Depends on the token used.

ETH - middleman is all stakers and nodes securing the network, in which you can also participate.

USDC - same, but with a centralized company who will blacklist your funds if you are on a US sanction list. Already very different degree of permissioned entrance to finances than a bank or money exchanger.

DAI - same as ETH but also depends on a permissionless and much wider pool of users across the world governing the protocol, which you can also opt into.

> ETH - middleman is all stakers and nodes securing the network, in which you can also participate.

That's three sets of middlemen then, because you need to both get into and out of ethereum as well.

Technically more if you count ISP, computer provider, and the bank handling your fiat to actually get in and out of the exchange.

But the idea is, once in the system, there are less intermediaries*. So if you send ETH or USDC, the receiver can spend that token for certain services or investments instead of converting back to fiat.

* specifically, intermediaries that control your funds or could censor your transactions.

That's not the idea I was responding to, which was the usual "it's great for international transfers" stuff, which as always completely ignores the two extra transactions introduced.

Also, was there not a report just a few days ago about the new PoS eth validators that are complying with US sanctions, making up a majority of the new blocks? This seems to go against the whole "reducing intermediaries who could censor transactions thing".

Either way, none of these arguments are new, and AFAICT, cryptocurrency hasn't made a huge dent in the transfers market in the last ten years of people saying it will.

But it does work for international transfers, if you also assume that the sender and receiver are spending the token for services, or if either party is not in a rush to exchange from or to fiat. An example would be a US citizen pulling crypto profits and sending remittances in tokens to their Latin American relatives, who wish to have some alternative liquid value not controlled by their banks or government in the case of financial collapse.

Crypto is probably not going to replace interbank USD-to-USD transfers but this is not something it needs to replace.

Usage is definitely increasing[1], but it won’t replace the extractive remittance industry overnight. The technology and UX still has a long way to go to be useful to non-nerds and the general public. Only this month did Ethereum even become a carbon neutral value transfer mechanism, which paves the way for future improvements.

And yes, if the majority of stakers commit to OFAC censorship, they can block your transaction to a sanctioned address. This is not great, and something the core devs will probably seek to circumvent in future, but it is not the same as a bank, payment processor or credit card company blocking your account on a whim.

[1] https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/2021-global-crypto-adop...

> But it does work for international transfers, if you also assume that the sender and receiver are spending the token for services

We're explicitly not assuming that. We are explicitly not assuming that, how many times must it be said?

From up-thread "you've sent Eth to yourself, and you still need a forex transaction on each end", to which someone replies "True -- it cuts down on middle men though!".

In that situation, you have not, in fact, cut down on the middle men.

And now three posts from you saying "But it does if you want if you want eth at both ends"

That wasn't the question. FFS.

Look again. The original statement did not explicitly assume forex. And the original comment to that statement was a question as to whether forex is needed; the answer is “no, if you don’t require fiat” - and obviously it also depends on calling Eth and stablecoins “money” which many crypto users do.

> international same party (sending money to yourself) money transfers

>> But you've not sent money to yourself, you've sent Eth to yourself, and you still need a forex transaction on each end?

Somewhere along the way the discussion changed from one party transferring to them self, to two parties.