Also, what happens in transactions where the seller does not deliver the right item? What if I buy a laptop off eBay, but I receive a box of rocks instead?
I disagree. I live in Europe and all my online card transactions over a nominal sum (~$10) are tied to a certificate-based security application that requires confirmation on my phone. This same application is used by all banks and most government entities.
There are of course banks in the world that are bad at security, but “banks”, as a general term, most definitely are not.
The fundamental problem is, of course, that security is annoying, so any fundamental security improvement to online banking needs to be mandatory and centralized, and if there is no will to push something like that I’m not surprised nothing happens.
1. Banks are bad at security.
2. People are bad at security.
3. The responsibility in the case of fraudulent transactions is not clear. Who is to blame? The bank or the user?
Cryptocurrencies either solve these problems or neutralize the negative consequences of these problems:
- There is no bank to impose dumb security rules
- When credentials are "stolen", the user has no one else to blame than themselves.
- There's no concept of fraud. Whoever holds the credentials (private key or nmemonic seed) is authorized to realize transactions using the credentials.
- There are no chargebacks. Once a transaction is confirmed, the receiver can be certain that their money is not going to get pulled back.