> Today, I ended up going to my other bank and pulling all of my money out as cash. I can't trust the system to not steal even more money from me. That's messed up. Because monday is a bank holiday, now I have to wait until tuesday until my accountant can deal with this bullshit. What kind of broken system is this?

Same.

It's insane how little control and power you have as an average person. Your bank accounts can be frozen on a whimp, you can be put into a jail with no attorney because you cannot use your own money to pay for them and forced to confess to something you never did, then slave away for the state.

There are too many laws everywhere which means you've broken some. The only difference between you and the person who got caught is selective enforcement and someone wanting to make an example or fulfil their own goals.

And financial system will snitch on all of it.

You have no privacy. Is that not insane? You could be jailed for having a financial transactions on grindr in some countries in the world.

Countries impose financial and currency controls against the benefit of the people all the time.

It's not "freedom" if you cannot choose to take your money outside.

It's fucked up how normalised limiting freedom has become. You don't notice it. The state controls so much of your money forcefully with a threat of violence and isolation.

Your money that you work hard for, sweat for, break your bones for.

Yes. All of this is why "web3" is not bullshit and why I've dedicated years of my energy and my funds to it.

Try living in another country too, I have. Banking is the number one pain point. Even more than language issues. Ever tried to get your own money out of a western union in a country that doesn't speak your language?

If you're doubting "web3" then you've probably never experienced these sorts of pain yourself and I could understand your trepidation. But since I'm understanding you, how about understanding me too.

IMO, the term web3 is tainted by VCs using retail to dump their tokens faster than they can dump equity in traditional IPO which is less transparent to average schmuck because most of the money comes from the retirement funds passively investing in everything.

It's their shortcut to liquidity which resulted in overpromises and dumps.

It's not unreasonable for someone to be sceptical but to dismiss it all together is a mistake.

We need to go back to the core. Decentralized financial instruments built to help people prosper economicly. To uplift poor people in unbanked countries. To stop dictators from rugging poor people and investors. To provide individual freedom and highest level of personal attainment.

The yield bullshit needs to stop.

Edit: I don't mean all yield strategies, just ones which are unsustainable (most of them).

I want unsecured lending products in crypto based on on-chain reputation which happens automatically on taking small loans or doing a lot of transactions maybe endorsement system where institutions stake money in return of verification.

Banks won't provide loans to people who need them the most. Even self employment people and founders with millions of dollars in exit struggle with a home loan because banks refuse to deal with anyone who doesn't fit their cookie cutter.

I believe crypto has potential to disrupt it.

I love flash loans for this exact reason. They are unique to crypto, allowing freedom to anyone to increase market efficiency by taking advantage of arbitrage without creditionals and needing absurd amount of capital to start.

Certainly, the marketing around web3 went to shit. But I've been in it for 4 years now so I don't really care about the VC's because I see the larger picture already.

I agree with everything you said, but the end. The ponzi tokenomics definitely needs to stop, but the lego yield stuff has potential. It is more than just unbanked, it is people without lines of credit. It is teaching people how to be fiscally responsible.

Based on my Vietnam example below. Woman with gold teeth instead deposits her stable money into her phone. That money earns yield automatically. She can also use a portion of it as collateral for a Kiva-style loan to help with her farm crops (or whatever small business she has). People who buy her products effectively pay back her loan directly by submitting to her phone app. She's in control of it herself.

Banking is a solved problem, has been for decades. Seeking an alternative in technological complex solutions is running away from the actual problem.

An international swift transaction takes days or sometimes weeks to clear. In developing countries, bank will take its sweet time to clear it which may take even more than two weeks.

It costs tens of dollars in fees and significant percentage in currency conversion cost if you live in a country where you cannot hold foreign currency received directly (Many unbanked countries have these kind of absurd laws).

So you will lose hundreds of dollars on currency conversion on a transaction of a few thousand easily.

This is taking into account the best bank account you can get with high income. At best, you might end up paying tens of dollars on a few thousand transaction in conversion.

Solved problem? Not at all.

I can provide so many examples where banking is broken. People buy registered companies for a company bank account in middle East because you cannot easily open a bank account if you are a foreigner or foreign company. You need to have hundreds of thousands in seed capital to start a current account.

In developed countries, I have seen friends struggle with getting a home loan because they are self employed or founder.

Maybe you don't believe crypto is the solution and I can accept that but banking system is nowhere solved.

If banking was a solved problem, then how come so many people don’t have an account?

Because the problem isn't banking. There are lots of people who don't have access to clean water either. Doesn't mean we need new solutions to provide clean water, but rather we need to figure out why existing solutions don't always work.

> Doesn't mean we need new solutions to provide clean water, but rather we need to figure out why existing solutions don't always work.

Solution doesn't work, we need a new solution. It doesn't need to be 'new', it needs to be 'different'! Play on words, at the end of the day, people still don't have bank accounts or clean water. Something isn't working. I'd rather be part of the solution and not part of the problem, even if the solution isn't perfect.

It is also an apple/orange comparison. Water != Bank Account.

Because they have little to no money.

By that same logic, taxis were a solved problem and uber shouldn't exist, yet here we are today.

It doesn't matter how much money someone has.

Everyone has a right to have a safe place to store it.

> You have no privacy. Is that not insane? You could be jailed for having a financial transactions on grindr in some countries in the world.

That’s because privacy against the state is at odds with enforcing the state’s laws. From a state-centric perspective, money is “good citizen behaviour” points. If you maintain a job deemed valuable, the bank prints you money to buy a house, etc. You have to know what people used their money on to assess if that’s good behaviour or not.

That's why bitcoin and ethereum are so awesome. It gives this power back to the people and there is not a whole lot that governments can do about it except watch the flow of funds. Of course we can argue over finer details, but the overall course has been set. It is just a matter of innovation now.

Having the combination of bitcoin as the single limited entity (simple is valuable) and eth as the programmable, more complex version of that, solves a lot of general needs and provides a good foundation to build on.

Sure the on/off ramps make it easier to trace it to individuals, but what happens when people stop using those and just deal with each other directly? L2's will make the smaller day to day, transactions cheaper and faster and those will just roll up with checkpoints on the L1's.

DeFi is a bottom up step in that direction. To emulate the existing infrastructure, we need programmable money. It stumbled to begin with, but again the foundation has been laid. Cat is out of the bag, so to speak.

I’m not sure that I would want people to hold all of that power - there’a a reason that the state has a monopoly on violence in the first place - turns out that having people roam the streets with guns is a less pleasant reality to be in for most people (look at Russia in the 1990s for what that looks like).

Not to go all black-mirror, but imagine someone anonymously putting up a $X million dollar bounty on someone’s head, backed by a smart contract promise or something (I know that it can’t be guaranteed at present, but imagine). Or other nefarious things that most of the society considers harmful - and having no way to stop those from happening.

Same as the promise of “hard money” - look at the 1930s for what a deflationary bust with “hard money” looks like. There is a reason why we have the current system, and while there are large issues with it, Bitcoin/Crypto solves very few of them

> imagine someone anonymously putting up a $X million dollar bounty on someone’s head, backed by a smart contract promise or something (I know that it can’t be guaranteed at present, but imagine). Or other nefarious things that most of the society considers harmful - and having no way to stop those from happening.

With or without crypto, nothing prevents that from happening today. Number one currency for nefarious actions is (and likely will always be), USD. Likely perpetuated by the US govt itself.

> There is a reason why we have the current system, and while there are large issues with it, Bitcoin/Crypto solves very few of them

I don't think they are trying to solve for those issues though. I'm more than happy with the issues they do solve, for me, today. Namely, more control and flexibility over my own funds.

I can take any amount of my dollars in my bank, convert them to a decentralized stablecoin (and I'm not talking shit like UST), fly to another country, and then access those funds locally without anyone telling me what I can and cannot do.

If that means that others can do the same and they might use that to do something awful, it doesn't really matter to me because if they really wanted to get away with it in today's standards, they could. Jamal Khashoggi is a prime example of this.

> I can take any amount of my dollars in my bank, convert them to a decentralized stablecoin (and I'm not talking shit like UST), fly to another country, and then access those funds locally without anyone telling me what I can and cannot do.

That's like: https://xkcd.com/538/

Are we talking about 2k USDs or meaningful sums like 300k or 10 million? Because banks in many countries (e.g. mine) have outright ban transactions with BTC-related websites (e.g. crypto exchanges) using their accounts... So assuming you find someone who'll be able to verse 1 million USD to your account (can/will coinbase do that? not in theory, in practice... or ask you 15 days to put the money together?), you'll have to convince the bank to accept and hand you the money. Then explain where did these came from. Good luck with that.

If you're carrying cash into a country, it is very easy to lose it at the airport given that they are looking for people carrying a lot of cash and have machines to detect these things.

There are private OTC desks of all sizes, all over the place, if you know where to look.

I too had something like this happen. After a burnout and extensive travel I somehow got my whole account frozen and emptied just after I got back home.

I spend weeks begging friends to pay my bills (i.e. server bills, domains, ...) Because otherwise my business would have died because I couldn't pay for anything. It took several weeks until I had a cash flow established again.

In no world am I going to trust a bank with my active money anymore. I rather loose 50% within a week than everything within a day.

Edit:// or the one time I couldn't buy any food before Monday because I forgot (or rather didn't care) Thursday and Friday is a holiday and transferred money on Wednesday afternoon only to arrive on Monday at noon. And this is within the same bank!

Also: Imagine doing international business like a SaaS in a Industrie Visa/MasterCard doesn't allow. Without crypto I would be having 50 PayPal (Payeer, PM, ...) like accounts from several countries and fees multiplying all over.

Edit2:// Or when I was living abroad but couldn't open a bank account because I also live in Switzerland and EU banks are afraid of money laundering so much that they simply refuse to open an account for someone that could 'launder so easy'. Even thought I do have an EU passport, and a legit business.

Had similar experience when I was out working in Berlin. I had a gym membership in one part of the city (paid up 12 months in advance in cash). Moved to a different part of the city and didn't go back. Fast forward about six months, two bald headed goons came knocking at my old address looking for me, with a 1850 euro bill.

Gym membership for the next year plus a 900 euro service charge because I hadn't written a letter starting my intention not to renew by 90 days of the time of an automatic roll over.

Luckily for me, the Aussie guy staying in my old place told them I'd moved into a squat and they'd have to serve notice on two dozen angry punks if they wanted their money. Never heard from them again.

But I was lucky, if I'd given them a bank account the full amount would have been charged straight away, with no comeback or way to get my money back for a service I didn't use, and the bank would be absolutely fine with that. Shortly after I moved much of my funds into crypto, and would do it again for the security from arbitrary seizure.

If it makes you feel better: most gyms are a scam. The whole business model is about selling as much memberships as possible, and making it hard to cancel. Most gyms sell much more memberships than they could even remotely facilitate, because they know ~80% of the members never return after the first month or so.

I used to work at a small gym that could handle maybe 100 visitors a day, I think they had over 8000 paying members. You could only cancel by letter 1 month in advance of the renewal date. The only exception was a doctor's letter for some medical reason you could no longer go to the gym. The owner drove a Ferrari (albeit second hand).

Every year on January, after people had been over-consuming food and had ambitious new year resolutions, they'd do all sorts of promotions, and they would sell for about a years worth of new subscriptions in a day. I'd estimate 90% of those 'januaries' (as they'd call them) no longer returned after the first month. About 75% forgot to cancel in December, so they would be charged again for a full year, though they hadn't visited in 11 months.

This is a common 'exploit' of human behaviour. People feel good about taking the first step in weight loss by buying the membership. But when you think about it, it makes no sense at all why you'd need a 'membership' the gain access to a gym.

This is also why home training devices are a big business, and why they usually come with terrible return policies.

> if I'd given them a bank account the full amount would have been charged straight away, with no comeback

Can they do that in Germany? In the Netherlands you can revert such "charge" transactions ("incasso") up to 13 months after they happen. Also, over here every subscription becomes monthly cancelable after the first year.

> you can revert such "charge" transactions ("incasso") up to 13 months after they happen.

You probably need a reason to revert them?

Up til 8 weeks the bank will just carry out the reversal without asking any questions. This is done by just pressing a button in your banking app.

After 8 weeks have passed you will indeed need to supply a reason.

but that won't save you from anything- you will get sued or dragged to debt collection

> Shortly after I moved much of my funds into crypto, and would do it again for the security from arbitrary seizure.

I don't think they would've been able to seize the money. But in any case your approach doesn't work, you still owe that money. Automatic renewals is a scummy practice but if they do have a legal claim you won't get out of it by being hard to find and keeping your money in crypto.

Probably best to treat it as an expensive lesson and remember to close your subscriptions in the future.

Exhibit A of why predatory consumer practices work.

You'd rather be civil, than treated civilly.

The practices need regulatory action to fight against. Germany got recently some legislated improvements like automatic renewals being cancellable with a one month notice period. Not sure if that applies to gyms too, but I certainly hope so.

> because I hadn't written a letter starting my intention not to renew by 90 days of the time of an automatic roll over.

No, it's because you signed a contract (scammy or not) and didn't follow its terms. You wouldn't want someone to do that to a service you provide.

There are a lot of stories like this. There are also a lot of unbanked people (1.7 billion worldwide). People who fail to see the value in Bitcoin/crypto often are not aware of those very real problems people are facing. Traditional banking is great so long as you are on the happy path.

In northern Vietnam, where I've done extensive travel, to this day, women store their meager wealth in gold fillings because that is the only place where they can put it and not have it stolen from them. There is no bank where they can deposit funds and even if there was, the Vietnam govt's version of FDIC is like $2k.

Amazingly, they also have smart phones and the government has put 4G towers through the whole country and in the most remote places.

That's our usecase right there.

North Vietnam is also where people earn the equivalent of $30 a month and can't afford to HODL until the next price spike, as well as not having many crypto on/off ramps for the unbanked.

Frankly, the enthusiasm some wealthy Westerners have for dumping newly printed gambling tokens on some of the world's poorest people is part of the cause of the anti-crypto backlash the OP describes.

They are already gambling on gold.

Sure, but for all its flaws, gold is a 5000 year old store of wealth with some use in dentistry that doesnt lose most of its value on a regular basis, not a pump and dump scheme whose wealthy foreign speculators need bagholders who havent bored of hearing about its future as global currency to bail out their artificial asset's latest collapse.

"Sure but". Look at the last 100 years of the value of gold. The value has gone all over the place, with many crashes. It isn't as stable as you think.

All it takes is one single "discovery" of a massive cache of gold. That cache is then controlled by the government who's land it is found on. It is one of the most heavily manipulated forms of 'money' on the planet.

It might be good enough for you, but as the person who started this thread, I'm clearly in the camp of less government control over my funds... No, thanks.

Excuse me. When did I say gold was good? I said it wasn't as abominably bad as cryptocurrency, which doesn't need something as unlikely as a discovery of a massive cache of gold to wipe out poor people's meagre fortunes and is the most heavily manipulated form of money on the planet.

It's like concluding that as poor Vietnamese people already smoke (the men generally do...) in lieu of better forms of entertainment, what would really improve their lives is some crystal meth.

100% true. Awful elitism.

Being in Vietnam i can attest the gap, and the gap also exists within the country. It isn't unusual to see customers at Starbucks opening their wallet to show they filled all the debit card pockets in full.

The population has an instinctive distrust for centralised authorities for the most part. Although very patriotic, they wouldn't place their life's worth of wealth in any of the several government controlled banks. Nor to the more independent or even foreign banks either. And it's good that way, Vietnam has a thriving crypto scene and may very well be one of top adopters of crypto. For what business use case they don't know quite yet, but it will come.

Same is true for Bangladesh, India, Philippines, etc. They all have good Internet connectivity but too many unbanked people.

Mobile wallets are quite popular for the unbanked in those countries. You don’t need a decentralised ledger for that.

The banks are awful and have been known to go out of business and take peoples money with them. The concept of FDIC insurance doesn’t exist. Also, good luck getting an account when you don’t have an address.

Your reasoning is something like: problem unbanked people, solution crypto. I don't understand that reasoning at all. Why not look at solutions that have actually proven to work first? Why not investigate the problem and figure out what their needs actually are?

> Why not look at solutions that have actually proven to work first?

Power structures are ending cash in various places for various reasons, and we need some even kind of private digital replacement to cash.

> the Vietnam govt's version of FDIC is like $2k.

So, like 8 years salary? That's significantly better than in the USA, I don't think it's making the point that you think it is.

Do the phones get stolen?

They do, but such event is rather considered the victim's fault for being a careless idiot. Stealing a phone isn't more an act of selfish robbery than a merciless lesson for those who don't keep valuable items safe. Better the phone than the house!

1.7 billion unbanked people for what reason? a software engineer in Sweden is not the same as a farmer in Bangladesh or a goldsmith in Syria.

Crypto is also great as long as it is great...

Crypto is one of many solutions for this problem. I'm willing to argue that out of 10 possible solutions, the crypto solution is the worst of all. Simply because the law is the law, and crypto might make it harder to enforce the law, it doesn't _change_ the law. So even with your crypto solution, you still would owe money to the California Franchise Tax Board, whether you like or not.

To be fair, it's a lot easier to deal with tax board says you owe $X but can't physically take anything, so you get a chance to make your case before actually handing it over, than tax board says you owe $X and just grabbed it out of your account without even warning you, you can try to contest it after but you'll be broke while you do.

Possession is 9/10 of the law. What some tax board thinks only matters insofar as they are able to enforce their will. People think governments are omnipotent. They are not.

Read what I wrote. I paid my taxes. I paid what I owed. I am almost 50 and never had an issue with taxes in my lifetime. They still emptied my account with no notification.

I never thought that would happen to me.

Why do you think the FTB took money from your account? Do you think you had unpaid taxes/etc.? You must have some intuition about it (e.g. previous notices?), and I'd love to hear more. Thanks.

I feel like it's a bit naive to expect that the crypto world can evade the authorities forever. You need a registered office and executives and lawyers to run any big company, and thus the authorities and laws have a way in. The laws governing the existing banking system are not an intrinsic property, the crypto world will have the same laws eventually, just on a slightly different technical platform.

Not evade. Just give me control of my own funds such that nobody can just empty my account without at least giving me notice first. As you can imagine, that is a quite disturbing and disruptive event.

I do understand you feelings, but I don't see how that's a technical problem. That's an entirely legal problem. The law could easily mandate that feature to any cryptocurrency which doesn't want to go to the underground, or remove that feature from regular banking.

How is law not technical?

Law does not follow physics, it's a purely human invention. But I'm not sure how that's relevant to the discussion?

Yah bc when you get scammed in crypto no one can get your money back! Lmao.

Agreed. Wallet security needs to improve.

That said, my company was recently scammed with a phishing attack where we were sent an invoice from one of our vendors. Someone had hacked the vendors accounting firm and we paid it to an different account number, get this… in the same bank. So, scammers were able to create an account, with kyc in the same bank. Crazy.

We are struggling to get the money back now.

Use an escrow? It's pretty simple to build reversible transactions for an erc 20 token on EVM.

Obviously you would introduce a centralized arbitrator. It's a solved problem in crypto except nobody uses it.