Clicking just a few links down on that article shows that JPM Coin is a Blockchain in branding only. It's backed by a centralized (in trust principals if not in compute) ledger and used for transactions between mutually-trusting parties.

Outside of the U.S., Uber is subject to taxi regulations in most of the places it operates.

In the U.S., it is subject to a new set of regulations governing "rideshares" that are similar to the regulations governing taxis. The primary differences are that medallions aren't required for rideshare vehicles, nor are rideshare drivers required to know anything about the location in which they're driving.

Objectively speaking, the taxi drivers and companies that are still alive today provide better service than their rideshare counterparts. I can tell a taxi driver "the Z building" at the airport and they'll know what it is, where it is, and how to get there. Most rideshare drivers need to look it up, and they'll be damned if they actually follow the google directions to get there without getting lost on the way.

Yes. Just look at London - where it’s private hire, not taxi, but still very regulated.

yes in many many many countries.

Good. AML/KYC laws are a huge abuse of state power.

> Stablecoins are essentially Venmo for crime

What is your source for stablecoins being "for crime"? I've seen many individuals from countries all over the world utilize stablecoins in ways legal for their jurisdiction.

Just to be clear, Tether and Circle also have complete control over their respective stablecoins if they so choose. They have the exact same power to reverse, freeze and block any transaction or balance just as PayPal and Venmo do.

PayPal also has their own stablecoin, PyUSD https://www.paypalobjects.com/devdoc/community/PYUSD-Solana-...

That middleman can be compelled by the government to return your funds. A foreigner who empties your wallet on a decentralized PayPal cannot.

Not really.

The “solution” for decentralisation - proof of work - makes the system a lot more expensive (think: higher fees) than a centralised database.

What fees?

I know many many friends who were able to survive an expensive city because of it. Cities that are largely messed up due to the governments stupid games with taxes and interest

By training models on unauthorized work and allow users to request them back.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43573156

The idea of the argument (or more accurately the joke) is that Uber is unregulated free market capitalism. It is what happens to the taxi market if they would lift all regulations. Uber’s whole “innovation” was to find a way to be unregulated while most of their competitors were still regulated.

Well, doesn't that specific meaning apply here? I mean, the lack of protection for end-users is at first compensated by investment money (low prices and huge effort on support). Once network effect is reached, the unregulated nature of the platform shows, end-users are wronged, only providers profit from the lack of regulation ...

Or maybe I don't understand the meaning of enshittification?

Yes I know, which is why I looked up the Wikipedia definition to make sure I was using it correctly.

Stripe provides a trusted service to its users, has a great reputation, then implements changes that will degrade that service by avoiding regulations designed to protect the consumer.

Adding blockchain is enshittification.

SEPA allows this in theory; in practice, for amounts >10k€, most banks will require you to provide proofs for the transaction due to the maximalist AML laws in the EU.

My bank requires me to download a PDF on their website, print it, fill it out by hand, scan it, and then send it by mail. After a few days, someone will decide to allow it (or not). If it is refused, I don't get any reason why and have to call the client service for clues.

> The ECB also had one of those CBDC built much earlier than people have been told. They already had something quite advanced around 2020, with a optimist launch date in 2022 I believe.

> It obviously failed miserably

They had a CBDC but hid it from everyone... but then somehow it failed miserably. If it wasn't released, how? They even had it before they decided to have it (2021). This seems just like a load of bullshit.

> I don't know about you, but I'd rather use a system that allows me to do what I want with my funds without anyone else controlling it.

How do we know that this unusual transaction is you doing what you want and not someone else controlling and defrauding you?

A small well-understood amount of friction that significantly reduces everyone's risk is not an attempt to control your funds.

Old systems with arbitrary delays based on twentieth century processes should be replaced, but not everything needs immediate infinite speed to be valuable.

Do you want to live in a world where everyone else can do whatever they want with their funds without anyone else controlling it, though? Seems pretty optimistic for anyone to think they'd do well in that world.

Existing Taxi services did not improve - they were replaced by a lower quality, more expensive alternative with a lesser economic infusion to local economies.

Hotels and the hospitality industry did not improve at all.

None of those points refute me or support the argument I was contesting - that a “uber or airbnb of banking” would cause banks to “get their act in order”.

Now I'm not generally a big defender of Germany, but the reason for much more prevalent use of cash is largely privacy in Germany. And I sort of agree that handing all monetary transactions to the mastercard/visa duopoly is a terrible idea.

We are essentially trading the convinience of a tap for increased prices and unelected gatekeepers that can (and will) easily push sectors out of business, because they don't like what they do.

Regarding the parking, I much rather would be able to pay with cash than the $2 parking plus 50 cents cc transaction fee that you have to pay in many places in NZ.

Is there a link for Fiat?

Madoff Ponzi scheme also ran for at least 20 years. And yeah around 1% of total USDT supply is blocked so yeah Tether can very well live on those blocked funds:

https://dune.com/phabc/usdt---banned-addresses

Have they ever passed a real audit? Not an attestation, not a pinky-swear from a no-name Caribbean bank?

This is the company who have never produced a real audit despite years of saying they would?

If they are fully backed they’d get an audit. The fact they don’t should tell you all you need to know.

> That depend on how you view money. Lending does increase the volume of money in circulation, in that sense it creates money. But that view is too simple to be useful.

Far from being too simple, it is the primary method of money creation in modern economies.

> The regulators that regulate, and in particular control reserve ratios (complex calculations that banks have to make about the relationships between their various assets) and base interest rates are the real creators of money.

Simply setting rates does not create money. It can influence it, but it is not the ultimate cause. Lending is. Reserve banks can and do lend, but commercial banks are responsible for the majority of money creation.

Person A deposits $100.

Person B borrows $100, all the coins move on the ledger.

The ledger could facilitate the transfer while the bank maintains an "IOU" for person A's $100. The bank would be betting that not everyone will come withdrawing at once, just like a regular bank.

Regulation is the only thing that can prevent this from being done with any sort of crypto. The same IOU-based business model as happened with cash, gold, etc, could very easily be implemented using the technology. If you don't like fractional reserve banking crypto isn't a magic bullet that makes it impossible, especially since the general public probably wouldn't be sophisticated enough to know how to stick to "true" crypto vs "IOU-based fractional crypto facades."

But generally regulatory regimes have decided that the productivity advancements offered by the investment-through-loans of major portions of deposits are worth the risks. I don't think the GENIUS act allows this, though, so there's one regard where stablecoins are more-regulated. I worry about the edge cases, though - seems like requiring stablecoins to be paid off preferentially incentives using them for deposits, which could harm circulation if the reserves or followed, or which could screw over non-stablecoin deposit-holders if an institution doesn't comply and then goes under.

(This is closer to how regular banking works than the naive "banks create money by incrementing a number in your account." After all, banks are generally either (a) expecting those loans to be spent or directly giving the money to third parties like car dealerships or home sellers - which is likely to physically move the money to other banks, institutions, or cash, not just recordings in their internal tables.)

As far as I understand, the backing assets aren't on-chain. I give tether $100, they create and issue me 100 USDT on-chain. But they can take my $100 and lend it out. Now whoever Tether loaned the $100 to has $100 and I have 100 USDT so $100 has been added to the money supply, just like with a normal bank.

It depends on the stablecoin mechanism.

Algorithmic stablecoins[1] don't have a one-for-one backing in real world assets so can in theory create new coins "from thin air". The amount they can do this depends on the exact algorithm and the backing assets, and the practicalities of unstable crypto pricing make this difficult in practice.

For example the well-known DAI stablecoin[2] is backed by a mix of crypto assets, but is overcollateralized to avoid problems when one of the backing assets drops in value. The is sort of the opposite of "creating money out of thin air"...

Non-algorithmic stablecoins can do it by being backed by "high quality loan assets", in which case the conventional, non-crypto credit creation mechanism applies.

[1] https://www.kraken.com/learn/algorithmic-stablecoins

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dai_(cryptocurrency)

theres no reason a bank couldn't take a stablecoin deposit and fractionally lend against it

thats effectively what already happens with their own internal ledgers anyways

There are defi loans for example. You take an asset like BTC and loan stablecoins against it.

The underlying asset can be rehypothecated, Celsius did this before going bust iirc.

Tether is also the underlying backer of crypto market cap, and has never done an audit of their assets. They've made loans to various crypto market participants.

In theory there are auto liquidation rules etc. In practice humans have not yet managed to create a financial system they can't make asset bubbles with

The same way it does in Excel.

You fire up Excel. Put some numbers in the boxes. Say those numbers are dollar bills you have under the bed.

Then you do SUM(A1:A10) to show your total funds. It has to be legit because Excel doesn’t lie right?

The reward function in the smart contract can be made to increase over time.