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Fintech dystopia

fintechdystopia.com

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Re: Fintech dystopia

#171

Post by ta12653421 »

smsm42 wrote: post #87
didibus wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It helped me to start from the problem it tries to solve. Fundamentally, we've been making digital versions of everything. We have digital phone calls, television, bookkeeping, document writing, drawing, etc. One thing we didn't have digitally was a currency. Why would we want a digital currency? For similar reasons to all the other stuff above. It's more convenient. When you "transfer money" from your bank account t…

> When you "transfer money" from your bank account to another, your bank has to physically move the associated cash from it's vault to the other banks vault, by hiring secure trucks, people, and so on That's several centuries out of date, I'm afraid. Even before computers banks didn't actually do that, but now they certainly never do that. They just change records in their books - it has been paper books once, now it…

thanks for clarifying, I'm still laughing my ass of because the sentence you quoted :-D

Re: Fintech dystopia

#172

Post by salawat »

anon-3988 wrote: post #25
salawat wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If that other half is stupid, the technology side will have to overcompensate or will maliciously abuse them. Repeat after me. Do not use technology to try to solve people problems.

> Repeat after me. Do not use technology to try to solve people problems. I am saying the solution to make people smarter or empower the people. Buy now pay later, credit cards, and all these bespoke algorithms is just an illusion to make people feel better when they get ripped off.

>If that other half is stupid, the technology side will have to overcompensate or will maliciously abuse them.

And what I am saying is that this sentiment, right here? Is exactly what leads to your later observation below, because the only ones willing to pay someone to implement a technical system, are inevitably the greedy ones looking to extract value from the suckers, and pay a techie to o make the little blinkenlights do their thing. You can't look at the technical side as the "hero" in this encounter, because the technical is what is propping up the fintech dystopia in the first place.

>I am saying the solution to make people smarter or empower the people. Buy now pay later, credit cards, and all these bespoke algorithms is just an illusion to make people feel better when they get ripped of.

You are dead on with this observation, but again, the answer to this is not something the technical world can solve. It's a people problem. We have to start talking about how whether these practices around are fundamentally exploitive or not, and whether they have a place in our society. Whether we should even be trying the money lenders offering them. That set of questions is firmly in the realm of people problems (problems that are fundamentally questions of human interaction, and whether something should or should not happen), rather than the technical, to which most systems in the fintech basically boil down to being a CRM, a set of ledgers/accounts, an invoicing/bill payment system, and some email/login/account viewing screen.

As someone with over a decade having been wasted trying to find a way to genuinely help people through the financial/insurtech sector (I know, what an idiot, right?), you cannot use technology on the service provider side, without it morphing into a more efficient value extractor, and often the other side of the transaction, the ones being fleeced, are in the worst place to say no in the face of a tech enabled lender.

Hence, I know it sounded sort of glib, but I'll say it again. No using tech to solve people problems.

Re: Fintech dystopia

#173

Post by ckastner »

> PayPal never did seek a banking license, arguing that it wasn’t actually accepting any deposits [...]

That worked in the U.S.

European banking regulators saw through this ploy and forced them to seek a banking license.

Re: Fintech dystopia

#174

Post by ta12653421 »

jongjong wrote: post #7

I was in relatively early in the web as a developer, I was in early on the crypto movement, also as a developer. These technologies didn't fix the problems. There is too much regulation, you can't do anything without a license. The only solutions are political, not technological. Everything feels like a scam within a scam. I feel dizzy just thinking about it. I'm completely demoralised. Everything related to career f…

>>It's illegal to live in a tent on 'your own' property,

want to elaborate which country this is?

Re: Fintech dystopia

#175

Post by laserbeam »

neumann wrote: post #32

This is a really fun well-written and on point set of articles. Thank you for sharing. I feel like at this point there isn't anybody defending stablecoins who isn't using them primarily speculative investment/trading. There has yet to be a usecase for distributed ledger that isn't solved better by a centralised ledger other than niche counter-culture solutions whose users are typically blinkered to the fact that they…

> There has yet to be a usecase for distributed ledger that isn't solved better by a centralised ledger

As I understand it, many countries in the European Union use distributed ledgers for elections. Essentially it lets you cross reference votes and store that database across servers in multiple countries. It also prevents post-election data tampering by the state holding the election.

My understanding is this this system is not an open to every random Joe who wants to have a server (like bitcoin is). I think you still need to be a state actor to be part of the distributed database (so it's not a zero trust environment).

(Unfortunately, I don't have any good links to back this claim up)

Re: Fintech dystopia

#176

Post by baq »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #161
baq wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'd consider this more of an export of US law than 'Code is Law' TBH.

Re: Fintech dystopia

#177

Post by sjducb »

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?

Gold became a global standard.

Re: Fintech dystopia

#178

Post by dzonga »

nlitened wrote: post #115
potamic wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

crypto off-ramps & on-ramps are expensive though.

check binance & other markets - e.g convert USD 10 to USDC

Re: Fintech dystopia

#179

Post by UltraSane »

mattbillenstein wrote: post #72

I looked at crypto a little for a startup - the thing that isn't usually mentioned is the huge downside of custody. Not your keys, not your coin - and holding those keys securely, think fire, theft, hacks, backdoored hardware wallets, etc - is really really hard to get correct. And if you mess up once anywhere - poof - all your money is gone and there's nothing you can do to get it back.

Exactly. Crypto is like having all of your money as cash that thieves can teleport out of your safe. It must be incredibly stressful to have most of your wealth in crypto knowing this.

Re: Fintech dystopia

#180

Post by UltraSane »

nytesky wrote: post #97
mattbillenstein wrote: post #72

I looked at crypto a little for a startup - the thing that isn't usually mentioned is the huge downside of custody. Not your keys, not your coin - and holding those keys securely, think fire, theft, hacks, backdoored hardware wallets, etc - is really really hard to get correct. And if you mess up once anywhere - poof - all your money is gone and there's nothing you can do to get it back.

Yeah who in this world has never had to reset a password? That’s what this means. That laser inscribed metal fob with you keys on it may as well be made of platinum. And I’ve never felt clear on how people trust wallet, hot or cold — at some point they connect to the internet for transactions, and all the vendors seem suspect. I really doubt most users are building their wallet from code reviewed cryptographically si…

Best you can do is to split your crypto among many different hardware wallets and some metal cold storage wallets. Maybe even try to memorize at least one wallet password. It just seems so stressful.
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