by __MatrixMan__ | 2025-04-04 06:30:32+00:00
> So you're comparing the problems with our current fiat system with some hypothetical perfect future crypto system and saying the crypto system is better

Well yes, I was attempting to refute:

> This is the only promise that cryptocurrency held

My claim is that there are other promises. I hear you say

> The current way that people are paying each other is not a problem that needs to be fixed.

...and I couldn't disagree more. Have you ever worked at a payment provider? Your code ends up with other payment providers in all directions and the user is nowhere to be found. It's just a big pile of parasites fighting over the money pipe. Outside of work I'd strike up a conversation with a merchant about how I'm familiar with their POS equipment, and there I'd learn that it's practically a hostage situation.

The liquor store near my house has two entirely separate POS systems pointing at two separate bank accounts and they just direct customers to whichever one happens to be enlisted in the least-objectionable shenanigans at the moment.

The needs of the people are not being served, especially if they're people who can't afford a lawyer.

I'm not proposing that anybody should have to use crypto. I'm saying that when crypto is ready, those who do use it will have a competitive advantage because they won't have to deal with the drag exerted by the existing system. The multiplicity of platforms won't be an issue because those two people--whoever they are--will agree on whichever one fits their use case (though I expect they will be fewer by then).

> why not spend that innovation on specific improvements to specific problems with the fiat system instead?

Because the fiat system was not designed to solve any of the problems we're talking about. It was designed to feed the Roman war machine, and since then its primary purpose has been to ensure that power structures established by varying forms of violence remain in effect without the need to trot out that violence again.

It's not the kind of thing you can incrementally improve on. It has the problems it does because the people who maintain it want it to have those problems.

Take credit card companies for example. There's a lot they could do to prevent fraud--there are many ways to build a system where payments happen without leaving secrets like credit card numbers out in the open. But they don't want to solve that problem because it's a problem that puts them in a privileged position--they get to be the money-censors, which is a powerful position that they frequently abuse.

Or consider health insurance claims. They could absolutely provide a price to the patient within a minute or two--fast enough for the patient to factor it into whether or not they get the procedure. But having the bill come six months later and full of surprises is a feature for them, not a bug.

We have a lot of harmful middlemen. Improving the fiat system would just to improve their capacity to do harm.

It may be in a pretty embarrassing state right now, which I hope it snaps out of, but crypto is at least compatible with the idea that we could put control over the system in the hands of its users. Fiat is not.