[hannasanarion]

When has the centralized authority, the banking system, ACH, Visa, Paypal, etc. ever "abused trust" by failing to record a transaction?

And why is that very minimal trust in the ability of your money to get from one account to another worth risking all your money by putting it in an account with a single point of failure with no recourse in the event of a breach?

In 88 years, no bank in the Untied States has ever lost a customer's money. To date, there are more bitcoin exchanges that have lost their users' money than there are that haven't.

[djoldman]

There are a multitude of examples of PayPal closing or suspending accounts without the consent of the account holder. Banks are free to attach conditions and fees to accounts that are not necessarily easy to understand if one is not financially illiterate. Many people are "unbanked." See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unbanked

I think it's clear that the concept of a wallet or account that can be created at any time in almost any place almost instantly, that can send and receive something of value securely is a valuable contribution.

[georgesC]

Those entities can abuse your trust if they decide to censor or cancel the transaction for some arbitrary reasons. Same can apply in the context of money, rules of said money can change, a person won't be necessarily always ok with that (we're talking about your own currency/savings), you don't have much control and much choice.

As a developer I appreciate the ability to skip the use of a third party, I just wish there were more users in this network, but the network grows.

And this is not about the united states in particular. I'm not from the US, I'm glad if you didn't had any problems with your monetary system and banks, and I hope it continues for the good of everyone.

[Vecr]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point was a thing, trying to get banks to not "record transactions" in your words.

[hannasanarion]

Did you actually read any of that article?

The allegations in Choke Point were that banks were approving transactions they shouldn't have, without doing enough investigation to check for fraud, not that they were failing to move money from one account to another, the "problem" that blockchain is supposed to "solve".

In what way is blockchain supposed to prevent fraudulent transactions? It is impossible in blockchain to even check for fraud, because every transaction is automatically irrevocably approved by-design, no matter how fraudulent.

edit: unless, what you meant to imply, is that the banks weren't supposed to approve those illegal transactions and so the government stepped in to punish them, and that bitcoin is good because it will never deny an illegal transaction and is therefore useful for committing crimes? well then thanks for admitting it, I guess.

[everydaysales]

I think you are misinterpreting the placement of trust when you're positioning your responses. You're saying that there are advantages to a monetary system that relies on "objective" third parties to adjudicate disputes, combat fraud, and stifle illicit/illegal activity. You're not wrong that these are useful utilities. It's why I don't believe Bitcoin will ever replace them. It will certainly coexist though.

The trust Bitcoin removes is the central banking component. We rely on governments who have shown wanton disregard for the value of their respective dollars by printing limitless supplies and dancing with the risk of hyperinflation. When we save money in a given currency, it's because we trust that currency as a store of value or we park it in a vehicle that returns value or at least staves off depreciation of value (savings accounts, bonds, stocks etc.) Bitcoin allows you to park your savings in a space that does not require you to trust any particular government's monetary policy. Maybe you're entirely comfortable with the USD or the Euro but there are folks in less stable countries with which Bitcoin is a godsend.

What do you do if you're a billionaire in China and you said something bold online about an atrocity your government has just committed? You hear that you're about to be disappeared so you wish to defect to another country. How do you move your wealth? Can you move it via the existing banking digital network? No because the banking system is controlled by the government and that type of activity is red flagged and stopped. Can you move it all in cash or gold? Perhaps, but it's a huge undertaking logistically and very obviously shows your intentions.

Bitcoin allows you to relocate the entirety of your wealth anywhere in the globe with literally just your brain power. You can memorize your seed and leave to where ever you want. That is insanely powerful freedom which is the result of removing the "trusted" third party through decentralization.