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Griffin – A fully-regulated, API-driven bank, with Clojure

juxt.pro

131–140 of 223 posts

Re: Griffin – A fully-regulated, API-driven bank, with Clojure

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>issues I've run into in the last few years Bitcoin has existed in the last few years. So I have to ask why it is that you haven't used it if you've had these issue moving money via traditional banks. Are the transaction fees too high (like Western Union).

I take part of my income in Bitcoin and spend it, both on-chain and Lightning Network, pretty frequently. I visit a number of local places that accept Bitcoin and use it for online purchases too. There are several Bitcoin ATMs in my city but they mostly have KYC with low limits and/or high fees. For purchases like cars or real estate it seems like you'd have to be pretty lucky to find a seller unless you're not parti…

why not buy Bitcoin, transfer it to destination country and sell it there for cash?

Re: Griffin – A fully-regulated, API-driven bank, with Clojure

#132
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they want to give you your book, because they want your money.

Step 1: You give them your money. From the seller's perspective, there's no need to bother with step 2.

The seller does not need to be anonymous, and customers would be less inclined to trust them if they are. At which point if they're ripping people off they would be subject to arrest for fraud, not to mention have immediate bad reviews.

More than that, sellers like repeat business, especially in low variable cost digital products. It costs them a tenth of a cent worth of bandwidth to actually send you the book, which is the only way they're going to get your money for the next book.

They want to give you your book, because they want your money.

Re: Griffin – A fully-regulated, API-driven bank, with Clojure

#133
post #96
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wouldn't say it's "extreme", it's very normal and natural. You just stick everything in the types and it works. Ah, then I seem to be missing the point/intention. Thanks for illuminating that it should feel "natural". I think I need to spend more time with ML/Haskell families. > ... the vast majority of the time you can construct your types in ways that force your logic to be correct because you just don't offer…

> Classic "logic" stuff. Forgetting to modify and return a map given some other information. Accidentally returning the inverse of a boolean (i.e. !isSomething(x) vs isSomething(x)), incorrect adds or bit shifts If something really is just a map or a boolean or an integer then you can't avoid this kind of thing. But usually it isn't, it's something meaningful in your domain, and then you can make and enforce the righ…

> If something really is just a map or a boolean or an integer then you can't avoid this kind of thing. But usually it isn't,

No matter how much you abstract out and dress up a boolean, at its heart it's still a boolean value and I don't see how making a custom type based on boolean would prevent returning the inverse of a boolean value bug.

Re: Griffin – A fully-regulated, API-driven bank, with Clojure

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

U.S. banking is surprisingly far behind the curve, and hasn’t led the world from a tech or innovation perspective for many decades. The UK on the other hand has actively encouraged new banks and new tech. It’s had things like instant, free, payments between personal accounts for almost two decades. Contactless transactions for at least a decade, mobile banking for decades, and government mandated banking API for almo…

US banks are very tightly regulated, and the regulators haven't ordered these inventions yet.

U.S. bank regulation is a joke compared to the UK and EU. Regulation isn’t the reason US banks are lagging so far behind.

Re: Griffin – A fully-regulated, API-driven bank, with Clojure

#136
post #42
post #26

Despite the unpopularity here. I am still a fan of cryptocurrency as an alternative to traditional banking.

With the introduction of CBDCs, FedNow, and platforms like TFA, it's starting to look like TradFi is getting the second-mover advantage. Cryptocurrency introduced programmable money, which is great, but it also came with other features like self-custody, extreme transparency & privacy, and immutability that have ended up being more than average users are willing to accept as a bundle. TradFi entities now have the abi…

> CBDCs, FedNow, and platforms like TFA, is getting the second-mover advantage

In the world outside the USA we had the features of these systems for decades before the bitcoin white paper was published.

Re: Griffin – A fully-regulated, API-driven bank, with Clojure

#137
post #16

They tried really hard to not use a distributed SQL database.

As long as your balance is eventually consistent, what's the harm? ;)

They specifically mention why they went with FoundationDB, and that is because it's strictly serializable.

Re: Griffin – A fully-regulated, API-driven bank, with Clojure

#138
post #6

Unfortunately in the UK a bank can (and do) freeze your account with no reason for up to 2 years without any recourse or access to funds. With API access you risk your money being frozen due to automatic fraud detection. The government have given up policing of finance to banks and they take the least risky options

These "challenger" banks are a gimmick. Friend of mine recently tried to set up an account for his new business and all "challengers" refused a business account, they were slow to respond and disinterested in helping. Eventually he set up with a high street bank, but the whole thing took over a month, which is ridiculous.

Exact same experience, I wouldnt say refused just hoop after hoop to jump through. disinterested in helping is an apt description, they got interested 2 years later and I would get a daily phone call about "finishing my application".

I was pretty transparent with the person(s) calling - after years of doing their best to push business customers away, someone up high decided to make to get as many business customers as possible and everyone was on a fat commission to open up new accounts (I think lure of government guaranteed covid loans might have had something to do with it).

High street bank was open within 3 days, fill out the form and done.

Re: Griffin – A fully-regulated, API-driven bank, with Clojure

#139
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how would you under engineer your bank?

You don't have to choose between under and over engineering

Perfectly engineering is nearly impossible. In my experience systems always end up under or over engineered. The distinction also depends on what's on the backlog – if you have a feature that's going to be hard to implement because of inflexibility, you're under-engineered, if it's easy but other features require more work than they should, you're over-engineered.

I can't make a judgement call on whether they're over or under engineered, but it's good to pick which one you would rather be, write that into your engineering team's DNA, and then learn to work with it.

Re: Griffin – A fully-regulated, API-driven bank, with Clojure

#140
post #76
post #26

Despite the unpopularity here. I am still a fan of cryptocurrency as an alternative to traditional banking.

I put 100k EUR of Bitcoin into a wallet, but then I lose the private key. There has to be a way for me to recover access to my funds. The only way to do that is to delegate trust to a central authority. Crypto will never, can never, be an alternative to traditional banking for the general population.

You're right, this is a massive weakness in the cryptocurrency space and until this gets better solutions I doubt there will be more mainstream adoption (without centralised custodians). But I will say that this isn't only a problem in the cryptocurrency space, it's a general problem for cryptographic systems. We need better generic systems for managed cryptographic keys, with several levels of backups and recovery options, with minimum hassle. ERC-4337 standard goes in the right direction.
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