[jgilias]

I find it really hard to reconcile this viewpoint with reality. I personally know businesses who use stablecoins for international money transfers because it’s just faster and cheaper.

Also, every month or so an article pops up here where either some business is rekt because their payment processor’s automated process kicked them off, or someone’s bank account got closed in a similar way screwing them.

Yet the only way to self custody electronic money and transact without intermediaries is somehow ‘pointless and idiotic’.

[methodical]

The key differentiating factor in your hypothetical reasons why traditional finance is inferior to defi is that there are systems to remediate the exact issues you mentioned, whereas if you send your crypto to the wrong address- it's gone. If you lose your seed words to your wallet and can't access it, or someone else gets access to them- it's gone. If you get scammed- it's gone. Literally all of these things (which are a /feature/ of the tech!) make it essentially unusable for any business that isn't looking for an adrenaline rush. What I love most about all of these shortcomings of the technology is how much people who push it minimize all of these issues by saying that it's user error, and people who utilize good practices won't have these issues. It's almost as if all of these people have literally never talked to a real person. No regular person cares or would ever want to care about hard wallets versus alternatives, seed words, verifying addresses, and avoiding phishing scams. All of these issues which can be mitigated by being technically inclined fall flat on their face with any person who just wants to send money to their grandson or pay a friend for dinner.

[jgilias]

The reasons are really not hypothetical. That being said though, I don’t personally believe that crypto will or necessarily needs to totally replace all fiat usage. It’s more along the lines of the realization that the possibility to have electronic money kept and transmitted outside of the fractionally reserved banking system is immediately useful.

Given the state of crypto adoption now, I can’t imagine a non-dystopian future a century from now where what we now call crypto or digital assets haven’t become a very boring and non-remarkable part of the civilizational fabric.

I can imagine dystopian futures where that’s the case though. One would be where the infrastructure we use to run crypto on (the internet, telecommunications) doesn’t exist. Another is where all the regulatory environments for digital assets that currently exist (UK, EU, Canada, etc) have been totally rolled back, and self-custody has been made a criminal offense. Probably some type of society straight out of hunger games.

[wonderwonder]

To be fair, people get scammed over wire transfers in traditional finance all the time

[hef19898]

What kind of businesses?

[jgilias]

One is a run of the mill software engineering consultancy, the other a startup making a development as a service platform where they link companies needing work with engineers in the developing world.