Your Bank Is An Anachronism!
#payitforward
I firmly believe that in today's day and age, banks are an anachronism. The truth is if you're using the banking system, especially the American banking system, you are stuck in the stone age…
To my mind, the entire banking system is an anachronism, something which is out of place in time and space. It's little more than a vestigial organ, left over from a bygone era. It's like your appendix or tonsils. Nearly everyone is forced to deal with them eventually. They kind of serve a purpose when they work properly. However when things go wrong, you can suddenly find yourself in serious trouble.
In today's day and age, there is no logical reason at all that anyone should control your money but you. Ever!
The reality is that this is all the banking system provides, a method of monetary control.
We're allowing control over our lives, by businesses who do not have our interests at heart.
You can't win a game against someone who is playing by a different set of rules!
The correct answer is not to change the rules, but to change the game.
Stop playing their game, by their rules.
We don't want to play with them anymore. Just tell 'em to take their ball and go home!
Let me tell you a story…
I have a friend named Sarah. 22 years old, fresh out of school, and she's trying to break into professional journalism by spending the summer roving from crisis to crisis. In other words,
She's a reporter and she's reporting on stuff!
She called me in a panic. She didn't think ahead to tell her bank that she was traveling to Belize to do a Johnny on the spot news report about the recent hurricane there. When she arrived, she went to an ATM to pull out some cash, then suddenly poof the bank closed her account, no explanation, no recourse.
This is called derisking and banks are now doing a lot of this. Especially if you're an American and spending time in places where the US Govt has some sort of beef with the local government.
This left her completely stranded. Her debit card didn't work, she didn't have enough cash to even buy a meal. My reaction to her was,
“Banks? Ugh! Seriously? Why???"
Fortunately for her, and thanks to money I earned on steemit, I was able to get cash into her hands faster than Western Union or any wire transfer.
The most amazing part of this is that I haven't had a bank account in over 3 years. I didn't even leave my house. It was a simple process too!
I just took SBD earned here and converted it to bitcoin using openledger. Then I used bitsquare (an open source localbitcoins) to locate someone who could get money to her right away. The total time from when we hung up the phone to when she had the cash in hand was around 30 minutes.
Guys! This was in a third world country where they had just suffered a hurricane and the banking system had been in a state of total disarray even before hand.
A special thank you to my government, for labeling anyone who disagrees with our imperialism, xenophobia, snooping and overreach, as terrorists. You guys are making the world so much more exciting!
As for me? I don't have banking problems, because I don't bother with giving someone my money only to be forced into a position where I have to beg to get it back when I need it. Yet, despite not having an account with any bank, I have...
A debit card denominated in dollars
A proper address for direct deposit of my paycheck
If for some reason I want a loan, I can get a loan.
If I want to invest in something, I can invest in it.
All my bills are paid up.
I even pay my taxes on all my income, just like I'm supposed to.
Perhaps most importantly, I have piece of mind. I know I have total freedom to use my money to do whatever I want, when I want, without worrying about some random company building a profile on me and whoring out my data.
Literally, every service you would ever use a bank for
I don't, and never will again! So why do you?
This is not just for cypherpunks, crypto nerds and computer geeks anymore.
I have another friend who receives child support in bitcoins. She's just a stay at home mom, not a programmer, not particularly into the tech scene. Her children's father works in another country, and she does not have a bank account, because they had a long stretch of being unemployed and ended up in a bad situation financially. Wires are tricky and full of red tape, Western Union sets strict limits on how much money can travel across borders and if you're an American living abroad, just trying to send home child support on a regular basis, Western Union is going to block you, because the amounts are just too high and too frequent.
Now money transfers are easy. He sends her whatever amount, she takes the kids to the local bitcoin atm and the kids have fun pulling cash out for child support, allowances or whatever.
I'm sure there are plenty of other stories. But we're getting more mainstream now and a lot of it is due to the efforts of @bytemaster and @dantheman who built the worlds first truly market pegged asset system that didn't require centralized control. With bitUSD there is no company to go bankrupt rendering the money worthless. Do you even realize how awesome that concept is???
I hold bitUSD because...
My dollars stay dollars, but most importantly,
My dollars stay, my dollars!
If you've been following the crypto scene for awhile, you have been burned by the rapid rise and fall of every crypto currency in the last years. This is called “forex risk." You might be surprised by this, but I don't have a lot of unnecessary forex risk or over exposure to unstable cryptos. I hold bitUSD (now SBD too), and when the market presents an opportunity to make some money, I take it. Otherwise I just sweep it into my market pegged assets and wait.
So no forex risk, but I also don't have to deal with what I like to call douchebag risk
I never have to worry about some stranger somewhere that I can't talk to, making a judgment call about whether or not I should be able to access my money that day.
No limits, no strangers, my money is just mine.
How do I do this? It's simple really.
I fired the douchebags and now I own my own bank!
You can too, whether you have $10 or $1,000,000
How?
Start thinking Blockchain, Blockchain, Blockchain!
While I do keep my steem here on steemit powering up.
I keep the bulk of my funds in bitUSD directly on the bitshares blockchain, along with an ever increasing amount of SBD on the steem blockchain. Then I just manage all of it in openledger.
Openledger is absolutely awesome!
I can't sing it's praises enough and it's literally the same thing as running your own private bank.
Why openledger?
Well as openledger says...
SPEED
Wiring money in the legacy banking system takes days. We let you send it anywhere in the world within seconds.
SECURITY
No one can freeze, seize, hack or attack your wealth. You are always in control and your identity can never be stolen.
TRUST
Your money goes directly from you to its destination; no middlemen ever get control of your money.
PRIVACY
Only those you authorize can see your accounts. We make our ledgers public for transparency, but you can keep yours private.
MULTI-SIGNATURE ACCOUNTS
Share control of accounts with friends, family, and business associates with complete accountability and flexibility never before available in legacy banking.
Openledger is just incredible in general. If you're not there, you're not doing right, in general.
It's not perfect, for instance Openledger allows you to have a bitcoin debit card and thereby interface with the “real" world, but I've never been too happy with the limits on it, so I never got one from there. You might be alright, but I have a shopping addiction.
For the part of the system where I'm forced to interface with the global finance system, I prefer to use www.advcash.com (reflink but using it gives you a fee discount).
Advanced Cash gives you everything you need to deal with the dinosaurs!
You get a SEPA address for employer payroll, and you can also deposit and withdraw through most e-currencies out there, including paypal.
Additionally, you convert funds easily to a myriad of different currencies, if you're like me and like to hit up Europe, for a quick weekend get away. Or even just do a little quick forex trading directly in your own wallet hello brexit!
You can send funds as cash to any person in the world, with nothing more than an email address.
They also offer an international MasterCard with chip and pin, as well as a virtual card which is very handy for online purchases. You can fund either card with Bitcoin and the rates track really close to btc-e.
I've spent enough time gushing about these guys, but the truth is while I do use Advanced Cash for a lot of things. I don't keep a lot of money there. While they're basically a PayPal killer, it's mostly just a quick way to interface with the dinosaurs on the rare occasion when I need to.
The fact is that when you treat the blockchain like your own private bank you have a lot options. Many of these can save a ton of cash while allowing you to stay purely in crypto. Most of my action actually takes place in these services because I prefer the products and level of service I get.
I'm sure I don't have to tell you about OpenBazaar but in case you have been hiding under a rock, this is a place you can buy just about anything, directly with your crypto coins.
While they are bitcoin only at the moment, if this post is upvoted enough, I'll start an effort to get steem integrated directly.
Yet it's more than just OpenBazaar. Once you start banking directly on the blockchain, the whole world is yours and you don't even really need dollars anymore, let alone the banksters.
For example Gyft.com allows you to purchase gift cards for major retailers using bitcoin. This includes Starbucks, Bestbuy, even Ebay. Yes I buy my Starbucks coffee each morning with money I earned right here and I'm bidding on several items at ebay. All bought with money earned right here on steemit.
Probably my favorite though is purse.io. This place allows you to shop on amazon. Pick whatever you want, pay in bitcoin, get it delivered right to your door and get an average 20% discount over the poor sods who have to use a debit card to buy things.
Most of these services take bitcoin and while we lobby them to start accepting steem. If you don't have any bitcoin at the moment? No problem, that's why we have!
openledger! Just trade some of your bitUSD (or SBD) for some bitcoin and in a few moments you have bitcoin sitting in your wallet, powered up ready to do whatever.
So what would be enough to get you to abandon the banking system?
I dunno, in my case, I have a lot of family all over the place. I quit the banking system after 3 banks in a row closed my account for visiting family in places the USA decided didn't support their political agenda, such as pretty much everywhere not in the continental USA.
I haven't looked back and I haven't regretted it. I never found it particularly challenging to wean myself away from the idea of dealing with them. Now I live in a world where my buddy's credit card will decline when we go out for a beer because the bank decided his brake job that day was just him taking too much of their money, but hell even my local bar takes crypto now!
Maybe you are satisfied with your banking experience? Maybe your life is stable enough, you don't do much traveling, or you just like things the way they have always been. Going bankless is not for you, yet. However I have a feeling that's only because you haven't been burned enough yet. You've not had to try and argue for hours with some distant voice in some far away country, telling you your card declined when you went to go buy gas, because you have no longer have any funds, the bank decided to charge a new fee so they could pay executive bonuses. I mean the CEO needs that new yacht right? Or they just close your account because you're now considered risky. But hey the check is in the mail, if you can find anywhere to cash it.
It's your choice though. You can write your own story, or let someone else dictate when where and how you can use your money.
For the rest of us, using the blockchain to store and manage your money is an exciting new option.
You get to own your own bank. You get to be your own personal banker.
Freedom at any price is worth it, but real freedom is priceless.
This posting was created due to a recent comment I made in an eye opening thread by @silverbug2000 In my response, I elaborated a little and mentioned that if I received enough upvotes on my comment, I would write a blog, where I explain how you can do everything you need to in the financial world without ever touching a bank. The response was overwhelming. 42 people upvoted wanting more information. So this is me, keeping my promise to everyone on steem that wanted to know more.
This is the first of two posts on the topic. It's intended to highlight to people new to the crypto currency community (or already in it), some tools, services and other stuff in general that are helpful and useful for living a life without being held hostage. The second post will come in a few days. It will be focused on people who want to integrate with the blockchain, i.e. literally banks, forex services etc, running their services on the public blockchain. Since they do have a role to play, they just aren't necessary anymore.
This one though? This post is for the rest of us. The non-elites, struggling to cope in a world that is rapidly becoming an us vs them struggle over who controls our money. Because if you can control someone's livelyhood and their life savings, then you have complete control over their life. Those in power desire nothing more than greater power. It's up to us to make sure we don't up our freedoms so easily.
If you liked the art, make sure to give a shout out to @klye who did the custom artwork #klyeart , except flaming, rocket, dino jesus which is something I found on google images.
Loved the point, loved the stories, and loved the @klye art!
You're spot on. For too long the banks have had no competition so do what they like basically treating us regular people like dirt - as your friend's example shows. The tide is slowly turning and they will need to adapt or die - might be better if they do just die in the long term.
One of the worrying trends that I have noticed is that they are deliberately shutting down cryptocurrency business accounts without notice both in the UK (Barclays is notorious for this) and the US. Looks like they are trying to get rid of potential competition before it gets too big.
A UK bitcoin selling business called Bittylicious (that I use a lot) has been trying to highlight this problem. Unfortunately there is little that can be done right now as the Banks are a law unto themselves and too powerful to be taken on directly by small businesses.
Hopefully this kind of behaviour will backfire on them when regular people start to realise that cryptocurrencies put the control back in their hands. They (banks) may end up making themselves irrelevant.
I'm familiar with Gyft and Purse.io - I haven't used OpenLedger yet (not that I remember) - will need to check it out. Also I hadn't heard of Advanced Cash so thanks for pointing out some new things for me to try.
@thecryptofiend Thanks! I really appreciate feedback. I didn't know this BS was going on in the UK too. But it makes sense. I had never heard of Bittylicious, but if you have a way to reach out to them, you might want to let them know that Santander recently bought ripple and has been bringing a bunch of banks onto the ripple blockchain. I honestly don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Hasn't helped the price of XRP though at all. But the banks doing this might be more open to dealing with crypto dealers in general, since they kind of need to know how this stuff works in order to use it.
I do agree about that "law unto themselves". It really bothers me a lot that they have this level of power and control over people's day to day lives. Especially those who are most vulnerable and least able to be able to seek out alternatives.
On a side note, if you do go to Advanced Cash, use the link from the posting. The reflink belongs to the single mom I mentioned in the post. When you sign up with it, she gets a couple bucks and you get a discount on fees. Also the single mom is a fellow steemian who I won't mention by name, because I don't know if she wants folks knowing her business like that. But using that links helps her, and helps you, so if you're planning to go you should consider using it.
Yes. I think they are aware of Santander and Ripple. Sadly Santander has one of the worst reputations for customer service in the UK!
OK thanks or the tip about Advanced Cash will do.
@thecryptofiend Really? I've got friends in Mexico who use them who absolutely RAVE about the level of customer service and cite it (especially the ripple thing) as their primary reason for not coming over to bankster free life.
I suspect they vary from country to country. Here they are constantly on a consumer affairs show called "Watchdog" for ripping customers off, overcharging, closing accounts all kinds of shenanigans.
Here's a funny thing...
Barclays has been working with a lot of UK cryptocoin businesses. If I'm correct, I'm pretty sure they're the banking partner of either Coinbase or BitPay. It's hypocritical, they work with a lot of Bitcoin companies, at the same time they'll treat their customers like crap.
Natwest, RBS and Lloyds aren't so bad, they're pretty good about it and don't question it much. Barclays are already known for being the NSA of banking, i.e. anything you do can and will be used against you, and will be questioned, not just crypto payments. I wouldn't touch Barclays with a 10ft pole, even if they weren't against cryptocurrency.
Williamsbank commissioned all of this #klyeart :D
Looks good man, Great article. You're a steem hero!
I'm available to do commissioned work for others.. Get ahold of me!
Which also means that with @klye 's permission it's available for use you just need to credit @klye as the artist.
Thanks @klye awesome work, yet again! For more klye art I had comissioned, check my blogs. Should be obvious which are klye style.
Klye Art!!!!
@condra Ok so you pretty much feel the same way I did when I knew I'd have a chance to offer him some commission work on this one :)
He's the best!
I would love to vote for this amazing piece, but it seems the mobile version doesn't allow me to vote... I'm using Android Lollypop. Any idea if it's the OS or am I blind?
Best,
Alec
Probably blind. Its the ^ symbol next to the dollar amount.
Dont stress it. I had to buy a 7 inch phablet before this site was usable.
Ahhh! There ya are! Thanks!!! That icon should be replaced by a steem icon. I'll go straight to github and make that change the next possible chance I get.
Great article! Banks, and any other entity that holds billions of dollars, are scary. No entity should be able to decide if I should access my money.
Question, though. Advcash sounds convenient, but isn't it true they are not available in the US? What do you recommend for folks not banking in the US?
Funny that you are your own bank, and your name is Banks ;o)
@casandrarose They're fine if you're in the USA. They used to have a policy preventing people in the USA from ordering a plastic debit card without proving that they are not a US citizen. But I heard they dropped it. Got mine before they started that policy.
Nevertheless, even if that policy is still in effect, you can still load ANY reloadable plastic debit card from your Advcash account, even prepaid cards you pick up at the gas station or even the walmart prepaid visa. Doesn't matter where you are in that case.
I'm working on making this transition in my life, and have taken some steps, but your suggestions are amazing and I will be coming back to this article for reference. I'm hoping by years end to be away from the Morgan Mafia
@prufarchy Thanks man, I really appreciate it. Hope there's some good stuff in there for everyone. I realized after posting that there is something I do miss.
The loan officer at the bank where I used to bank, had really awesome Jolly Ranchers. I don't know where she got them from. But the ones I get at the gas station just don't taste the same. :D
Every trap needs sugar ;)
I'm no big fan of the banking industry but the crypto currencies still can't compete with the convenience of traditional banks yet. Things seem to be headed in a direction that could make traditional banks more obsolete but there are still some issues to work out, security being one. If someone steals my bitcoins I am pretty much screwed where as at least with a bank I know I am getting my money reimbursed. Loved the article though, it shows that you definitely can get out of the system I just don't think it is ready for the masses yet.
@fingolfin Properly managed, no one should be able to steal your coins and that's part of the point of this. It's getting easier every day to manage your coins whether they be bitcoin, steem, SBD, bitUSD. Tools are here and more are coming. Soon it's going to be like the smartphone revolution. You'll look at someone whipping out a credit card and be like Oh yeah haha! I used to have one of those too! Here try some real money!
When you are talking about converting over the general population though properly managed isn't something that your average person can necessarily handle. I am always reminded of the George Carlin quote, "Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that."
I recommend CREDIT UNIONS for the less techno-savvy; effectively banking co-operatives, you are a member of the bank, not a customer, and you get voting rights, dividends, and whatnot. I have been a member of one for decades, and they gave me better services than a main bank, and their customer response has been better than excellent. Furthermore, the money stays in the community. Its perfect.