Millions of people work at banks… lots of middlemen that maybe don’t need to be there anymore…

I mean you don't need people to manually make money transfers anymore, but I don't think many people do that. Banks have a lot of different jobs, very few of them are obsoleted by crypto, at least so far.

That’s the opportunity, right? Some code does the work.

As I said, little or no manual labour is involved when you pay your bills or transfer money. Bank employees meet customers, set up mortgages, program the payment infrastructure, make deals with other banks, help hide money in shady jurisdictions etc.

There's still a need for them though. Societies still want to do AML/KYC stuff, and tax audits.

In fact bitcoin makes it harder[1], so we probably need MORE people doing these investigations.

So we actually maybe need millions MORE people to work these things.

[1] mostly. In some ways also easier. But probably on net harder.

If only we could invent a way of settling transactions that takes more money and energy than running traditional banks. It might sound like the worst idea ever, but with enough buzzwords and a sprinkle of Ponzi, I think it will be a hit.