[charcircuit]

It prevents centralized entities being the gatekeepers to the modern financial world. The US maintaining their own digital version of cash would also work, but the government is slow, and does not want to compete against these centralized entities due to being advantaged as the government controls the currency itself.

Payment processors essentially get to dictate what is and is not allowed to be financially viable which is a very powerful form of control over culture.

[Zanfa]

> It prevents centralized entities being the gatekeepers to the modern financial world.

In theory, but it doesn’t in practice. Most crypto transfers never make it to the blockchain, they happen entirely in SQL databases of exchanges.

Also, Tether has complete control over USDT and can block or reverse any payment or freeze any account it wants. No bank or payment processor in the world has such centralized control over the traditional financial system.

If anything, crypto is more centralized by comparison. Both in terms of payment processors as well as wealth distribution.

[charcircuit]

>In theory, but it doesn’t in practice.

In practice neither exchanges or Tether have made any attempts at refusing to allow payments to legal businesses as far as I'm aware. So in practice it does.

[Zanfa]

Whether they abuse their power is completely orthogonal to centralization. It’s also false. Just look at the amount of customer complaints in the Coinbase subreddit where they’ve blocked legitimate customer access.

[rimbo789]

What’s wrong with centralized entities? There should be financial gatekeepers. They are much better than whatever crime syndicates benefit from crypto

Crypto is just speed running the 19th century and making us re learn all the reasons why we made the pre crypto regulations.

[charcircuit]

>What’s wrong with centralized entities?

Because the CEO of one could read a false news article about your site and prohibit you from transacting with them anymore. Your existence is at the whims of a few people.