If it's completely decentralized, that might be the case. However, as far as I understand it, one usually trades crypto on exchanges, so you're back to trusting one counterparty.

With regards to getting screwed, the history of exchanges getting "hacked" and all the crypto disappearing should speak for itself, and with regards to transparency, just look at Tether as an example of how you can avoid it.

Sure, it happens with banks, too. I still have no clue how Wirecard managed to do what they did, without getting caught, in face of credidble reports of malfeasance. But in general, it has become much, much harder to wrong others, or to be reckless. And that is because of the regulation everyone keeps decrying, as if somehow they were the subject of it.

That's a completely different matter. The operation of exchanges doesn't have anything to do with the operation of a cryptocurrency. You need exchanges only for trading, not for using a cryptocurrency.

"I still have no clue how Wirecard managed to do what they did"

And you still seem to have a strong stance on how great the current regulatory scheme is.

My strong stance stems from two decades of being on the pointy end of that regulation. The government audits I was involved with were all by extremely capable people; top-notch investigators.

regulation (in the UK at least) means that in many cases, if someone steals money from my bank account, I get it back. Compare that with what's happened to many cryptocurrency exchanges where they have losses (e.g. quadriga) and the consumers who used them are largely out of the money.

If the bank overcharges me, I have some form of redress (e.g. the PPI scandal).

It's not perfect by any means, but for many consumers it's likely better than a world where, once the money's gone, it's gone.

On the other hand, at least in the US, we don't have much protection when banks themselves take money from our accounts. E.g. back in 2009, banks made $37 billion from overdraft fees [1], thanks to shady practices like reordering transactions to maximize overdrafts. There was a class action suit about it, but it was a token victory, with very little money going back to the victims.

This doesn't negate your point, but I would just argue that we pay a heavy price for our heavily regulated financial system, between bank fees, card processing fees, foreign transaction fees, trading fees, etc.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2012/02/28/147573947/the-fight-over-over...

Exchanges are not cryptocurrency.

From a financial exchange and price setting perspective, they are absolutely key to how the current cryptocurrency market works.

if Binance, Kraken, Bitfinex, Coinbase et al shut down tomorrow, what do you think would happen to the price of BTC and the rest...