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Fintech dystopia

fintechdystopia.com

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191–200 of 288 posts

Re: Fintech dystopia

#191

Post by Gigachad »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #164
svetb wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 financia…

This is why banks often block you from buying crypto in the first place.

Re: Fintech dystopia

#192

Post by throwaway290 »

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 yes, Russians, Iranians, Palestinians are known to use crypto, for example

Yes and mostly (as in 99% by amount of crypto moved) it's their governments

For example Russia it is not legal to pay with crypto, and to cash it out allowed crypto exchanges must submit your transactions to the government etc otherwise they get blocked.

But the bandit state is free of course to use it to trade with its friends like NK (which basically runs its nuclear program on ransomwared crypto) or Hamas;)

Re: Fintech dystopia

#193

Post by potato3732842 »

ta12653421 wrote: post #166
TrackerFF wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ;-)

Do they offer high yield savings accounts with reasonable min-balance requirements?

Re: Fintech dystopia

#194

Post by dmantis »

throwaway290 wrote: post #192
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 yes, Russians, Iranians, Palestinians are known to use crypto, for example Yes and mostly (as in 99% by amount of crypto moved) it's their governments For example Russia it is not legal to pay with crypto, and to cash it out allowed crypto exchanges must submit your transactions to the government etc otherwise they get blocked. But the bandit state is free of course to use it to trade with its friends like NK (…

> For example Russia it is not legal to pay with crypto, and to cash it out allowed crypto exchanges must submit your transactions to the government etc otherwise they get blocked.

Sorry, but it's very naive to think that Russian people use only "allowed" crypto exchanges and comply with the laws. That would be an impossible country to live in.

Direct connections with people and being street-smart are important kinds of skills in such societies. And even without connections, you can easily go to some popular Russian exchange aggregators and find no-KYC options with cash delivery, as far as I know.

EDIT: I've actually just checked for you: starting from 10,000 USDT, you can cash out anonymously with cash delivery for 1% in Moscow right at this moment from a publicly accessible resource with reviews.

Re: Fintech dystopia

#196

Post by FergusArgyll »

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…

This is an awful case of preconceived notions!

Stablecoins are not speculative or investments at all - their price stays the same. That's where stable in stablecoin comes from.

You see crypto and think day trading

Re: Fintech dystopia

#197

Post by strken »

jcfrei wrote: post #186
strken wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the end of the day, most crypto has a built in way to turn fossil fuels into significantly less money than you paid for them, so it doesn't even apply to the US unless they've started requiring KYC for ASICs and GPUs. I am not convinced this carbon-intensive form of money laundering is a good thing, but it certainly exists.

Outdated view since 99.9% of transactions happen on proof of stake systems which have a very low carbon footprint - not much more than Visa or Mastercard.

Okay; so what? Go mine one of the POW coins and buy what you actually want on an unregulated exchange. You're still burning fossil fuels to get it.

My general point is that you can exchange money for energy and energy for crypto, and nobody can really stop you if you're doing it at a small enough scale. Siphon the fuel from your car and run a generator, pretend you're charging your EV, whatever.

Re: Fintech dystopia

#198

Post by splix »

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?

In the world where the non-questionable financial organizations decide who can access them or not, based on the place they were born at. I.e., the current world.

Re: Fintech dystopia

#199

Post by fireflash38 »

nlitened wrote: post #181
dzonga wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

crypto off-ramps & on-ramps are expensive though. check binance & other markets - e.g convert USD 10 to USDC

Expensive relative to what? When people are rescuing their hard-earned savings of 200k USD out of a third-world country, they would be happy to pay even double-digit per cent commissions, and crypto is much, much cheaper, faster and safer than all other available options. Of course, if you're a US citizen transferring 200k USD from Chase to Bank of America, crypto doesn't make any sense.

Who are these people in 3rd world countries that have 200k USD cash? You make it sound like they've scrounged to make it happen... But its far far more likely to be people either trying to wash the money or they were from less than legitimate sources.

Definitely not lower class people like you seem to imply (or perhaps I'm just reading into it?)

Re: Fintech dystopia

#200

Post by coderatlarge »

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’m curious what counts as

“dystopia level of financial surveillance,”

these days…

recently i made a cash withdrawal from my personal account ahead of a trip abroad (they asked me why) and within days received a FinCEN notice in the mail warning me about “ structured transactions”… having made no other cash transactions days or even check cashing or writing days before or days after.

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