[csydas]

I think you're missing the point here. I'm not a crypto advocate, but Visa and Mastercard definitely have too much power as do most online transaction processors, and the amount of information that online processors collect (at the request and joy of governments) is quite scary.

A select few organizations can control whether you can buy necessities or not and cut you off even from legally earned money on a whim. Banks have finite cash on hand which limits your mobility and liquidity at any given moment in the event of an emergency. Online commerce at this stage may as well be a secondary benefit given how your information is scooped up and resold to advertisers.

Financial systems are quite convenient, there's no denying that, but they're extremely fragile and the system exists at the whim of a few select people. Visa and Mastercard have demonstrated they can effectively remove persons from modern civilization at their discretion, not even with official government requirements, and that this has not been challenges is really unsettling.

To reiterate, cryptocurrencies are not the answer here in their current state, as they're too unstable and basically inherit not only all the issues that normal banks bring, but also introduce a ton of new issues. I don't know how to ensure sovereignty for individuals who are legally earning compensation when a support representative for banks can click on a checkbox and make them penniless. Nevermind if the company the representative works for is influenced by an unhappy government.

Finance is terrifying, and we're really in a strange place where we don't have a good answer for ensuring individual sovereignty with any currency, crypto included. I stress over this because I'm less and less confident every year that there is a good solution for this besides eschewing Finance entirely (and that's quite the magic trick...)

[forgetfreeman]

Individual what now? Sovereignty? We pretending fiat currency isn't a thing now? You a gold bug? Understand I don't disagree with any particular point you've made here but you may as well be freaking out about the weather. If the international financial system were to ever truly brick 2/3 of the world's population would busy themselves with killing each other. The surviving third that didn't succumb to disease would likely starve. What flavor of (now worthless) fiat currency you might have hoarded isn't going to alter any outcomes. I feel like what you're expressing here is less like a rant on international banking and more like pathological mistrust in institutions as a concept.