Several decades old centralised technology batch processing ALL CAPS messages in COBOL with a transaction time measured in days or weeks, a 10-15% transaction failure rate, no finality and exorbitant costs?
As if the zit goo that holds the cryptoverse together is not, in its own way (behind the façades of functional programming and fabncy consensus protocols) -- basically another form of ALL CAPS and COBOL.
Well, transactions settle with finality in seconds or minutes and cost pennies. Success rate is much higher, and failure is funds never left your account.
So whatever it's held together with, which generally seems to be cryptography, mostly works.
You, ah...you know that "finality" is bad in a system that needs to transact money, right?
Fraud exists. (You should know. The cryptocurrency universe is mostly that.) But more importantly, judges exist, and they do not give a single sweet damn that you say it "cannot be reversed".
(And a hearty LOL at "costs pennies". Ethereum gas fees yesterday, on the say you posted this, averaged eight bucks in actual-money terms. I can send a wire cheaper than that.)
High fees and days/weeks wait times for international wire transfers are common knowledge - check at almost any bank.
The above links partly explain why this situation exists in a world where all money is basically already "digital".
It's kind of not. And the only system making radical inroads to actually improving the status quo (which has been deeply entrenched for decades) is crypto, which right now offers real solutions adopted by consumers and institutions.
Doesn't mean its perfect or that there's no dark side, just as with everything. But the media - and HN largely, on this topic - loves to play up such things, so good luck finding much accurate information there, or here.
What nonsense. Crypto payments are more heavily-regulated via KYC than traditional payments. Anyone who's signed up for any crypto exchange attest to this fact. Crypto payments, as with all payments, over any mediums serve all purposes good & bad.
Just because the news typically only reports the murders that happen in a given city, doesn't mean that the only thing that's going to happen to someone in that city is to get murdered. Crypto reporting is much the same.
But yeah, technically you are still more likely to get murdered there, so only go if you're really into the other things it offers.
Just don't assume that with hundreds of billions invested, from all kinds of participants large and small, that the entire city is a fraud or otherwise nefarious. It's a major city - it has a lot going on, much under-reported.
Unless you live there, and you read the local news, attend local events, etc. Then you might have a better idea of what it's really like, and which alleys not to walk down alone at night, and where you can get the best bagels.
> Crypto payments are more heavily-regulated via KYC than traditional payments.
So this is why Ransomware peddlers and North Korea use bank transfers to move their money around, and why dark market users mail checks to each other? Or do they use crypto coins instead?
Well if you'd read what I've said, you'll know that's not really my style.
Unfortunately, I assumed you knew a slight more about the topic you're discussing than you evidently do.
My reply's intended to suggest that the privacy coins you are referring to - unknowingly, or otherwise - are simply another form of money. Bracketing them with regular crypto, something I did only in keeping with how you initiated, isn't the best.
In practice, privacy coins are a small subset of crypto, some of the least-used of all types available. And again there are also legitimate use-cases with them that reduces this further to the point it's a bit silly.
A subset, of a subset, of a...
But, you're welcome to succumb to the endless brainwash of BS and biased media reporting for crypto and think whatever will make you happy. Reality lay in waiting, for whenever you wish to join it and the complicated world that doesn't get clicks.
So you respond with a thought-terminating cliche that does not even address my comment, and then when called out on it, you accuse me of insincerity and lack of breadth. Interesting tactic.
What are you talking about? I've addressed your comment twice now. First in a way I assumed you knew enough about crypto to understand, and second explaining that in more detail. I've "accused" you of ignorance, not insincerity.
Meanwhile what you've done is failed to read my comments properly and then attempt to insult me. Read them until you understand, and if you don't, ask questions. That's the spirit of discussion and learning I'm engaged in.
If you aren't, good luck with that, and I wish you the best.
Calling people ignorant while giving a barely concealed bitcoin talking point in response to something completely unrelated (you claimed KYC was harder for crypto, but can't explain why it is favored for those looking to avoid it) is not doing your part in a productive conversation.
It's not "favoured". Crypto use is a tiny subset of all financial activity criminal included. "Ignorant" is not intended as an insult, it's merely accurate. You appear not to know some things and I've tried to help with it.
Money laundering alone is estimated in the trillions per year according to the UN. This is significantly greater than the entire value of all privacy coins combined:
Eg, even if the entirety of Monero was purchased only for money laundering, it could only account for 0.1-0.2% of the total that occurs. Where is the other 99.8-99.9% being conducted? What systems are "facilitating" that?
Well, everything that isn't crypto... banks, cash, checks, etc.
Not the GP poster, but if you read some of the more recent research coming out of the groups that were originally founded by Facebook/Libra/Diem/Novi/whatever they call themselves this year, these actually do seem like substantial improvements eg over existing payment systems. Their papers (yet to be confirmed in live production systems afaik) report an order of magnitude capacity improvement over eg the Visa network (160k+ TPS vs 24k, at latency in the low seconds, or even subseconds).
For some of those systems, it would be a stretch to call them blockchains (there's no comparable data structure, sometimes not even consensus), but the important thing is that they come with peer-reviewed BFT security guarantees. So I do wonder, if you can have BFT guarantees for such a system, and still more capacity than you'll likely ever need, why wouldn't you?
