But there are additional, unnecessary risks created by the banking system, and for many transactions (like when the thief stole my friend's laptop, or transactions that result in identity fraud) those risks are the vast majority of the total risk. In those cases, cryptocurrency solves the problem; it doesn't just shift the risk back to the buyer.
Your links to checks are fantastic. Who the hell uses checks any more? Wow.
Cryptocurrency precisely shifts the risk to the buyer, their recourse is gone if the goods they get are substandard. The imbalance of power between merchants and consumers is real, and consumer protections like reversibility are there to address this.
Perhaps PayPal is not the best choice for person to person transactions. I am sorry your friend got ripped off, but perhaps as a seller he should do his research about who he’s selling to. Without reversible mechanisms, every buyer has to research every purchase.
Your idea that cryptocurrency would solve your friend’s situation is just plain wrong. It might have solved it for one party, but it does push the fraud risk onto the buyer. If your friend had sold a laptop to an honest buyer, but the laptop died as soon as it left the house, or was of lower spec than advertised, the buyer would have been out of luck.
I’m not sure why you think pointing this out indicates that I’m upset, I can only presume this is tone trolling.
You’d have to be historically illiterate to want to throw this stuff away.
I’m sorry your friend got scammed, but there’s a host of damn good reasons we put the risk on the seller.
This is not a set of outdated practices resulting in ‘risk’ to sellers, it’s deliberate consumer protection.