[samarama]

That is the case, because Engineers have a bad understand of global finance, business and money.

That’s why they don’t understand the problems that crypto is solving.

If you look at the comments here, you’ll see that many comments are saying that crypto isn’t doing anything useful.

However, crypto is literally solving the extreme problem of infinitely printable FIAT money and very slow and expensive cross-border transfers, which might be the most impfactful invention of the last 2 decades.

On top of that, crypto adds transparency, accountability, interoperability, decreases fraud in every possible market.

However, hacker news doesn’t understand that, because they simply don’t global finance, global markets, business and moneys.

[tappio]

Your comment arrogant so I expect you will get badly down voted. It is also fundamentally wrong, so I will comment nevertheless. Maybe I can save some poor soul from this naive ideology.

The question is not really about what are the downsides of FIAT money. All solutions have problems. Even if cryptos could solve all problems that FIAT has, that does not mean it is a better solution to the problem that FIAT solves.

The question is really about what problem money solves in the first place. The foremost purpose of is to distribute resources. Money is a completely social construct that does not have any value itself, all value is derived from the promises of those who have resources make. Real world resources, like oil, are what ultimately matters. As a side note, this is also why the Russian sanctions don't really work as well as some people hope for, and they are ultimately a bad idea.

Anyways, I think it's fair to say say that the current financial system has been extremely successful compared to any earlier financial system, such as the gold standard. Everyone who understands finance even a tiny bit knows that a system with finite money supply like gold does not solve the actual problem the current financial system is solving. It may solve some issues that money has, such as efficiency, transparency, and transfer costs, but as a tool for distributing resources it's useless.

So the comparison you are making is meaningless. Even if those problems would be solved, it won't solve the problem money is actually solving.

On top of that, the problems you mention are not problems of money. They are problems of people, of human nature. New money will not fix them.

[samarama]

> Even if cryptos could solve all problems that FIAT has, that does not mean it is a better solution to the problem that FIAT solves.

That sentence literally refutes itself.

[tappio]

Screwdriver (cryptos) and drill driver (fiat schema) both can be used to screw. The proponents of screwdrivers are constantly complaining how drill drivers are clumsy, how you can't safely run around with them, etc. But do you really want back the society where you build houses with screwdrivers? Current fiat schema is just so much more than what you think. I assume you didn't study finance or economics, so it might be hard to understand just how many things have been possible because of fiat currencies. Yes, many crisis too, but it put the rate of innovation and growth into steroids. Thanks to it, we now have time to argue in internet about this kind of worthless matters.

[ben_w]

No it doesn’t.

Fiat currency can solve problem Alpha while having itself a problem Beta, and something else can solve problem Beta without solving problem Alpha.

[ben_w]

> However, crypto is literally solving the extreme problem of infinitely printable FIAT money

Except crypto does nothing to prevent that; and the printability of fiat money is controlled by a number of systems from historians pointing at what happens if you don’t to international treaty to democratic accountability; and the multitude of different cryptocurrencies means it has an echo of the same problem overall only with no accountability, and even within single currencies it has one-dollar-one-vote rather than one-person-one-vote accountability of a democracy.

> and very slow and expensive cross-border transfers, which might be the most impfactful invention of the last 2 decades.

My banks do this at zero cost. Literally zero. Slowest time it a few minutes to show up as a notification on the other bank, normally it’s about as fast as the time it takes iOS to show a notification banner.

> On top of that, crypto adds transparency, accountability, decreases fraud on nearly every consumer product.

Bank can’t refund you if you get ripped off when there’s no bank.

[samarama]

What banks are you using, because cross border transfers take 2-5 business days.

[ben_w]

Halifax (UK), Revolut (Lithiuania at the time), N26 (Germany), plus whoever it is backing up my share trading (I read the small print then promptly forgot it because it didn’t matter).

[V__]

> However, crypto is literally solving the extreme problem of infinitely printable FIAT money

It might be an extreme problem to you, not to everyone else.

> very slow and expensive cross-border transfers

This has been solved again and again by different companies, be it wise.com or others.

> On top of that, crypto adds transparency, accountability, decreases fraud on nearly every consumer product.

Except for the fact that nobody can get their money back after they have been scamed. There is no authority to complain to or reverse a transaction. Wich makes it useless for the masses.

> which might be the most impfactful invention of the last 2 decades.

This is why people are tired of crypto, it has been over 10 years and it has't really changed anything. Crypto enthusiast think that, but it didn't and it won't.

[samarama]

> It might be an extreme problem to you, not to everyone else.

So mass inflation is only an extremely problem to me? This is probably the most false claim possible.

> This has been solved again and again by different companies, be it wise.com or others

Except they constantly freeze user accounts for no reason.

> Except for the fact that nobody can get their money back after they have been scamed. There is no authority to complain to or reverse a transaction. Wich makes it useless for the masses.

Of course there is, all the exchanges have to comply by with law enforcement and that’s what they are doing. This way, since the transactions are all public and can be traced endlessly it’s very difficult to evade law enforcement through scams.

Thats also why this $4.5B scam was caught https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-09/nyc-coupl...

[tappio]

You don't seem to understand what ultimately causes inflation. Not a surprise, as you don't understand money either.

Inflation happens because central banks have been trying to fix structural problems by printing more money, and this time it didn't work out. Sometimes it has worked. If they didn't do that, the problems would still be there. If we didn't have the possibility to print more money, we couldn't even try out if that helps. Ultimately, the structural problems would be worse if financial system was ran on cryptos.

[samarama]

No, if that wasn’t an option, then the root causes such as wasteful spending, not holding politicians accountable, student loan crisis wouldn’t even happen in the first place, because those that are committing those misdeeds currently are the same that are printing the money.

[ben_w]

None of those are root causes of inflation in most nations. Hyperinflation perhaps (but even then a collapse in economic output with fixed money supply can mess you up), but normal inflation is put into a deliberate low-but-not-zero level to encourage spending over saving.

[V__]

> So mass inflation is only an extremely problem to me? This is probably the most false claim possible.

Of course inflation is a problem, but saying crypto could solve it is not true. But even if it could, why would anybody who cares about inflation use crypto, when the value fluctuates so much?

> Except they constantly freeze user accounts for no reason.

And crypto exchanges disappear with all your money. I am not saying there are no problems, just that this problem (simple currency exchange) is solved.

> Of course there is, all the exchanges have to comply by with law enforcement and that’s what they are doing. This way, since the transactions are all public and can be traced endlessly it’s very difficult to evade law enforcement through scams.

So instead of a bank I have a "exchange". All my transactions are public (which is not a positive) and if someone exchanges cryptos from bitcoin to monero then you are still fu*ed.

But ignoring all things we said. All crypto enthusiasts have one important saying: "Not your keys not your crypto". Go ahead and try to explain to someone, how to safely secure their keys and that all their money is bound to them. That if lost/stolen, they have nothing. Crypto makes things (for the avg. user) less secure, more complicated without any benefit. If you fear the government or have specific reasons, go ahed use it, nobody is saying there are no use-cases, just that it's not a useful system for the masses.

[kuschku]

> very slow and expensive cross-border transfers

The EU did more to solve that issue than crypto ever did.

15'000€ in under 10 seconds, for free, across the entire SEPA zone.

Converting fiat into crypto, transferring it, converting it back still takes far longer. And keeping money as crypto isn't a working solution, because the currencies are so volatile.

Not every crypto solution adds transparency and accountability, look at monero or mixers in other chains.

And then there's the issue with deflation. Inflation is something valuable, because it means doing something today is valued more than what you've done in the past. It encourages people to spend money, to do something with it, instead of saving it forever.