> It’s insane to think that people are ever going to be competent and experienced enough to run their own bank.

Not what happened here. A centralized exchange is the exact opposite of "running your own bank".

> Society needs banks and regulations.

Agreed about the principle, but I can bet we disagree about the scale. A lot of the problems in the past financial crisis are due to banks being "too big to fail" and regulatory capture that makes it basically impossible for small-scale banks to be sustainable. Open Banking and the fintechs that are cropping up are all based on the same idea of "winner-takes-all" dynamics that has been the bane of Big Tech.

> Crypto anarchy is a farce; don’t fall for it.

You are absolutely right. Just like goldbugs, there is this special type of crypto enthusiast that believes that their "money" will be of any use in an apocalyptic world, and simply forget that a world with failed institutions they will probably not even have internet, and even if they did they will lose pretty quickly to rubber-hose "hackers" than anything.

But crypto can be used as a hedge for the many dysfunctional institutions that we have today, and it can be a response to this hyper-globalized world that we live in. It's barely a paragraph on my description of Hub20 [0], but one of the reasons that I am working on it is that I hope that it can be used as a community-oriented bank, where each group of people can define how to operate it and how to manage the funds. I hope to make it something that can be a middle ground between the "welcome to the jungle" and the "resistance is futile" mindsets that seem to polarize the crypto-debate.

[0] https://hub20.io/about

The comments defending crypto seem to all anchor on the argument on what crypto "can" be. Anything "can" be anything. Maybe it is what it is and it has to be something totally different to be different.

The "can" is not hypothetical. There are plenty of times and people who have used crypto as a way to get around dysfunctional institutions. It's just that those stories get drown-out by the ones looking for a quick way to be rich, the scammers and all the chaos that always come with any new technology.

Edge cases don't make much of an argument.

They tend to be edge case for HN users. That is, male, educated, well off/affluent and living in a first world country. All the benefits of cryptocurrency are already available in their privileged position and they cannot understand that others do not have the same options/access to financial instruments.

One trip to Argentina is all it takes for someone to get crypto.

Thanks for the details. I guess we'll have to go to Argentina to learn more.

So it's not an edge case for female, uneducated, poor people from third world countries?

I guess this is the "you won't get it" defense. Maybe the real problem is that we do get it.

>>>So it's not an edge case for female, uneducated, poor people from third world countries?

When a Philippine friend of mine lacked capital to purchase inventory for her business at the start of lockdowns last year, I sent her some Bitcoin. She didn't fully understand how crypto worked but I talked her through the basics (wallets, etc...) She converted the BTC to pesos locally, and paid me back in Bitcoin, with interest. She got the capital injection she couldn't find elsewhere, and I added to my BTC pile (at a time when BTC was just under $10k, as I knew it would go up again).

Disingenuous much?

That's called a strawman argument, I never made the claim yet you are making a statement as if I had said that.

Either you understand my point and are being deliberately obtuse or you need to re-read my comment and go away and think about it. Either way you are not adding any value to the conversation. So please don't respond to me again.

I'm helping you reconsider a weak argument. You're hoping your statements are self explanatory.

Also don't direct the behavior of people on a comment board. There's other places to go where you can feel good about yourself.

They are not edge cases for the people who use it out of need.

Feel free to provide details.

Try making an international transfer to a country that does not use USD/EUR/GBP without losing more than 5% of the total value to exchange fees ("official vs parallel") and government taxes on finance operations. Brazil not until long ago had a tax of 0.38% on every bank transfer (both ways!) and they have been talking about bringing it back.

Try working as a service provider with international customers, receive a payment from the client but getting notice from the bank saying it will take them 60 days to clear the money order, or that you can take it right away if they skim some of it.

Try living in Venezuela and seeing the government confiscating whatever property they can if you happen to be in the opposition. Try to keep up with hyperinflation while all of those in the elites can park their cash offshore.

Try to withdraw more than 600€ from your bank in Greece.

Try using an international contract as proof-of-income in a bank, in case you want to get a loan for your business. Try searching for a micro-credit solution that is not going to charge you usury rates.

Try running a business that is deemed "offensive" and see how you can not accept credit card payments. Not illegal. Just "offensive".

It's amazing that crypto has solved all of these problems, I wonder why people still have them.

It's not a problem anymore for those that are using crypto.

Why is it so hard for you to accept that you don't have a valid argument? Do you think that playing dumb and taking cheap jabs at what other people do gives you any moral superiority?

It's because you don't care if you're actually right. The proposals you're presenting are obviously not solved nor does Bitcoin solve them. If you have a problem paying 5% transaction fees than why would use Bitcoin (not to mention every transaction is subject to tax which gov'ts haven't been aggressive at collecting now, but can choose to collect it retroactively at any point having a public ledger to reference whenever they need it).

- I don't use Bitcoin, not anymore anyway. Stop assuming that crypto = Bitcoin, or that everyone that sees the value in blockchain believes in or depends on BTC.

- I am not in the US, so what you are talking about taxes make absolute zero sense. Stop assuming that everyone lives like you.

- Transaction fees are fixed, so while you certainly don't want to use it (at the moment) for transfer if small value, it is certainly an advantage to use for larger sums. Also, you can use a middleman who will take obviously less than banks.

But anyway, please continue telling me how the problems that I and others managed to solve or alleviate through crypto were not real.

Bitcoin already acts as a hedge against inflation, since its supply is relatively fixed (90% of all the maximum supply of Bitcoin has been mined).

Taleb would like to have a word with you.

(Or probably not, he would just call you a Bitidiot for parroting this argument and block you on Twitter)

It's a hedge against economics in general.

> A centralized exchange is the exact opposite of "running your own bank".

I assume the argument is that if a large company with this much money on the line can't figure out how to securely run a bank, how would I be able to?

I disagree with that argument, though, as I think it is in fact the large amount of money on the line managed by a large number of people that makes running an exchange difficult.

I think we 100% agree. Thanks for elaborating. I am including banks/exchanges in the set of things that need regulation. I understand the way I worded my comment implies retail did something wrong, that was not the intention. I was more tying to highlight that this stuff is important and there’s a reason people lean on 3rd party entities to help them manage and trade their assets—it’s too complex to do alone for most. So we’re gonna need L2 institutions that handle large amounts of consumer assets and so we’re going to need to impose regulatory requirements surrounding e.g. key storage and access. Deploy root-chain-enforced multi-signature requirements, perhaps entertain transaction revocation for sufficiently large sums, etc.

> so we’re going to need to impose regulatory requirements surrounding e.g. key storage and access

This is the part that I said I knew I'd disagree about scale. ;)

Instead of hoping for any kind of "imposed" solution, I'd rather prefer a myriad of different providers and wait to see what patterns emerge and what becomes the best practices. Bottom-up, evolutionary approaches always beat top-down designs in the long run.

More than a hedge against dysfunctional institutions, it hastens the downfall of those institutions by removing their leverage. Imagine if the US government had to collect more taxes and police the blockchains to enforce it instead of just printing money, it would push them to the brink. Grab your popcorn. Crypto is a self fulfilling prophecy of government failure.

Hmm curious to hear more about this, do you have any examples?

El Salvador? How else would you explain an authoritarian leader of a narco-sponsored state and paramilitary groups being so interested in promoting Bitcoin?

Crypto doesn't fix the failed state.

There are a lot more problems there then: "bought the dip" lol

Evolution does not work by "fixing" anything, just by removing what is not suitable for the environment.

Crypto is not going to "fix" anything. Crypto is just an alternative for those who live on places that the institutions are broken, and the more the institutions are broken the more compelling crypto will become.

The problem in the first place was internet access to rural areas to enable easy banking.

This is the type of comment that could've been taken out of an episode of Silicon Valley. It's like what happens when techbros who never left their homes think they can solve social issues with tech.

To have "easy banking", first you need to live in a place with healthy financial and banking institutions.

To have that, you need to have a government that is able to give confidence to investors that the money is not going to be misused or appropriated.

To have that, you need solid political institutions, corruption can not be systemic, and leadership needs to have a sense of stability in regards to social-economic policy.

El Salvador has none of that. Farmers can have smartphones and even good data connectivity, they still won't be able to get credit to invest on their work, they still will depend in large landowners for their livelihood, they will still be coerced to vote for the local baron who has the connection with higher officials and with the drug traffickers, etc.

Internet access is the lowest hanging-fruit and the least of the concerns.

Going to a bank requires a drive of 4 hours with public transport in El Salvador and is one of the many issues for rural areas.

But yeah, eg. Africa uses sms for lending and transferring money. Which is also perfectly fine and it works there.

Lookup 'mobile payment banking' and it works there, even with corrupt governements.

( I'm not saying the situation is perfect. But for access to money, borrowing, saving and banking, it's a solution)

ACH is reversible for 30 days IIRC, though technically forever through court orders. Checks are essentially giving everyday people ACH access.

You’re right and I’ve said it before, the only place crypto is going is going to be boring and indistinguishable besides minor details from traditional services.

There is a lot between a check and an entry in the Fed’s FTP server, notably a bank. You do not have credentials to drop your own transactions there, I think anyway XD

I like the option to be my own bank. It's a little insane for everyone to just hand all power over to The Citadel just because it's easier.

And that’s what’s cool. You can participate at L1 if you want, but transactions will be expensive and you’ll be responsible for your own security guards. If you want to handle others’ money though, then there should be some standards.

> It’s insane to think that people are ever going to be competent and experienced enough to run their own bank.

It's also insane to think people are competent enough to vote (this was a real argument in the 1700s), and yet here we are. Also insane to think they're competent enough to use guns, or drive cars, or whatever.

I think that, throughout human history, the pattern here is that we'd rather prefer the tyranny of the masses as opposed to the tyranny of the aristocracy. That's why I think crypto is here to stay. It will be pseudo-regulated, but if DraftKings and Eaze/WeedMaps is any indication (who would've thought, just 15 years ago, that sports betting or marijuana would be legal in most US states?), people will have access to these risky financial instruments.

This libertarian argument is somewhat disingenuous. It hides the fact that the whales stand to benefit tremendously. The peons will still be peons.

You're asking for us to vote you into power, and so far all of the evidence says this is a bad thing. Power consumption, no restitution for hacks, pump and dump driving insane swings and pyramid scheme behavior, the emergence of ransomware, NFT artificial scarcity.

KYC and AML are good. Regulations are good. The cowboy wild west without these protections is a nightmare that will lead to increased lawlessness, hacks, and thefts that will harm the poorest among us.

I don't want the thought leaders in crypto being in charge. They've already shown what bad stewards they are by downplaying all of these points and continuing to ignore the problems. They're focusing on what they can gain rather than what others are losing.

> This libertarian argument is somewhat disingenuous.

I'm not really making any argument; in fact, I'm probably leaning towards the "philosopher king" ideal rather than the masses running the show (I mean, just look at how much of a societal disaster social media has been), but it seems to be where we're headed.

> It's also insane to think people are competent enough to vote

The last five years have made me seriously start reconsidering this premise

It's almost like in the past the world did not have anyone who had the capability to print their own money, until the world said "this is madness, we need to put structure to this".

You can’t print gold. …

But you can go to 'India', conquer the Aztecs, steal all their gold and silver, and depress the European gold economy for the next century.

-----

You can also subtly alter the composition of your gold and silver coins to leverage your reputation and squeeze more money out of your gold reserves.

Turns out that most people don't have a habit of checking the density of gold coins. As long as they weigh the same, you can trick the scales.

500 years ago, they'd mix cheaper metals into their coins. Today, we'd just use tungsten, which has very similar density to gold.

You can do the first thing with a chain coin but I don’t think you can do the second.

For Blockchain, you just invent a new coin (DOGE, Shibu, whatever). Every new Blockchain is a new group of people printing a trillion / quadrillion crypto tokens and throwing into the market.

As long as cryptofans buy up new coins or NFTs, you can keep printing new tokens.

Holds true as long as "cryptofans buy up new coins". But eventually, they won't. For these types of get-rich-quick gamblers, they usually shift their money around to the next thing, but an equal amount of them lose their money as well.

Those that invest in Bitcoin tend to be more conservative, and are more willing to hold their coins and use it as a long term investment/store of value. They aren't easily convinced a new coin can replace Bitcoin either.

“A fool and his money are soon parted”

Fool’s gold has always been a thing. Similarly, there will always be some who cannot distinguish between Bitcoin and the latest dog coin. Few Bitcoiners are selling Bitcoin to buy NFTs or altcoins.

What are they selling it for?

Most are Hodling. The rest are selling for USD or USDT mostly is my guess

So basically, no one is actually buying the story of "digital gold" or "store of value". They are either playing the game of greater fool, or trying to cash out of it.

Call me back when Bitcoiners actually start using the thing as a currency. At least that was more interesting.

Call me confused, but my understanding is that pretty much everyone is currently using it as digital gold, a store of value, a powerful hedge against inflation.

Why is store-of-value not a valid use case, especially with central banks printing money so aggressively?

Who cares if it is used as currency? It is used by millions and that's what matters.

As long as governments insist on taxing Bitcoin as property, it will never be a medium of exchange. As long as it continues to grow at 10-20x the S&P500, it will not be used as a unit of account.

So what?

It is a $1 Trillion asset class that has proven itself as a store of value over the past 12 years. It offers unique technology, game theory and network effects relative to all alternatives and it is protected by a forcefield of hashpower called Proof-of-work that is impenetrable to even nation-state level attacks.

Bitcoin is amazing. I believe it is the most remarkable innovation of the 21st century. Prove me wrong. Tell me about a superior innovation invented this century.

> everyone is currently using it as digital gold, a store of value, a powerful hedge against inflation.

You and I have a different idea of "everyone" means, but anyway...

> Why is store-of-value not a valid use case

Because if it's value depends on a large number of people agreeing to its value, then it's not a store of value. All it takes is for the miners to decide to dedicate their resources to something more profitable, and suddenly the network is worth zero.

> It offers unique technology.

It's so unique, it has spun how many forks already?

> It is a $1 Trillion asset class that has proven itself as a store of value over the past 12 years.

You are literally using circular logic here.

> Tell me about a superior innovation invented this century.

"Blockchain, not Bitcoin". ;)

And even blockchain still needs to prove itself. I believe it can be very useful for some cases, and I am working to see it succeed. I just don't think that "digital gold" is one of those cases.

BTC was a good prototype. That's it. We should continue in the drawing board instead of pretending that we have a finished product in our hands.

BTC already failed as a currency, the activists and cypherpunks that first got into it would be mortified to see how now current proponents end up cheering for a dictator in a Banana Republic that is pushing "their" coin. The "digital gold" narrative switch was an attempt to save it and now we are all playing this game of "Emperor has no clothes" with something because some people are trying to be rich without building any wealth.

> You and I have a different idea of "everyone" means, but anyway...

I misspoke, everyone who is investing in Bitcoin, ~100 million individuala, is doing so because of it's store of value and inflation-hedge properties

> Because if it's value depends on a large number of people agreeing to its value, then it's not a store of value. All it takes is for the miners to decide to dedicate their resources to something more profitable, and suddenly the network is worth zero.

Can you tell me a single asset or commodity (including USD) whose value does not depend on a number of people agreeing to it? Yes the US gov determines that fiat has value by accepting it for taxes, but how much value it has to purchase real goods is determined by the market.

> It's so unique, it has spun how many forks already?

Often imitated, never replicated. No one has ever come close to replicating the hashpower that makes Bitcoin secure.

> You are literally using circular logic here.

It is a $1 Trillion asset that started out as a worthless technology experiment almost 13 years ago

> "Blockchain, not Bitcoin". ;)

No, just no. Blockchain without Bitcoin, meaning the game theory that led to the rise of the network and the supercomputer network that protects it, is just a nice academic theory. Other Blockchains do not enjoy the hashpower or the security budget of Bitcoin and are therefore not competitive. (Name one other Blockchain that is more secure than Bitcoin)

> BTC was a good prototype. That's it.

A prototype that is now worth $1 Trillion in market cap, moving more value than Visa every day.

How can we call that a prototype?

Are there any competitive blockchains that are aiming to replace this Bitcoin 'prototype' and providing a decentralized digital currency with a fixed a pre-determined monetary policy, protected by the most secure super-computer ever created?

> BTC already failed as a currency, the activists and cypherpunks that first got into it would be mortified to see how now current proponents end up cheering for a dictator in a Banana Republic that is pushing "their" coin.

I'm sorry Bitcoin didn't conform to your 'allowed' definition of a 'currency'. Bitcoin is no more a currency than the automobile was a mechanical horse. Bitcoin is a radically different way of solving the same problem traditionally solved with money. There is overlap, but it isn't going to be 100%.

I think you are overly focused on the medium of exchange and unit of account use case. These unfortunately are dead on arrival for any country that taxes Bitcoin as property rather than treating it like a currency. In El Salvador, Bitcoin can be a currency, not in the US or Europe.

> The "digital gold" narrative switch was an attempt to save it and now we are all playing this game of "Emperor has no clothes" with something because some people are trying to be rich without building any wealth.

I appreciate your perspective. Have fun staying poor.

- USD is not a commodity or an asset.

- "security by hashpower" assumes that PoW is the only way to go, when the important feature of blockchain is that it works to BFT consensus.

A security system that is expensive to maintain and consumes so much resources in a non-renewable fashion (and I am not talking about energy production, I am talking about energy itself) is a bad system, period.

We should not be looking at how much hashpower it is using and thinking "that's a good thing", we should be thinking "how can we have a consensus system that is more efficient and less wasteful".

- USD is not a commodity or an asset.

And yet the point stands. The value of the USD depends on a large number of people collectively agreeing that x dollars are worth y loafs of bread.

- "security by hashpower" assumes that PoW is the only way to go, when the important feature of blockchain is that it works to BFT consensus.

Yes, security by hashpower assumes that PoW is the only way to go because so far that is the only thing proven to be resistant to a wide range of attacks that made previous attempts to solve the Byzantine General's problem fail. Do you really believe that Satoshi Nakamoto didn't consider PoS as an option?

> A security system that is expensive to maintain and consumes so much resources in a non-renewable fashion (and I am not talking about energy production, I am talking about energy itself) is a bad system, period.

Bitcoin mining is one of the most concentrated sources of renewable energy demand in the world today. The game theory economics unlocked by the availability of a high demand for low-cost electricity without regard to it's location or proximity to a population center is a game changer. It will reshape nations and society over time.

> We should not be looking at how much hashpower it is using and thinking "that's a good thing", we should be thinking "how can we have a consensus system that is more efficient and less wasteful".

I agree. Until we find those solutions we have Bitcoin and PoW.

> USD depends on a large number of people collectively agreeing that x dollars are worth y loafs of bread.

Hum, no. That is horribly reductionist. USD is a currency, who has a central bank enacting monetary policies. It also has a very big government behind it that wants to have some oversight over the economy.

> PoW (...) is the only thing proven to be resistant

Again, no. PoS is doing just fine, it allows for a much larger and diverse pool of nodes. Meanwhile in PoW systems you have hardware manufacturers who "test" their equipment on mainnet before delivering to the buyers and quite frequently gets scared with the concentration of hashpower by one pool or another.

> mining is one of the most concentrated sources of renewable energy demand

Can you provide one example of a place where has cheap, renewable energy and that can make the energy distribution more profitable than bitcoin mining?

Do you understand that it doesn't matter if the energy production is 100% clean (which is not, and likely will never be given that energy is cheaper in countries with bad environmental records), the problem is that if mining is more profitable than selling the energy, any excess energy will always go to mining and all of the "advantage" you are talking about is ending up in a closed-loop system?

> Until we find those solutions we have Bitcoin and PoW.

Let's pretend for a moment that there are no better alternatives today: suppose that there will be one day in the future (2, 5, 10 years? Doesn't matter...) where there is a chain that demonstrated to be more efficient, can make more transactions and is just as secure as PoW. Let's for the sake of argument assume that the new tech is so undeniably superior, even BTC's core team announces plan to adopt it.

How do you think the transition will happen?

(a) BTC users will continue using only BTC's until the devs manage to create and implement a migration plan? (b) BTC users will slowly migrate away to the new chain? (c) BTC devs will just freeze the old chain and make a new genesis block on the new chain? (d) BTC users will panic-sell and move to the new currency on the new chain? (e) BTC users won't even be able to notice the new chain resurgence until it is too late?

For the question above: what about the miners? Are they just going to dump their mining rigs and get on board with the new system, or do you think that their operation is just too profitable for them to let it go?

What I am trying to show is that - if you assume today that there can be something better than BTC and can supplant it - then the future price of BTC is ZERO. Given that BTC does not pay any kind of dividends, and that the future price of BTC is ZERO, then there is no point of holding it. Every bag holder is just playing a game of chicken now.

During the gold standard central banks would engage in sterilising operations to prevent large fluctuations in the money supply, which was the equivalent of open market operations in modern central banking (what some people call "printing money")

Well, technically you can. You can "print" gold by using other elements with simply changing number of protons to match 79. I believe this has been done already, if my memory serves me right reading some article years ago. Its just that the cost of doing so even on small scale overweight the cost of the resulting gold, even if the price would be of a 10-fold what it is today.

tldr: its possible, just not worth it.

But it's interesting, because it sets an upper limit for the gold price.

Yes very interesting. Gold was originally formed within supernovae, which is a sure sign that our planet is formed from molecules that have been through at least one or two supernovae already. Another fund gold fact, the reason gold appears in "veins" is that it's actually big blobs, but over time water runs through the blob, dragging along little bits of dust with it down the same channel. Those little bits of dust build up and become veins of gold.

Ha, yeah technically you can grind the chain too, but it requires unreasonable amounts of resources.

You can't print bitcoin, but you can mine more gold.

The banks are the ones getting hacked.

Yeah I’m including crypto banks in the set of things that need regulating. People rob banks, for sure. There should probably be op-sec regulations and e.g. on-chain multi-sig requirements for transactions out of the bank accounts and ability to revoke etc. Bank rolls up its L2 day-to-day into a smart contract address type of stuff.

Bitcoin is a great lesson on why things are the way they are.

It’s not just evil banker man rules, there’s reasons.

Yes but there’s also real value in developing better technology and encoding transparency and accountability into our financial and social systems. Evil banker men and corrupt authorities do exist and people rightfully want to rebalance the power distribution to mitigate the damage manipulative people can do.

The question is whether any of the cryptocurrency companies are actually able to deliver that. Traditional MLMs always claimed to be doing something noble like being healthier or democratizing real-estate, too, and the cryptocurrency pitches notably revolve around people selling things which they know cannot solve the stated problem but promise that they’ll figure out how to built a viable system after you buy in and make them rich first.

I wouldn’t be surprised to find that if given the choice any given crypto company would gladly become “the man” they would seem to be fighting against.

I feel like an awful lot of the market could be summed up as “Wouldn’t it be great if <ordinary activity> had microtransactions like a pay-to-win mobile game?”

99% of all crypto companies are scams looking pump the price and sell their premine.

Bitcoin is the only crypto that matters.

and there is no Bitcoin "company"

And Chia.

Nah, another shitcoin that is run as a startup with a large premine.

I love how crypto is somehow morally superior bcs "technology". Somehow crypto enthusiasts can explain away the opportunist cesspool that surrounds crypto as isolated anomalies, while making corruption a characteristic exclusive to existing institutions.

Who said anything about morally superior?

There is no morals in regard to the technology. The tech itself has no morals, it is the people that use the tech for good or evil.

Not really, "evil" bankers are held accountable by the judiciary and regulators. If anything crypto-currencies hamper the ability of those authorities to hold them accountable, so they make things worse in that respect, not better.

> ..."evil" bankers are held accountable by the judiciary and regulators

...by the judiciary and regulators only so far as the (imperfect) legislation of the day allows.

You are forgetting the unelected central bankers who knowing refer to inflation as "transitory" when they know, and we know, it isn't.

You are forgetting the guys who decide to print 40% more US Dollars in 18 months without giving the electorate an opportunity to weigh in on this drastic decision.

These central bankers are the so-called "evil bankers" -- the Wall St types just want to make money and while that might be greedy, at least they're honest about it.

> You are forgetting the unelected central bankers who knowing refer to inflation as "transitory" when they know, and we know, it isn't.

This is not true, that bankers refer to inflation as something "transitory" as you put it. Maybe they talk like that about current inflation rates but certainly not about inflation itself.

Managing the money supply according to a democratic mandate doesn't constitute "evil", sorry. I thought this was a serious discussion.

Note the word "so-called". And note the use of quotes citing the OP.

This is a very serious discussion.

On a side note, where is that "democratic mandate" of which you speak? Been looking for a while and can't seem to find it.

You can't find the mandate?

https://www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed/section2a.htm

If this is it then I have to wonder what value the rules really provide. Because I'd rather 150M abruptly change hands every now and then than listen to a member of the PMC standing on their faux meritocracy tell me I'm too stupid to do A, B and C and then write regulations to make sure I can't.

Pretty sure it's just evil banker man rules.

Tether is the next fucked example, they print money.. Out of thin air! No audit, nothing. They say they bake it with collateral. But some people think it's either nothing or they print tether to buy bitcoin. Either way. Its fucked.

Bitcoin is just a currency, there's nothing stopping traditional banks/institutions from using it or allowing customers to trade/keep it.

it's kind of beautiful that way though. fools and their money are soon parted, while others learn and do things the right way. it's like making banking accessible to hobbyists.

It's both. You need some regulation, but only moral ones.

Hello world from the first world

The main issue in third world countries is always corruption.

Corruption is a huge first world issue too.

In the first world, it's always called a "lapse in judgment" ...

in UK politics it's called "sleaze" but that's a fair bit better than "lobbyism" in the US.

so 95% people in 3rd world countries are corrupted?

100% lives in a corrupt state, mafia, or militia.

Absolutely I agree. People will always be stupid and stupid.

Uh no, this is (one reason) why you want to use a (well written) decentralized exchange.

>is like giving people ACH access

I use ACH, I know nothing about it, and I'm sure I can lose all my money from using it wrong, as banks love systems that are impossible to operate securely. I don't have this problem with bitcoin, and never will.

As for the tech side, you know nothing. The bugs are simply because of the demographics behind decentralized tech:

- Before snowden: script kiddies, slightly educated hobbyists

- After snowden: all kinds of idiots

> Crypto Anarchy is a farce

Your post is a farce. Wanting basic control over your own money (and removing horrible bank insecurity and UX as a side effect) is not anarchy or anything remotely resembling it. Your post only sounds reasonable from the perspective of $current_world which is basically hyperstatist, people are literally afraid to have sex and cross the street without government approval.

What are some examples of well-written decentralized exchanges?

Uniswap (v2) has simple contracts, has been audited multiple times, holds billions of USD and it has not faced any kind of systemic attack. The only issue that I can think of is that pools with low liquidity can suffer from front-running.

Even the fees are not a "problem", if you consider that there are already roll ups (loopring, zkswap) that run pretty much the same version of those contracts and cost fractions of a penny.

Curious to hear more about this as well. How is Uniswap?

Uniswap, pancakeswap, 1inch, apeswap, sushiswap, traderjoes, Crono, quickswap, paraswap and those are just off the top of my head.

All of these projects have hundreds of million to billions in tvl and have been running fine for years.

Dexes are the backbone of the defi community and share very little in common with centralized exchanges.

> All of these projects have hundreds of million to billions in tvl and have been running fine for years.

Oh if only you knew.