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Fintech dystopia

fintechdystopia.com

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Re: Fintech dystopia

#111

Post by whatshisface »

jernejzen wrote: post #105

As someone working with African companies (legitimate businesses, mid-sized transactions), the key use case is payments in stablecoins—their banking infrastructure doesn’t allow for reliable and consistent foreign remittances. These deals would be practically impossible without stablecoins. (And to be clear, I’m someone who has never been particularly enthusiastic about crypto or blockchain.)

Do you know why people would choose to use stablecoins, rather than trade shares in an ETF that held government bonds, or something like that? That's what stablecoins are, effectively just a share in the holding company's bank account.

Re: Fintech dystopia

#112

Post by ArtTimeInvestor »

BobbyJo wrote: post #63
ArtTimeInvestor wrote: post #54

I think people here on HN keep underestimating the relevance of crypto for four reasons: What crypto is already useful for is not to replace the cash in your pocket and your savings account. It is useful to replace SWIFT and Fort Knox. What crypto will be useful for in the future is uncertain. But uncertainty does not mean pie in the sky. How the internet would be used was uncertain in the 70s. Yes, nerds were alread…

Bitcoin was created 17 years ago. The "the use cases are coming" argument doesn't work anymore.

That means you would have given up on the internet in the 80s.

That is what I mean by point 3 in my comment.

Re: Fintech dystopia

#113

Post by paperpunk »

jernejzen wrote: post #105

As someone working with African companies (legitimate businesses, mid-sized transactions), the key use case is payments in stablecoins—their banking infrastructure doesn’t allow for reliable and consistent foreign remittances. These deals would be practically impossible without stablecoins. (And to be clear, I’m someone who has never been particularly enthusiastic about crypto or blockchain.)

Can you give more details on this? Why is it that the existing banking system cannot do this kind of foreign remittance? E.g. correspondent banking via Swift?

Is it high fees, is it overly burdensome sanctions/AML checks, something else?

Re: Fintech dystopia

#114

Post by tonyhart7 »

paperpunk wrote: post #113
jernejzen wrote: post #105

As someone working with African companies (legitimate businesses, mid-sized transactions), the key use case is payments in stablecoins—their banking infrastructure doesn’t allow for reliable and consistent foreign remittances. These deals would be practically impossible without stablecoins. (And to be clear, I’m someone who has never been particularly enthusiastic about crypto or blockchain.)

Can you give more details on this? Why is it that the existing banking system cannot do this kind of foreign remittance? E.g. correspondent banking via Swift? Is it high fees, is it overly burdensome sanctions/AML checks, something else?

because their central bank is sucks, simple

Re: Fintech dystopia

#115

Post by nlitened »

potamic wrote: post #94
wmf wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other legit use for stablecoins is allowing people in Venezuela, Argentina, etc. to hold US dollars while the US government pretends they don't know this is happening. (Officially the US does not encourage dollarization of other economies against their will.) I agree that a centralized US dollar CBDC that isn't run by scammers would be a simpler way to do this.

If a country does not allow their citizens to exchange currency, then this is as good as a black market and comes with the same risks as obtaining currency through any other black market means.

Carrying around or storing piles of foreign currency is much riskier than having a USDT wallet. You also cannot fly to another country with cash.

Re: Fintech dystopia

#116

Post by lurk2 »

wakawaka28 wrote: post #78
ChadNauseam wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There has yet to be a usecase for distributed ledger that isn't solved better by a centralised ledger what about situations where centralized ledgers won't serve you? e.g. someone who wants to buy drugs, or sex workers want to get paid. And you mention "niche counter-culture solutions" but I don't think it's so niche - in 2002, the government of Argentina stole 2/3rds of everyone's savings by forcibly converting th…

What you're talking about, resistance to government meddling, is more of a function of the currency than the ledger. Cryptocurrencies only work because of people silly enough to buy them in exchange for actual "valuable" or official currencies (which can be imposed on some people in the world at gunpoint). If a cryptocurrency was forced on you at gunpoint, it most certainly would not be one that provided any anonymit…

> Ideally you could just have a foreign bank account that your country cannot touch.

Doesn’t solve the problem as these assets can still be seized by foreign governments.

Re: Fintech dystopia

#117

Post by smsm42 »

troupo wrote: post #99
smsm42 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fact, there's probably less people who understand the old money system than those that understand the crypto math. After all, the latter can be readily learned from books and whitepapers, go figure where do you learn how actually the real monetary system works, in all its complexity, and how would you even get such level of access without being member of the Fed board.

Yes. Because no one has ever written any readily available books and white papers on old money.

Tons of books, of course. But if a person reads a good book on, say, Bitcoin chain foundations, I am pretty sure they'd understand how it works. If you read 20 financial books, I am not sure you'd understand how something like US money system really works.

Re: Fintech dystopia

#118

Post by nlitened »

wakawaka28 wrote: post #78
ChadNauseam wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There has yet to be a usecase for distributed ledger that isn't solved better by a centralised ledger what about situations where centralized ledgers won't serve you? e.g. someone who wants to buy drugs, or sex workers want to get paid. And you mention "niche counter-culture solutions" but I don't think it's so niche - in 2002, the government of Argentina stole 2/3rds of everyone's savings by forcibly converting th…

What you're talking about, resistance to government meddling, is more of a function of the currency than the ledger. Cryptocurrencies only work because of people silly enough to buy them in exchange for actual "valuable" or official currencies (which can be imposed on some people in the world at gunpoint). If a cryptocurrency was forced on you at gunpoint, it most certainly would not be one that provided any anonymit…

> serve as a distraction from their inevitable uselessness

I don’t understand your point. You said that crypto is only useful as long as governments use it for nefarious purposes and money laundering — so basically it’s a guaranteed relevancy in the future, no? How is that inevitable uselessness?

Re: Fintech dystopia

#119

Post by lmm »

whatshisface wrote: post #111
jernejzen wrote: post #105

As someone working with African companies (legitimate businesses, mid-sized transactions), the key use case is payments in stablecoins—their banking infrastructure doesn’t allow for reliable and consistent foreign remittances. These deals would be practically impossible without stablecoins. (And to be clear, I’m someone who has never been particularly enthusiastic about crypto or blockchain.)

Do you know why people would choose to use stablecoins, rather than trade shares in an ETF that held government bonds, or something like that? That's what stablecoins are, effectively just a share in the holding company's bank account.

How do you transfer those shares to another company to pay them?

Re: Fintech dystopia

#120

Post by dartharva »

jernejzen wrote: post #105

As someone working with African companies (legitimate businesses, mid-sized transactions), the key use case is payments in stablecoins—their banking infrastructure doesn’t allow for reliable and consistent foreign remittances. These deals would be practically impossible without stablecoins. (And to be clear, I’m someone who has never been particularly enthusiastic about crypto or blockchain.)

Why can they not just use America's banking infrastructure directly instead of using America's banking infrastructure indirectly through meaningless overengineered abstractions like stablecoins?
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