> your bank account would just hold USDC or Bitcoin, and you could send a billion dollars to anyone in the world in a few seconds. That belief is powerful and I still ascribe to it.

These statements still surprise me to this day. If you're a good person engineer, why does sending money in seconds need blockchain? There's parts of the world where this is commonplace and free as well.

I don't believe cross border was there in 2010 or so but why not implement that feature in an existing system instead of building out a parallel universe

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yes_man 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

The cross border not about technical capacity but legal control. For example if you are a refugee you might not be able to pull your bank savings and liquid stock with you from your home country to another without it being seized or taxed, but your crypto is always yours as long as you are the only holder of the keys. This scenario is one of the rare real world utilities I see with crypto.

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dist-epoch 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Your crypto still needs to be declared, even if you hold the keys. Not doing that breaks all kinds of laws and makes you jail-able.

Sure, you can hope the state won't find out about your crypto, but then how do you enjoy it?

	▲	yes_man 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Specifically for a refugee, at least with crypto you have the possibility to declare your assets in your destination, since you actually still hold on to them. Which is unlikely if it is tied to banks or investment platforms of an authoritarian country trying to genocide you. I understand this sounds like a fringe example but there are over 100 million forcibly displaced people globally.

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hvb2 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yes, there are rare use cases where this is useful. The high inflation case is one as well.

So stop talking about a parallel system and start talking about what it is, a niche product.

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torginus 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

A lot of countries cracked down on merchants accepting bitcoin, and in a lot of places it's illegal to offer BTC->cash conversions without KYC.

I suspect authoritarian regimes would be the first to close this loophole. This is not theoretical - Russia did this in 2022 to stop people from offloading their rubles and/or fleeing the country with their money.

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kikimora 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

As a Russian I can attest - you can do crypto in Russia and it is one of a very few ways many friends of mine support their families from abroad.

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torginus a day ago | parent [-]

And what's the legal status of crypto nowadays for individuals?

	▲	kikimora a day ago \| parent [-]
		Crypto is qualified as property and regulated in a very similar way. There is a market for borrowing using tokens regulated by digital assets act (цифровые финансовые активы).

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mizzao 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Yep, it's highly illegal to use crypto in China

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lawn 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> If you're a good person engineer, why does sending money in seconds need blockchain? There's parts of the world where this is commonplace and free as well.

The promise was to make this available for everyone, to send money everywhere.

For example for me in Sweden it's really, really hard to send money directly to people in Ukraine since the Swedish banks simply refuse to send money there.

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HtmlProgrammer 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think the key difference is the inability to be (easily) deplatformed / locked out which can happen in traditional banking

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gobip 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You are questioning the method when people just see the need.

If you're an engineer, no matter what you say about the method, you know a country at war will make you lose all your savings. Or if you're a foreign citizen in a country that will seize your assets, even "by accident".

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nrhrjrjrjtntbt 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It is not an engineering problem, it is a geopolitical and legacy banking problem. Yes sending an encrypted message somewhere in the world in under a second is solved.

	▲	kikimora 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		How about sending money in seconds? Do you realizes capital requirements and cross border implications?

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kikimora 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>why does sending money in seconds need blockchain?

I challenge you to explain how such a system would work?

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crimsoneer 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Because you don't trust or don't believe in the legitimacy of governments.