"again"

when's the last time you or anyone you know handed off large chunks of cash to strangers for the purpose of delivering that money to someone else?

noteably without trust - that means no insurance and no legal contracts.

> when's the last time you or anyone you know handed off large chunks of cash to strangers for the purpose of delivering that money to someone else?

Every time you do a bank transfer that is exactly what happens

You can't make a bank transfer without having a legal contract with a bank. Contracts reduce the need for trust, that's why they exist.

A beyond naive statement.

It is not a matter of trust but one of understanding. People need to react to their motivations and incentives, and one must take that into account when interacting with other people.

They've never trusted each other and never will. This is a utopian fantasy.

That's their point. The core value from cryptocurrencies is just that, you cannot trust the other party, so here is a system that allows you to transfer money between others, without trusting anyone (well, except trusting the developers and makers of the protocol that is).

Not just the protocol makers/devs. Let's pretend you are trying to buy something online with ethereum... (ridiculous of course, who uses these coins to buy real stuff?) You'll have to trust:

  * The website you're using (is it a fake clone of the site you thought you were visiting)
  * The people that made your crypto wallet (app or hardware, or both?)
  * Your computer (lots of crypto stealing malware out there)
  * The person/company you are sending money to (are they who they say they are? are they going to just disappear with your coins, since the transaction can't be cancelled)
  * The smart contract you might be using (how many bugs are in it, has it got a backdoor to rip users off)
  * The miners building the blockchain (it's not just that they don't have to mine your payment - some miners will front-run transactions to do whatever you are trying to do first)
  * [...]

But sure, apart from that, it's completely trustless!

You seem to not really grasp the context here. When people say that cryptocurrencies (specifically Ethereum here) are trustless, they don't mean that cryptocurrencies turn the entire world trustless, they are referring to that the medium of transfer is trustless. Just like a SSL certificate doesn't mean the seller won't run away with your money without delivering anything, trustless cryptocurrency doesn't mean that either.

What is trustless is the verification of transfers. Previously, entities had to come together in meatspace and agree how a transfer happen. Now, entities that have no idea about the other entities on the network, can send money between them without having to trust the network, as the network is incentivized to behave well.

Again, all the problems you listed have nothing to do with "trustless" cryptocurrencies, but everything to do with humans. Cryptocurrencies don't try to solve those problems, and wouldn't be able to either.

> Previously, entities had to come together in meatspace and agree how a transfer happen.

I transferred money to somebody else last night despite never having met them, virtually or in meatspace or whatnot--I used a credit card to buy something.

That's sort of the issue with the trustlessness of cryptocurrency: it "solves" issues in the financial that are already practically solved for billions of people.

> I transferred money to somebody else last night despite never having met them, virtually or in meatspace or whatnot--I used a credit card to buy something.

Great! In the context of the discussion, that transfer wasn't "trustless", you have bunch of contracts setup and more to support and make sure the transfer is trusted and OKed.

> it "solves" issues in the financial that are already practically solved for billions of people.

Yes, bank transfers and credit cards works for a lot of people. But there are tons of people who cannot use those, what about those people?

Have you ever tried to send money from Nigeria to Ecuador? It's a hassle, especially when you deal with a larger amount. Your transfer is gonna get stuck in the fraud-department at some entity you never heard about, simply because the transfer is coming from Nigeria.

Instead, doing the same transfer with cryptocurrencies took about 1 minute to enter the details, and 5 seconds for finality of the transfer, and it's done.

I think the poster you're responding to was being sarcastic :)

ah, that's probably a more realistic interpretation - I tend to not see sarcasm if it's anywhere bordering ambiguity

I hope so.

I can't tell if he's being sarcastic.