So you're angry that the virtual money you got as a handout, from a system in early development, was lost four years later after you failed to act on an upgrade announced months in advance. Sounds fair.
Crypto currencies overlook the benefits of a centralized currency - some entity to correct mistakes. Fiat currency is backed by the trust in a nation state for example. If my money disappears, I have some authority I can appeal to for addressing it. Whether they do address it or not is a different question, but at least there’s a process.
When someone in stellar screws up and locks out wallets, or when Mt. Gox loses mounds of bitcoins, there is no recourse. Just a “oh, the math makes fixing that impossible” response. Or they can take the ethereum approach and just rewrite history to cover up your mistakes, delegitimizing the entire currency in the process.
In a world with pure intentions and no mistakes that may work, but the real world is messy and people are any combination of stupid, forgetful, and malicious.
Crypto currencies and distributed ledgers are interesting in theory, but will fail due to the implications of needing to operate in the real world.
I don’t know about you, but the bank cannot arbitrarily decide that my money is gone because I didn’t deign to respond to them within a certain time period.
The moment the bank starts doing that it’s not a bank any more, it’s a scam.
Brushing aside the "giveaway" aspect of the parent comment, banks decide that money is gone (or inaccessible) because actors didn't respond within "reasonable timeframes" pretty frequently. For example:
- Banks are not legally obligated to honor checks older than 6 months
- Dormant accounts where the bank is unable to contact the account owner have their balances transferred to the state (State Seizure)
The latter probably makes a little more sense in this case since you could (depending on the issuer) just request another check from the source.
Crypto currencies overlook the benefits of a centralized currency - some entity to correct mistakes. Fiat currency is backed by the trust in a nation state for example. If my money disappears, I have some authority I can appeal to for addressing it. Whether they do address it or not is a different question, but at least there’s a process.
When someone in stellar screws up and locks out wallets, or when Mt. Gox loses mounds of bitcoins, there is no recourse. Just a “oh, the math makes fixing that impossible” response. Or they can take the ethereum approach and just rewrite history to cover up your mistakes, delegitimizing the entire currency in the process.
In a world with pure intentions and no mistakes that may work, but the real world is messy and people are any combination of stupid, forgetful, and malicious.
Crypto currencies and distributed ledgers are interesting in theory, but will fail due to the implications of needing to operate in the real world.