[jdietrich]

One of the primary arguments in favour of cryptocurrency is avoiding the fragility of fractional reserve banking. Building a cryptocurrency with a fractional reserve is basically building an unlicensed and uninsured bank. That's not a particularly attractive prospect for depositors, so naturally Tether were incredibly dishonest about it.

[jpmattia]

> One of the primary arguments in favour of cryptocurrency is avoiding the fragility of fractional reserve banking.

Only by people that don't understand fractional reserve lending. For example, the exchanges are loaning BTC for the purpose of shorting. This is exactly fractional reserve lending, just like the banks.

[Scoundreller]

If you have 10 BTC in your wallet that says you have 10 BTC, it will always be 10 BTC and available to you.

If you have 10 drachmas in your bank account that says you have 10 drachmas, there are a lot of different* ways that it can suddenly become partially/fully unavailable to you that wouldn't happen with your self-hosted BTC wallet.

[jpmattia]

> If you have 10 BTC in your wallet that says you have 10 BTC, it will always be 10 BTC and available to you.

Not if your wallet is held at an exchange, which is why that keyword appears in my comment.

[Scoundreller]

Then you have failed to counter the claim of "One of the primary arguments in favour of cryptocurrency is avoiding the fragility of fractional reserve banking."

[jpmattia]

Most people would define fractional reserve banking" as a bank* that loans out a fraction of its reserves.

You are of course free to equate that to "your self-hosted BTC wallet", but I doubt it will gain much traction as a definition.