[granddemolisher]

> Today, I ended up going to my other bank and pulling all of my money out as cash. I can't trust the system to not steal even more money from me. That's messed up. Because monday is a bank holiday, now I have to wait until tuesday until my accountant can deal with this bullshit. What kind of broken system is this?

Same.

It's insane how little control and power you have as an average person. Your bank accounts can be frozen on a whimp, you can be put into a jail with no attorney because you cannot use your own money to pay for them and forced to confess to something you never did, then slave away for the state.

There are too many laws everywhere which means you've broken some. The only difference between you and the person who got caught is selective enforcement and someone wanting to make an example or fulfil their own goals.

And financial system will snitch on all of it.

You have no privacy. Is that not insane? You could be jailed for having a financial transactions on grindr in some countries in the world.

Countries impose financial and currency controls against the benefit of the people all the time.

It's not "freedom" if you cannot choose to take your money outside.

It's fucked up how normalised limiting freedom has become. You don't notice it. The state controls so much of your money forcefully with a threat of violence and isolation.

Your money that you work hard for, sweat for, break your bones for.

[latchkey]

Yes. All of this is why "web3" is not bullshit and why I've dedicated years of my energy and my funds to it.

Try living in another country too, I have. Banking is the number one pain point. Even more than language issues. Ever tried to get your own money out of a western union in a country that doesn't speak your language?

If you're doubting "web3" then you've probably never experienced these sorts of pain yourself and I could understand your trepidation. But since I'm understanding you, how about understanding me too.

[granddemolisher]

IMO, the term web3 is tainted by VCs using retail to dump their tokens faster than they can dump equity in traditional IPO which is less transparent to average schmuck because most of the money comes from the retirement funds passively investing in everything.

It's their shortcut to liquidity which resulted in overpromises and dumps.

It's not unreasonable for someone to be sceptical but to dismiss it all together is a mistake.

We need to go back to the core. Decentralized financial instruments built to help people prosper economicly. To uplift poor people in unbanked countries. To stop dictators from rugging poor people and investors. To provide individual freedom and highest level of personal attainment.

The yield bullshit needs to stop.

Edit: I don't mean all yield strategies, just ones which are unsustainable (most of them).

I want unsecured lending products in crypto based on on-chain reputation which happens automatically on taking small loans or doing a lot of transactions maybe endorsement system where institutions stake money in return of verification.

Banks won't provide loans to people who need them the most. Even self employment people and founders with millions of dollars in exit struggle with a home loan because banks refuse to deal with anyone who doesn't fit their cookie cutter.

I believe crypto has potential to disrupt it.

I love flash loans for this exact reason. They are unique to crypto, allowing freedom to anyone to increase market efficiency by taking advantage of arbitrage without creditionals and needing absurd amount of capital to start.

[latchkey]

Certainly, the marketing around web3 went to shit. But I've been in it for 4 years now so I don't really care about the VC's because I see the larger picture already.

I agree with everything you said, but the end. The ponzi tokenomics definitely needs to stop, but the lego yield stuff has potential. It is more than just unbanked, it is people without lines of credit. It is teaching people how to be fiscally responsible.

Based on my Vietnam example below. Woman with gold teeth instead deposits her stable money into her phone. That money earns yield automatically. She can also use a portion of it as collateral for a Kiva-style loan to help with her farm crops (or whatever small business she has). People who buy her products effectively pay back her loan directly by submitting to her phone app. She's in control of it herself.

[mmcnl]

Banking is a solved problem, has been for decades. Seeking an alternative in technological complex solutions is running away from the actual problem.

[granddemolisher]

An international swift transaction takes days or sometimes weeks to clear. In developing countries, bank will take its sweet time to clear it which may take even more than two weeks.

It costs tens of dollars in fees and significant percentage in currency conversion cost if you live in a country where you cannot hold foreign currency received directly (Many unbanked countries have these kind of absurd laws).

So you will lose hundreds of dollars on currency conversion on a transaction of a few thousand easily.

This is taking into account the best bank account you can get with high income. At best, you might end up paying tens of dollars on a few thousand transaction in conversion.

Solved problem? Not at all.

I can provide so many examples where banking is broken. People buy registered companies for a company bank account in middle East because you cannot easily open a bank account if you are a foreigner or foreign company. You need to have hundreds of thousands in seed capital to start a current account.

In developed countries, I have seen friends struggle with getting a home loan because they are self employed or founder.

Maybe you don't believe crypto is the solution and I can accept that but banking system is nowhere solved.

[latchkey]

If banking was a solved problem, then how come so many people don’t have an account?

[mmcnl]

Because the problem isn't banking. There are lots of people who don't have access to clean water either. Doesn't mean we need new solutions to provide clean water, but rather we need to figure out why existing solutions don't always work.

[latchkey]

> Doesn't mean we need new solutions to provide clean water, but rather we need to figure out why existing solutions don't always work.

Solution doesn't work, we need a new solution. It doesn't need to be 'new', it needs to be 'different'! Play on words, at the end of the day, people still don't have bank accounts or clean water. Something isn't working. I'd rather be part of the solution and not part of the problem, even if the solution isn't perfect.

It is also an apple/orange comparison. Water != Bank Account.

[mateo411]

Because they have little to no money.

[latchkey]

By that same logic, taxis were a solved problem and uber shouldn't exist, yet here we are today.

It doesn't matter how much money someone has.

Everyone has a right to have a safe place to store it.

[sshine]

> You have no privacy. Is that not insane? You could be jailed for having a financial transactions on grindr in some countries in the world.

That’s because privacy against the state is at odds with enforcing the state’s laws. From a state-centric perspective, money is “good citizen behaviour” points. If you maintain a job deemed valuable, the bank prints you money to buy a house, etc. You have to know what people used their money on to assess if that’s good behaviour or not.

[latchkey]

That's why bitcoin and ethereum are so awesome. It gives this power back to the people and there is not a whole lot that governments can do about it except watch the flow of funds. Of course we can argue over finer details, but the overall course has been set. It is just a matter of innovation now.

Having the combination of bitcoin as the single limited entity (simple is valuable) and eth as the programmable, more complex version of that, solves a lot of general needs and provides a good foundation to build on.

Sure the on/off ramps make it easier to trace it to individuals, but what happens when people stop using those and just deal with each other directly? L2's will make the smaller day to day, transactions cheaper and faster and those will just roll up with checkpoints on the L1's.

DeFi is a bottom up step in that direction. To emulate the existing infrastructure, we need programmable money. It stumbled to begin with, but again the foundation has been laid. Cat is out of the bag, so to speak.

[medvezhenok]

I’m not sure that I would want people to hold all of that power - there’a a reason that the state has a monopoly on violence in the first place - turns out that having people roam the streets with guns is a less pleasant reality to be in for most people (look at Russia in the 1990s for what that looks like).

Not to go all black-mirror, but imagine someone anonymously putting up a $X million dollar bounty on someone’s head, backed by a smart contract promise or something (I know that it can’t be guaranteed at present, but imagine). Or other nefarious things that most of the society considers harmful - and having no way to stop those from happening.

Same as the promise of “hard money” - look at the 1930s for what a deflationary bust with “hard money” looks like. There is a reason why we have the current system, and while there are large issues with it, Bitcoin/Crypto solves very few of them

[latchkey]

> imagine someone anonymously putting up a $X million dollar bounty on someone’s head, backed by a smart contract promise or something (I know that it can’t be guaranteed at present, but imagine). Or other nefarious things that most of the society considers harmful - and having no way to stop those from happening.

With or without crypto, nothing prevents that from happening today. Number one currency for nefarious actions is (and likely will always be), USD. Likely perpetuated by the US govt itself.

> There is a reason why we have the current system, and while there are large issues with it, Bitcoin/Crypto solves very few of them

I don't think they are trying to solve for those issues though. I'm more than happy with the issues they do solve, for me, today. Namely, more control and flexibility over my own funds.

I can take any amount of my dollars in my bank, convert them to a decentralized stablecoin (and I'm not talking shit like UST), fly to another country, and then access those funds locally without anyone telling me what I can and cannot do.

If that means that others can do the same and they might use that to do something awful, it doesn't really matter to me because if they really wanted to get away with it in today's standards, they could. Jamal Khashoggi is a prime example of this.

[atmosx]

> I can take any amount of my dollars in my bank, convert them to a decentralized stablecoin (and I'm not talking shit like UST), fly to another country, and then access those funds locally without anyone telling me what I can and cannot do.

That's like: https://xkcd.com/538/

Are we talking about 2k USDs or meaningful sums like 300k or 10 million? Because banks in many countries (e.g. mine) have outright ban transactions with BTC-related websites (e.g. crypto exchanges) using their accounts... So assuming you find someone who'll be able to verse 1 million USD to your account (can/will coinbase do that? not in theory, in practice... or ask you 15 days to put the money together?), you'll have to convince the bank to accept and hand you the money. Then explain where did these came from. Good luck with that.

[latchkey]

If you're carrying cash into a country, it is very easy to lose it at the airport given that they are looking for people carrying a lot of cash and have machines to detect these things.

There are private OTC desks of all sizes, all over the place, if you know where to look.