The problem isn't the bank organization itself: it's the money that you deal in. Regardless of your bank structure, whether it's some typical commercial bank or some kind of cooperative association, you're still left holding a fiat currency that is inflated on a whim.
The beauty of crypto (and especially Bitcoin) is that there's either a fixed amount, or at least the rate of change of the money supply (inflation) is at least perfectly transparent and mathematically provable.
And Bitcoin's hard cap is based on incentives and code, i.e. it could be changed (difficult to see in reality absent some really strong outside coercion, perhaps). Another attack on the value of Bitcoin could be from a state actor using nearly unlimited resources to take over most of the mining or validating and using it against it. I.e., there are ways to degrade it as a store of value (other than just arresting everyone found using, for example).
Some things are just far more likely to happen than others.
Which of these 2 things are more likely to happen?
1) An attack or change on Bitcoin that renders it completely valueless or unusable
2) Governments inflating fiat currencies and robbing you of your wealth
I'd say that 1 is merely theoretically possible, but 2 is about as close to complete metaphysical certainty as you can get.
In defense against 2), I'd venture it is probably better to own production assets (and parts thereof) rather than crypto.
Also, if inflation is sky high and destroying everything left and right, they could very well come for 1). So there is a spectrum of inflation where crypto might(!) be a hedge, but similarly a lot of other assets might(!) deliver said hedge. Just because it is limited in supply does not mean people will always imbue it with value (stamps are great example of staff that is dropping in value as far as collectables are concerned).
Now where I could see an issue is then with people who don't have "wealth" but some savings that get inflated away and potentially limited asset selection to invest in. Whether or not crypto will help, is up to crypto, not some law of nature, though.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding something about your response, but I think your response is too focused on my use of the word "wealth". Obviously, genuinely wealthy people have a large part of their assets tied up in physical assets that might serve as a hedge like land, resources, real-estate, businesses, and likely aren't anywhere close to entirely liquid.
I'm more focused on the impact of inflation on normal people. An average person of average or below average means likely holds most of their life savings in cash-like things or even literal cash. Being able to afford land, an investment property, a factory, a McDonalds franchise, or physical assets isn't even on their radar screen. The average person of average means is screwed by inflation far more than the wealthy because they have far less of an ability to buy real assets that might always have some value.
The reason inflation makes me angry is that it's a stealth tax, primarily on the poor. Whatever else you want to say about Bitcoin, the fact that there can only ever be 21 million units is extraordinarily positive in this respect.
Relying on speculative assets, in the sense that they are not producing widgets that can be sold at higher prices due to inflation, to compensate for inflation might or might not work. The world isn't running on Bitcoin, so the limit doesn't quite bite into the real world without enough people imbuing it and Bitcoin with value. I am not taking an anti crypto stance here, more saying that trying to solve this problem via crypto might not pan out/there are other approaches, too, that should be pursued.
Bitcoin probably isn't the ultimate solution out there, but I'm simply pointing out that it at least doesn't have an attribute that allows you to steal value through inflating the currency.
Inflation is a particularly pernicious theft from people: most people don't realize where it comes from and just think that "prices go up over time" without realizing what's happening. The awful media even tries to gaslight people that they're doing better because "wages go up too."
> vs. better wages (more collective bargaining?), automatic tax adjusters etc.
There's a lot more that can be done to help non-rich people, but the problem is that one's opinion of what's actually helpful to people change when you really begin to understand economics and prioritizing systems over goals.
While the current level of financial and banking regulation is certainly debatable, creating super lightweight version of banks might not necessarily the way forward.