[jcranmer]

> When you "transfer money" from your bank account to another, your bank has to physically move the associated cash from it's vault to the other banks vault, by hiring secure trucks, people, and so on.

That hasn't been true for, uh, centuries. It's like literally the entire point of banking, to allow financial transactions to take place without having to physically haul around collateral anywhere.

(And if you want a digital version of what banks actually do, it's called SWIFT, and has been around since checks Wikipedia 1973).

[seanhunter]

Yes and for people who think “centuries” is an exaggeration, the knights templar gained their power and wealth in the middle ages specifically because people could use their promissory notes to exchange for cash so that they didn’t have to physically transport valuables around between Europe and the middle East during the time of the crusades. They allowed people to deposit cash at temple church in London and withdraw it in Jerusalem.

See https://www.bbc.com/news/business-38499883 and elsewhere.

It’s really telling how poor the knowledge of financial history and the existing state of the art in traditional financial tech there is among people in the crypto-boosting space. Many of the “innovations” they claim have been around in traditional finance for hundreds of years.

[smsm42]

Hawala is the same principle and existed pretty much since the same times, maybe earlier (nobody really knows when it started). Still exists and causes major headaches to people like FATF.

[_9ptr]

knights templar mentioned in a thread about fintechs and banking. Nice.

[baq]

They were the fintech of their times, so perhaps it’d be more surprising if they weren’t.