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by CRConrad 1599 days ago
> It’s kind of missing the point to focus on the narrow issue of “can you accidentally destroy money in the conventional banking system?”

No it isn't. That's a huge difference. On the contrary, focusing on “Shit happens in the conventional banking system too!”, that's missing the point, IMO.
1 comments
SilasX 1599 days ago
It’s not really a difference because you can destroy money in the conventional banking system eg by burning paper money. And it’s extremely important if the defense you’re giving I’d wrong, which it is, if that defense is “humans can come in and correct obviously unreasonable things”.

In both conventional banking and crypto, yes, there are situations of “sorry, you’re fucked, but like, you’re just supposed to know not to do that” (where “that” is send wires you’re not 100% sure of or guard your physical cash carefully).

No offense, but you really seem to be drawing the abstraction boundaries poorly here.

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CRConrad 1599 days ago
> you can destroy money in the conventional banking system eg by burning paper money.

But that's an accident or intentional vandalism by a user of the system; it isn't built into the system itself.

> In both conventional banking and crypto, yes, there are situations of “sorry, you’re fucked, but like, you’re just supposed to know not to do that” (where “that” is send wires you’re not 100% sure of or guard your physical cash carefully).

In conventional banking the “sorry, you’re fucked” situations don't destroy the money banking is all about handling.

> you really seem to be drawing the abstraction boundaries poorly here.

My "abstraction boundary" (if I understand the term correctly?) is: A system that can have parts that do this -- destroy the very thing it's supposed to handle, "money" -- is a crap system. "Yeah, but you can burn cash!" (vandalism) or "Mistype an account number and the money is lost (to you)!" (not destructive) are not system critiques but whataboutism.

Currency-changing ATMs (do such things exist? If not, why not?) or vending machines like for petrol don't have built-in banknote shredders.

[Edit: Left off half a sentence, screwed up emphases.]

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