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If I lose 50 € to some unscrupulous merchant, that's worth it to not have to ask the bank for permission for and tell them about every transaction.

in other words, you aren't poor enough for the loss of 50 € to mean that you are going to have less food this month and won't be late on your rent because of it.



Ah yes, banks, the champions of the poor man.


It isn't that banks are looking out for poor people. That should be obvious.

But poor people do use banking services and in both countries I've lived in (US and Norway), there are built in consumer protections. They aren't perfect, but they are stronger than you get with crypto. You can often resolve a payment issue, for example. FDIC protection in the US covers most folks (most folks don't save more than whatever the limit is now).

And this protection, even if imperfect, helps folks have a little more stability in their lives.


But cryptocurrency is the same as with cash. Yes, we need to teach people that they shouldn't send cryptocurrency to some shady "investment" company, just as they shouldn't give cash to a guy in a van promising them returns, but the risk profile is exactly the same as with cash, which people have been using successfully for centuries.


The risk profile is, currently, not the same as with cash, for the reasons some people further up the thread mentioned (no or nebulous ability to freeze/seize assets of bad actors).

To the extent that the risk profile is or will become (with expanding regulations) the same as with cash, cryptocurrencies provide no meaningful improvement over cash, but have significant drawbacks.

So why should we take all this effort to get to "just like cash, but with extra steps"?


Because it's cash you can easily carry with you, even if you have millions, you can send to anyone anywhere in the world instantly, they're much more difficult to steal if you have a cheap hardware wallet, etc etc. They have many more advantages.




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