Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

No one is disrupting banks – at least not the big ones

popularfintech.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 452 posts

Re: No one is disrupting banks – at least not the big ones

#101

Post by losteric »

henry_bone wrote: post #99
Waterluvian wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s the thing I can’t ever come to understand about crypto. It’s purely about perception of value. At least with some precious metal, it has a floor value as a function of its practical uses and abundance. Which leads me to believe that the only thing that could be honestly said is that a crypto is purely about winners and suckers and timing.

That's true of everything we use as money, including precious metals. You can't eat them, live in them, use them as weapons, walk down the street in them. They have value bacause we all agree that they do and we all agree to use them as a means to exchange that value. Also, and this is important and I should have said it first, they have value because their supply is restricted. The same is true for crypto. It's fung…

What are you talking about? We can wear gold, make weapons out of iron, cups out of copper… coins have both a fiat face value and real tangible value (the “floor”).

Bitcoin has no intrinsic value. It’s entirely belief.

That’s not a bad thing. MLMs can be very profitable, some turn into multi-generational institutions of faith.

I own bitcoin because it’s like buying a share of the Mormon church early on. Absolutely, do it! But comparing it with gold? Come on, be real.

Re: No one is disrupting banks – at least not the big ones

#102

Post by epolanski »

picafrost wrote: post #7

In many cases the start-ups that disrupted entrenched big players did so by skirting the existing law and regulations the big players have to abide by and gaining market share before regulators could catch up to them. Maybe I simply lack vision but I don't think this behavior maps well into the fundamental day-to-day livelihoods of every day people. Certainly I am not willing to risk my finances for marginally increa…

One problem with fintechs is that they are severely ad disadvantage when it comes to regulations.

The first thing those banks face when they open in Italy is a huge surge of difficult customers and they realize too slowly how difficult and expensive it is to abide to anti laundering.

6 months down the road they start closing accounts left and right just because you do too many operations and it's expensive to track them.

Re: No one is disrupting banks – at least not the big ones

#103

Post by Frummy »

ninetyninenine wrote: post #87
perrygeo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> mega banks have the sole power of creating credit out of thin air Amazing that more people don't know this. Most people will insist until their face is red that bank credit is a "loan" with equal debits and credits on both sides of the balance sheet. Wrong. The borrower's bank account goes up. And the bank's balance sheet goes up (the loan is an asset). Viola, new money.

i thought the central bank does this?

It goes up the chain to the central bank.

Re: No one is disrupting banks – at least not the big ones

#104

Post by epolanski »

poisonborz wrote: post #63

What do we understand under "banks"? If keeping with the simply notion of "stores funds and provides debit cards", the most common usage in EU, especially east, banks were deeply disrupted. Revolut and Wise took a large segment of the youth, who now also got hooked on more services like savings accounts and stocks. They have startup-like culture while being registered as standard banks. Obviously their services, qual…

I'm a revolut user, but I fail to understand how they plan to make any money off me with all they throw.

Re: No one is disrupting banks – at least not the big ones

#105

Post by epolanski »

dylan604 wrote: post #45
scarface_74 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What type of transactions do you need to make outside of business hours that you can’t do electronically? And who actually deals with physical checks? Even the various contractors I used when preparing my home for sell took some form of electronic payment

if i transfer money from one bank's account to another, it takes minimum of 48 hours if I make the request before 3pm cutoff time. Day 1, the transfer request is made at 1pm. Day 2, the money is no longer available in the sending account yet not in the receiving account. Day 3, the money is available in the receiving account. If I do it after 3pm, the request is not placed until Day 2. Why? WTF does a computer have a…

In Europe we have instant bank transfers, for free in Italy as of January 2025.

The bad thing is that they don't work outside business hours (not a huge problem), and that you can't cancel/revert it.

Re: No one is disrupting banks – at least not the big ones

#107

Post by TeaBrain »

badgersnake wrote: post #24
Red_Comet_88 wrote: post #3

No one is disrupting banks because the mega banks have the sole power of creating credit out of thin air, and no upstart fintech company has this power. To gain this power requires the creation of a bank, which as you can imagine, is probably the most gate-kept activity on earth. Andreesen talked about this in his Rogan appearance. The banks and gov brought the hammer down on crypto because it was a legitimate threat…

Tether appear to have created a huge amount of USD out of thin air. Best not to pay much attention to Andreesen though.

On this point, I too have a really difficult time understanding how there is supposedly >$50 billion in treasury bonds backing Tether USDC sitting at Cantor Fitzgerald. It really does seem like the bonds backing tether just came out of thin air, unless tether was sponsored by an entity that gave them the wherewithal to obtain the bonds, for the sole purpose of moving money without KYC with tether.

Re: No one is disrupting banks – at least not the big ones

#108

Post by ikr678 »

ranger207 wrote: post #88

The products being pointed out in this article as an attempt to disrupt banks seem to be basically the same product for a different price. Like, a high-yield savings account is just a savings account with a better price, right? How do you disrupt an industry by selling the same products? The advantage of startups is that they're more nimble, can pivot to fit the market better, and can adapt to customer requests faste…

This is a very US centric article, a lot of the disruptions listed are incumbent 'big bank' products in other jurisdictions. I feel the lack of adaptability is likely a result of US market conditions/regulations rather than lack of innovation.

Re: No one is disrupting banks – at least not the big ones

#109

Post by wahern »

ianburrell wrote: post #93
dylan604 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if i transfer money from one bank's account to another, it takes minimum of 48 hours if I make the request before 3pm cutoff time. Day 1, the transfer request is made at 1pm. Day 2, the money is no longer available in the sending account yet not in the receiving account. Day 3, the money is available in the receiving account. If I do it after 3pm, the request is not placed until Day 2. Why? WTF does a computer have a…

Wait for FedNow to get rolled out. That is the Federal Reserve's instant payment system. It does need to be implemented by banks cause it is just an API. One nice feature is that it has push model, pulling money means making request that can be approved which should increase the security.

The problem with pushing payments is that the cost of fraud falls on the payer. In the pull model, if the payer says it was unauthorized, the rules favor the payer--restoring the payer account happens as a matter of course, and disputes are handled subsequently. This sucks for the payee, but they're usually businesses who are more sophisticated and better placed to handle these issues. But in the push model, the presumption is the payment was intended by the payer. It's a wholly reasonable presumption assuming sophisticated, rational agents. But we're talking rolling out push payment systems where the payer will be your elderly grandmother.

It won't be pretty unless there are some aggressive changes to existing regulatory and legal frameworks. But it's not easy to figure out to protect consumers in push payment systems without opening gaps where fraudsters can directly abuse the system, like checking kiting scams of old. (Checks are a pull payment type of system, but the important point is that the cost of check fraud--forged, kiting, etc--fell primarily on banks and merchants, and less on individual grandmas who couldn't buy food because they were stuck in a months-long battle with the bank to recover funds.)

Re: No one is disrupting banks – at least not the big ones

#110

Post by Joel_Mckay »

ranger207 wrote: post #88

The products being pointed out in this article as an attempt to disrupt banks seem to be basically the same product for a different price. Like, a high-yield savings account is just a savings account with a better price, right? How do you disrupt an industry by selling the same products? The advantage of startups is that they're more nimble, can pivot to fit the market better, and can adapt to customer requests faste…

Most people have zero notion of what money is... let alone what banks offer as a business.

Indeed, the entrenched investment industry has become less fair (or an outright liability) to customers, but casinos are at least honest with their customers. Gambling with other peoples money was not a real financial service until relatively recently.

There is a market for a fiscally sustainable savings/investment industry, but most people with under $2m in cash can't afford the bonded fiduciary services.

Good luck, I kind of admire their ill fated ambition. =3

Post reply on HN