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by tkmunzwa 2403 days ago
> How do you think someone in Cyprus, Zimbabwe or Venezuela would feel about your statement saying to trust the banks?

Someone from Zimbabwe here - I endorse their statement: trust the banks. I lost my money to a bank closure in early 00s, eventually got some of it back from the zombie entity that the central bank resuscitated. The CEO of a Zimbabwean crypto-exchange[1] "lost the password" of a cold wallet (wink) a year ago - the deposits therein were lost with no recourse; the exchange is struggling with solvency[2]. So yeah, if you're not going to stuff money under your mattress, give it to a bank before going full crypto.

1. Golix - you might have heard of it as it was offering the world's highest USD:bitcoin rates. The fine print was that you couldn't get USD out of Zimbabwe

2. https://cointelegraph.com/news/ceo-of-zimbabwean-crypto-exch...

2 comments

That is very unfortunate, you have my sympathy. But I think it has to be pointed out that leaving your money in a crypto-currency exchange is generally considered to be worse than leaving it in a bank, regardless of where you stand on cyptocurrency in general.

Personally, I lost 3 bitcoin when someone hacked my MtGox account in 2012. I think they'd had 2fa for a little while at that point, but I was stupid and didn't enable it. Furthermore, I had reused my account/password on some fledgling bitcoin forum. In my defense, when I made the accounts I didn't think the valuation of bitcoin would peak around $20k :)

> I endorse their statement: trust the banks. I lost my money to a bank closure in early 00s, eventually got some of it back

Solid argument mate. Next you'll tell me that forced land seizures is good for the economy too.

This is bait.