[nojster]

Have you tried international money transfers?

Bank to bank this can take 3-5 business days (agreed, western union can be faster, but less convenient) and, depending on your payment processor, can easily cost 15% on the transferred value.

So I argue that, similarly like with the mail to email example, money to emoney is faster, cheaper and safer.

[romanoderoma]

> Have you tried international money transfers?

They transfer real money, immediately available upon receiving them.

International money transfer follow international regulations, you can make them speedier by breaking rules, which is usually not what you want if you receive or send money abroad legally (imagine a mom receiving money from her son having to explain why she received it from unofficial crypto channels)

International money transfer is insured, lost crypto are lost forever.

International money transfer it's a highly regulated market users have the rights to be informed of the cost of the operation before starting it, costs also include exchange rates (the operator does the operation for you, you send X and the receiver receive dollars or pound or euros directly, crypto don't include that), taxes collected upfront (crypto skips that) and of course service fees.

International money transfer also pass through IRS (or the equivalent agency there is in other countries) for amount higher than a certain threshold, to avoid money laundering.

Crypto skips that.

etc. etc. etc.

That's why it costs more.

But it is also more secure and less suspicious for the authorities.

E-mail had no such downsides.

[ric2b]

> They transfer real money, immediately available upon receiving them.

Just like a Bitcoin transaction (unless you're excluding it from "real money" because of it's low adoption, but that's not a technical limitation).

> International money transfer is insured, lost crypto are lost forever.

Is it insured against your own mistake when selecting the receiver or amount? I doubt it, and that's the only way you'll lose crypto during a transfer.

> International money transfer it's a highly regulated market users have the rights to be informed of the cost of the operation before starting it, costs also include exchange rates (the operator does the operation for you, you send X and the receiver receive dollars or pound or euros directly, crypto don't include that), taxes collected upfront (crypto skips that) and of course service fees.

Actually crypto can do all that (minus the taxes) and it's actually the standard, assuming you're exchanging between different crypto-currencies and not Bitcoin -> Euro. As for taxes it's just a question of making a wallet that automatically pays the correct tax to the taxing agency address.

> E-mail had no such downsides.

E-mail definitely also skips lots of steps of snail-mail:

- It can't send any physical items

- There's no government agency monitoring your mail for tariffs evasion or other unlawful activities.

- You can't just say you don't want to receive ads by e-mail and then sue the companies that don't comply

- There's no registered mail

- Etc, we could probably come up with other limitations

[romanoderoma]

> As for taxes it's just a question of making a wallet that automatically pays the correct tax to the taxing agency address.

We'll see if that's true the day all the "minor" limitations are solved.

Today bitcoins cannot be spent, due to technical limitations and psychological ones (high fluctuations make it impossible to know how much you are really spending)

Bitcoins can be stolen by simply hacking (or losing) a device, your money can't, unless it's cash.

But you usually don't keep all your money in cash in the same place, as you do with bitcoins.

etc. etc.

[ric2b]

> Bitcoins can be stolen by simply hacking (or losing) a device, your money can't, unless it's cash.

Hacking/phishing/social engineering into private bank accounts is quite common, probably more than into cryptocurrency wallets.

It's easy and highly encouraged by every cryptocurrency wallet to backup your wallet seed, so losing a device is not a problem unless you ignore that advice.

> But you usually don't keep all your money in cash in the same place, as you do with bitcoins.

I don't, I have them split into multiple wallets, sort of like my fiat money.

I carry a small amount on my phone but most of the BTC I own in on a cold/hardware wallet. That stays home just like the debit card for my main bank account.

[romanoderoma]

> Hacking/phishing/social engineering into private bank accounts is quite common, probably more than into cryptocurrency wallets.

They are not common and you don't lose any money, if they are stolen from banks.

> It's easy and highly encouraged by every cryptocurrency wallet to backup your wallet seed

That's not protection, that's just preparing for the worst, hoping for the best.

> I don't, I have them split into multiple wallets, sort of like my fiat money.

You are not an average user then

And that's why you show symptoms of survival bias

> That stays home just like the debit card for my main bank account.

You debit card cannot easily be used to steal money from you even if someone steals it physically

[nojster]

> They are not common and you don't lose any money, if they are stolen from banks. if someone obtains access to your bank account and withdraws your money, then YOU have to prove that it wasn't you.

Also, about how common some scenarios are in the UK: https://www.statista.com/statistics/586715/share-of-cyber-se...

> You are not an average user then

any statistics to back up your claim?

> You debit card cannot easily be used to steal money from you even if someone steals it physically right, because especially since covid-19 you are less and less asked for your PIN when purchasing with debit / credit card