> The whole point of crypto is that you can own it (ie you and only you have your keys).
I've also heard stories where people were locked out of exchanges during crashes, preventing liquidation, because exchanges stopped or delayed deposits during high volume trading.
Its super cool that you can keep your own crypto, but if you can't trade that crypto, whats the point?
I think you missed the whole point. Celsius, centralized exchanges, etc, you don't actually own the crypto. You have an account on a site. If you want to own your crypto and also trade between currencies, your better off using something like Uniswap
I think you've missed the point as well. Nobody owns anything with crypto. When you give your crypto to Coinbase, there is no $250,000 FDIC insurance that comes along with it. You don't even get to know what wallet it's in, and if Coinbase decides to go sideways, they can snatch up your money with no legal consequence. You're right that part of the problem is the US failing to regulate them, but there's nothing to regulate. A public ledger does not a currency make.
Your parents will never have a custodial wallet. The fact that traditional banking is easier than 'doing crypto right' should give you all the adoption metrics you need.
>I think you've missed the point as well. Nobody owns anything with crypto. When you give your crypto to Coinbase, there is no $250,000 FDIC insurance that comes along with it.
No, it is you who missed the point yet again. If you give your crypto to Coinbase it isn't your crypto anymore. You are entrusting Coinbase with your crypto. FDIC insurance may be helpful if your bank has financial difficulties, but any money you entrust to the bank can be seized just as easily as Coinbase can seize your money. Ask a truck driver who participated in the lockdown protests in Ottowa how secure their fiat money was in the bank after it was unilaterally seized by the government.
> The fact that traditional banking is easier than 'doing crypto right' should give you all the adoption metrics you need.
Does anyone go into crypto because it is "easier" than traditional banking?
Even if you have a private wallet, you don't 'own' your own crypto.
When the Solana network was down [0], could the people that 'own' their own wallets trade their crypto? What about the people with their coins on an exchange?
A recent example is Solana. Their network keeps crashing [0]. Everyone keeping their own keys are completely locked away from trading their coin. Everyone with their coin owned in a centralized exchange can trade freely.
If you hold your own coins, you're vulnerable to network attacks and AMM instability/hacks.
If you put the coins on an exchange, you're vulnerable to the exchange's liquidity issues.
Yes, if you use Solana you should be aware that the chain very regularly has serious downtime. Ethereum gas fees can spike but generally there has never been downtime.
That's why I think Bitcoin is outdated (yes, get your pitchforks), and you really need something that can do smart contracts.
Bitcoin you can hold it, transfer it, and not much more. Having smart contracts (like Ethereum) allows you to have something like Uniswap, which is decentralized and allows you to trade your coins.
Yes, it's not a fiat on/offramp, but if stablecoins are actually good and backed, in the scenarios you describe you would just buy/sell stablecoins and at a later point exchange those stables for cash.
With tBTC (v2 coming very soon), you can move you bitcoin to the ethereum chain and trade it/use all defi there and then move it back all trustlessly. So in a way it makes ethereum a layer2 for bitcoin to work off of without having to change the bitcoin base chain
We have a solution for that - it is called money and it is anonymous. I can also use it to buy things like Halloween candy at the store even when the power is out. Truly amazing invention.
But it isn't programmable, and I can't easily carry large quantities of it. Is it really so crazy that some people want to use crypto? The person wasn't saying "crypto uniquely solved this problem" they were defending against someone who said "crypto is useless if you can't do this".
Can't wait until all your crypto disappears because of an off by 1 bug:0 I guess that is the ultimate question - Does crypto actually solve a problem? Or at the very least solve some problems without creating more intractable problems in the process. I definitely remember it being touted as an inflation hedge. How'd that workout? Or that you cannot create more than X amount of Bitcoins - until they split the ledger. It seems like a new scam coin is minted daily - talk about lower barriers to entry. Just the fact that you mention transporting large sums secretly is interesting. There are many Drug Cartels wishing it was easier also.
I honestly don't understand how any self-respecting software developer wouldn't be excited by programmable money. I have wanted programmable money for almost a quarter of a century now, ever since I was consulting for a bank on their first website back in 1998. The centralized banking system simply refuses to do it... they barely even give me API access for taxes and accounting purposes, much less being able to automate moving money around or responding to payments :/. I've anxiously followed attempts by startups to build their own credit cards with better APIs (all of which end up sucking and eventually just fold), I've abused the hell out of the mostly-undocumented OFX endpoints offered by traditional banks, I was the largest mobile/phone customer of Amazon Flexible Payments up until they shut it down and replaced it with a lame Stripe competitor, and I have built an entire empire of tooling on top of PayPal... which somehow is the closest thing we still have here in 2022.
In contrast, crypto is this almost futuristic mechanism that centers developers by giving you a serverless transactional database system on which you not only can work with money but you can implement your own money. I can build my own mechanisms for authenticating access to that money, including--if I wanted to--replicating whatever features I liked from traditional systems. It offers functionality similar to ACH and wire transfers, but as a truly federated system that allows anyone to participate. Does it allow scams? Sure... but only in the same sense that other open systems like telephone networks, e-mail, and the web allow people to run scams! Are you really so closed minded as to not think everyone should get the power to automate their own lives as they see fit? God... I bet you are also one of those people who insist no one should be allowed to write or even install software on their own devices without going through Apple, or who insist that private end-to-end encrypted messaging is going to end civilization by mostly empowering terrorists, child abusers, and "Drug Cartels" :/.
I've also heard stories where people were locked out of exchanges during crashes, preventing liquidation, because exchanges stopped or delayed deposits during high volume trading.
Its super cool that you can keep your own crypto, but if you can't trade that crypto, whats the point?