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Fintech dystopia

fintechdystopia.com

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Re: Fintech dystopia

#161

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

baq wrote: post #121
whatshisface wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or a CD, or maybe just a bank account. I think of stablecoin issuers as banks because why not: they keep your cash, pay you some yield and promise to give it back to you when you ask them. Walks like a bank, quacks like a bank…

Does holding stablecoins require any sort of KYC? Or do I just need to maintain the security of a private key?

If the latter, I think that explains why stablecoins are popular in countries with weak institutions.

In a country with strong laws, and strong rule-of-law, "Code is Law" is a solution in search of a problem. But in a country with weak laws, it can be a lifesaver.

Re: Fintech dystopia

#162

Post by TrackerFF »

dmantis wrote: post #148

This is a very American-centric post. E.g."Stablecoins won’t bank the unbanked, because people get stablecoins by purchasing them on a crypto exchange, and no crypto exchange will open an account for a customer unless they have a bank account." Well, I understand that US has dystopia level of financial surveillance, but in many places in the world you can change cash in person to crypto without many issues. And you d…

I don't think any first world country makes it possible to do banking, if you decide to simply not comply with AML/KYC regulations. You very much become unbanked, if you simply don't want to or can't comply with those things. (European here)

Re: Fintech dystopia

#163

Post by atemerev »

malthaus wrote: post #154
dmantis wrote: post #148

This is a very American-centric post. E.g."Stablecoins won’t bank the unbanked, because people get stablecoins by purchasing them on a crypto exchange, and no crypto exchange will open an account for a customer unless they have a bank account." Well, I understand that US has dystopia level of financial surveillance, but in many places in the world you can change cash in person to crypto without many issues. And you d…

and in what fantasy world would a system primarily used by questionable countries/organisations/individuals ever become a global standard?

Questionable individual here. My bank accounts are all blocked now just for the reason of my nationality, nothing else. Crypto is currently my lifeline.

Re: Fintech dystopia

#164

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

svetb wrote: post #123
paperpunk wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Not OP, but we have contractors in Nigeria, and paying them via regular bank transfer is nearly impossible. For example many banks will outright refuse to make SWIFT transactions to Nigerian accounts. This is just one example of a few factors that lead to a sort of isolation from international banking.

>many banks will outright refuse to make SWIFT transactions to Nigerian accounts

The flipside of this is crypto turbocharging online scammers.

"The industry in Cambodia now generates more than $12.5 billion annually – half of the country's GDP, according to the United States Institute for Peace."

"The criminal gangs entice trafficking victims with fake job offers posted on social media and then force them to financially exploit people online including through fake romances or “pig-butchering” schemes in which the scammer builds trust with a victim before stealing their money, Amnesty said."

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/society-equity/amnest...

The scammers will make friends with someone online, persuade them to deposit increasingly large amounts into a "crypto trading platform", then finally run with the money.

Crypto has created an alternative financial system with many fewer rules. This can either be good or bad depending on the circumstances.

I think it has the potential to be a good thing in the long run. In the short run, however, people need to learn to instinctively distrust crypto as a scam. Especially if the situation involves a friendly attractive lady you've been chatting with online who's really good at trading cryptocurrency and wants to share her secrets with you.

Re: Fintech dystopia

#165

Post by lmm »

Integer wrote: post #160
lmm wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Doesn't that exist already? Mobile payment gateways are available in many countries already. None of them work cross-border. And one suspects the US Government is working very hard to make sure they never do (look at the money laundering accusations against the Brazilian system for a recent example).

G20 Targets for Enhancing Cross-border Payments[1]: “Reaffirm UN SDG: Global average cost of sending $200 remittance to be no more than 3% by 2030, with no corridors with costs higher than 5%” “75% of cross-border remittance payments in every corridor to provide availability of funds for the recipient within one hour of payment initiation and for the remainder of the market to be within one business day, by end-2027”…

Fine words, now let's see if they live up to them.

Re: Fintech dystopia

#166

Post by ta12653421 »

TrackerFF wrote: post #162
dmantis wrote: post #148

This is a very American-centric post. E.g."Stablecoins won’t bank the unbanked, because people get stablecoins by purchasing them on a crypto exchange, and no crypto exchange will open an account for a customer unless they have a bank account." Well, I understand that US has dystopia level of financial surveillance, but in many places in the world you can change cash in person to crypto without many issues. And you d…

I don't think any first world country makes it possible to do banking, if you decide to simply not comply with AML/KYC regulations. You very much become unbanked, if you simply don't want to or can't comply with those things. (European here)

Oh well, there are some shady brokers in Cyprus which are using EU passporting regulation but which are "not really good" with KYC ;-)

Re: Fintech dystopia

#167

Post by willguest »

> Actually improving people’s financial wellbeing, for example, will require us to pursue real, slow, piecemeal, democratic solutions.

Democratic solutions are, imho, doomed to failure. In order for them to work a significant portion of "take back control" and "make my country great" brigade will need to have some kind of revelation about the direction of society as a whole. Given the amount of resources pumped into keeping people separate and fighting one-another, this seems like naive optimism.

I consider this to be a woefully inadequate response to a vast, complex and thoroughly embedded set of interconnected issues. Appropriate solutions will require a deep appreciation of complexity science, radically better system design and, frankly, a level of imagination, determination and competence that simply doesn't exist as a social norm, and will not emerge for at least a generation (or three), given that educational and political institutions are so deeply rooted in the current mode.

I don't think Bitcoin is revolutionary - it's just algorithmic scarcity - but I do think that distributed ledgers are an important piece of a future puzzle, as they provide transparency where previously it didn't exist. That said, there are no silver-bullets and not everything should necessarily be held on one.

My position is that, until we actually address the misconception of infinite growth within economic system design (i.e. not by external constraints, such as taxation), we haven't even started. Some may say that Bitcoin already does this, but its capture by the financial sector demonstrates that it is, at best, another asset class.

My anticipation is that this won't happen, so I am fully expecting a kind of looney tunes moment as we race off the side of the cliff. I am interested, not in preventing that from happening, since I think it is inevitable, but rather on planting bushes on the side of the cliff that might give us things to grab as we fall. Feel free to accuse me of either pessimism or optimism.

Re: Fintech dystopia

#168

Post by dbdr »

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…

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

How easy is it from most people in the world to "just" open a bank account in another country?

Re: Fintech dystopia

#169

Post by ta12653421 »

smsm42 wrote: post #84
_9ptr wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, a lot of people don't understand the old money system either

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.

Founding banks, working in banking back office infra (central bank connectivity etc.); there are for sure places where you can get this knowledge. Also there dedicated central banking degrees in lot of countries.
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