RE: A Little Something For the Delusional Anarchists of Steemit
I think you miss the point with Bitcoin.
Receiving a bank wire in Greece, from another Greek bank, charges me 3 euros. Receiving a paypal payment charges me 0.35$ plus X% of the amount. VISA charges interest, charges annual fees, charges payment processing etc.
Money transmitters, payment companies, banks make billions.
Enter Bitcoin. Bitcoin operates at cost. There's no profit involved. Who cares how much the banks own. It doesn't change the end result: The fees that I have to pay to the banks / paypals etc, don't exist with BTC. I can make a payment far cheaper. And if BTC is crowded, I can use an altcoin and do the same for even less fees. The percentage of holdings of rich people in crypto is irrelevant because it is busting their business model.
For any system that has X profits and a new player comes along and charges almost nothing, that system has a problem.
Example: The old telcos saw VOIP coming on the horizon. They could invest in Internet etc etc, but they would never get the same amount of money as they did when they had the long-distance-call market. Their market was busted because VOIP (and voip-like apps) were system-busting techs.
The blockchain is similar because it eliminates the need for a middleman. It doesn't matter how much they invest in it. If the usury element is removed due to the elimination of the middleman, then they can't generate the same profit. Their system is busted.
Ok. Lets consider the bank charges @alexgr. Have you ever thought than those charges reflect some form of safety and liability? Sure bitcoin is "free" but is your coins get lost there is no reimbersement. zero. nada. From Mt.Gox to Bitfinex. same story.
Cost for a service is not a "problem". Cost exists because a market can reflect to that cost. How the heck did you come to deduct to "there is a problem"?
There is always a middleman. Coinbase is a middle man. Bitfinex is a middle man. Steemit is a middle man.
it depends how you see your middle man.
Cypriots lost their fiat. Greeks have their fiat locked up in the bank (actually the money doesn't even exist because the ECB doesn't cover those deposits - they are virtual digits on a screen). In the meanwhile, the EU has passed the bail-in laws where the depositor is a bank investor and first in line for bail-in... What safety?
The "there is a problem" is intended for the companies that will see their profits busted due to a system-busting model. Whether it's telcos/longdistance due to voip, or banks/payment companies due to crypto.
If I can make 100 payments with near-zero fees, and 100 payments with 3E charge, that's 300E lost for the bank. "That's a problem" for them.
I am a Cypriot @alexgr . I didn't loose my FIAT because I know that a bank insures up to 100.000 euros in the bank. Those that lost is because they treated their money like casino chips. They gained interests up to 7% and having millions in savings while bankers invested their wishes (loans for expensive cars, education in England, villas, etc) in toxic investements. In a effect customers defined the will of the Banks. this is how economy works.
Greeks have been milking the entire European Union for half a century while being comfy in goverment jobs. Greece has been a disgrace to the human race. 50 years of the same PASOK / ND politics that only aimed to live off money of others. pathetic.
Value is plasmatic. always. whether FIAT or crypto. same thing. I value one ass to be sexier than another. again. the value i thereby give is plasmatic.
Banks already implement blockchain transasctions. they won't loose because much of those FIAT fees will be allocated for safety protocols in crypto—and i must say—it might be even more expensive
So it's ok for someone with 99.999 euro to lose nothing and it's ok for someone with 100.001 to get a haircut?
Those that lost are not "casino players". They are depositors. I could have sold my 200k house and had the money on the bank. Why should I lose my money?
As for Greece, I doubt you understand the reasons for the problem yet you seem to have a pretty aggressive opinion. Greece wasn't living off the money of others. They were living off their own debt up to 2001. 80% of greek debt was in GRD (Greek Drachmas). Greece was printing its own money and spending it - as most countries do with their national currencies. And then it was magically converted to Euros. A currency that the country wasn't issuing and as thus it would be impossible to repay 100% of its GDP in such a currency.
The Maastricht treaty was very specific that countries that exceed 60% debt-to-gdp ratio should not enter the euro. Greece had 100%. The europeans wanted Greece in, in order to convert the GRD-denominated debt to EUR-denominated debt and as such take over the country. They did this by blatantly violating the Maastricht treaty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maastricht_Treaty
"The treaty led to the creation of the euro. One of the obligations of the treaty for the members was to keep "sound fiscal policies, with debt limited to 60% of GDP and annual deficits no greater than 3% of GDP".[4]"
Anyway, as for the blockchain: Again your estimations regarding blockchain-use by banks and how they are not going to lose much, are quite removed from reality.
In a scenario where cryptocurrency took over the world tomorrow morning, the banks would be out of business. This is due to the fact that their job cannot be sustained without their charges, which cryptocurrency can do without. It's that simple.
How can you be so long into cryptocurrency and not understand something as simple as the profit-business getting destroyed? It boggles my mind.