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

popularfintech.com

121–130 of 452 posts

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

#121

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…

Crypto has never posed a credible threat to any aspect of the establishment, and it never will. Need proof? You don't have to go through an arduous screening process to acquire and deploy compute. The finance industry saw a pool of dumb money forming and predictably decided they'd like a slice of the action.

> an arduous screening process to acquire and deploy compute

That right there is more unlikely than crypto becoming a credible threat to the banking establishment.

If you want to see a lot of dead bodies of rich people in the street, tell the rest of the world they can't have their smartphone and laptop and Xbox and Playstation.

That's a great way to get yourself killed.

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

#122

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…

>The banks and gov brought the hammer down on crypto because it was a legitimate threat to the banking cabal which runs the American Empire.

Price instability, confiscatory and variable transaction fees, several high profile frauds -- including in a so-called "stable coin".

Crypto is its own worst enemy. Not the government.

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

#123
post #39

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.

If you count the loan as an asset, surely you have to count it as a liability for the borrower. And the bank has to actually give the money, so they're down that money. In the end both are net zero.

The transaction is balanced in isolation, but the initial part (actually giving the money) is allowed to be negative for the bank as long as they're within their leverage ratio.

So yes, as a whole the bank gives money from thin air.

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

#124

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, bu…

> fiscally sustainable savings

Buy gold bullion, rent a bank safe deposit box, store it there. I suspect this is what comes closest to that, as of now. (Sigh.)

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

#125

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…

If there isn’t sufficient competition for commercial banks, I think they should just be regulated as privately owned utilities for the public good or just be made into a public agency. What is the point of outsourcing this service to private industry if there is no working market dynamic?

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

#126
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At least with some precious metal, it has a floor value as a function of its practical uses and abundance. I don't really give this argument much credence any more. If the value of, say, gold or diamonds were to drop their practical-use-floor-value, they'd be valued at probably less than 1% (maybe much less) of current value. I mean, how much gold is actually consumed by industry? And we even have industrial diamon…

I mean, this is all true which is why we have fiat currencies. The UK government has consistently honoured debt for longer then the US has existed, for example.

Inflation, and especially controlled inflation, is much easier with fiat money. Most governments see it as an extremely valuable tool.

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

#127

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…

>Like, a high-yield savings account is just a savings account with a better price, right?

Most if not all the big banks have a high yield savings account or an equivalent under different names.

And yes, it's just a savings account with an actually noteworthy interest rate. It's usually a bit below the interest rate of money market funds.

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

#128

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…

Getting a banking license in the US at least is totally doable and lots of banks are created de novo every year. As another commenter noted, anyone can create "money out of thin air". Come to my corner store and buy an apple on credit. Poof! Credit was the original money, made out of thin air, and can be by anyone.

There used to actually be lots of new banks, now there are some: https://www.statista.com/statistics/193052/change-in-number-...

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

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting a banking license in the US at least is totally doable and lots of banks are created de novo every year. As another commenter noted, anyone can create "money out of thin air". Come to my corner store and buy an apple on credit. Poof! Credit was the original money, made out of thin air, and can be by anyone.

Can your corner store credit be used to pay taxes? How long will your corner store survive if the IRS found out you were processing transactions in your own currency?

>How long will your corner store survive if the IRS found out you were processing transactions in your own currency?

Offering someone credit in USD isn't making your own currency. The closest widespread version of that are community currencies[0], which the US doesn't seem to particularly care about -- I'm guessing because they're generally pegged to the dollar and promote local economies.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_community_currencies_i...

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

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, d…

Bitcoin physical value is that, one way or the other, billions of humans got atoms in their brains, arrange in such a way that they recognize bitcoins, and have a certain understanding of it's setup... this is a lot of atoms, and is no small fit.
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