William PietriIn the 15+ years people have been promoting blockchains, this flowchart remains undefeated.
John D. Martin III
Doctor M. Popular
william.maggosI think that's true but I also want to do it without a middleman. Transfer money easily. Like email. Someday soon hopefully with @Interledger perhaps. But I'd still rather use what we've already got over crypto.
Dima Pasechnik 🇺🇦 🇳🇱@wjmaggos @docpop @williampietri @Interledger it's an exclusively US banking bug - problems with bank transfers. Europe and at least parts of Asia are doing fine with this, no blockchains etc needed.
Crypto is only great for money laundering, otherwise, what's the point? Crypto is a more expensive way to transfer funds.
@dimpase @wjmaggos @docpop @Interledger For sure. To the success cases, I'd add M-Pesa. Launched at about the same time as bitcoin, it solved the same nominal "e-cash" use case. But it actually works and is widely used in a number of African countries. No blockchain, no need of one.
@williampietri @wjmaggos @docpop @Interledger as a relatively fresh off the boat US resident, I find it truly insane that the easiest way to transfer funds in US is to mail a check.
I gather it's Visa/MasterCard/Amex/PayPal/etc cartel lobbying which prevented and prevents a sane, (almost) free, US-wide electronic fund clearance.
EU/EEA, which is considerably bigger, less centralised, has more than one currency, etc., does this already for over 20 years. Yes, I can give anyone my UK bank account number (it's perfectly safe to do so -- unless you're afraid that someone will try to impersonate you at a physical branch of your bank, good luck trying the latter though, it's a quick and sure way to jail) to send me money.
ManuX@wjmaggos @docpop @williampietri @Interledger After carefully considering all the angles, I want exactly as many middlemen as possible. It is the only way to minimise frauds and revert thefts in most cases. Security over convenience, always.
@manux @wjmaggos @docpop @Interledger Yes, as more than a decade of heists has demonstrated, cryptocurrency's lack of reversibility and traceability, sold as convenience and freedom, primarily enables crime. I'd be much obliged if people kept their libertarian fantasies onanistic in scope and out of our shared financial system.
@williampietri @manux @docpop @Interledger
agreed. but the decentralized middlemen of banks work. like fedi servers. the centralized middlemen of PayPal, Venmo etc suck but dominate. I just want a protocol to make transferring money work more like fedi than Facebook etc. maybe we weaken the power of credit card companies in the process. and stop empowering sites like Amazon by storing our billing info with them.
crypto is like everybody keeping gold and cash under their mattress.
@wjmaggos @manux @docpop @Interledger
In the middle of dealing with a bunch of blockchain loons is not the best time to approach me with very similar libertarian fantasies.
But my short answer is: The Fediverse *barely* works at ~1% of the traffic levels of a modern social network. And it only continues to work because it's not very lucrative for spammers.
Banks are, yes, somewhat decentralized, but they are backed by a number of dedicated centralized organizations and systems. Compare with the wildcat banking era if you want to see what truly decentralized banking looks like.
If actual money were flowing through something like the Fediverse, it would be a piñata for everybody from script kiddies up to rogue nations. I too have a raft of issues with large corporations, but moving money is the single worst place for open-source dilettantes to indulge their naivete.
Giacinto Boccia@wjmaggos @williampietri @manux @docpop @Interledger
Well, a platform that allows different institutions to transfer money sounds kind of familiar...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area
Sure, there are governing bodyes, but this doesn't make it a megacorporation.
Well, a platform that allows different institutions to transfer money sounds kind of familiar...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area
Sure, there are governing bodyes, but this doesn't make it a megacorporation.
@g_boccia @williampietri @manux @docpop @Interledger
@dimpase
I'm fine with this kind of govt centralization.
The US has an ACH (automatic clearing house) system where banks have a routing number and then we get account numbers. What I don't get is why we can't modernize this into something like a username/domain to make transferring money like sending an email. then let us build that into apps. also #FedNow is starting up.
do other countries have this? could we have an international system?
@wjmaggos @g_boccia @williampietri @manux @docpop @Interledger EU/EEA, and beyond (e.g. Ukraine, Israel,...), 87 countries in total, have International Bank Account Numbers (IBAN).
If your bank supports transfers to IBAN, and I gather all the banks which allow incoming IBAN also allow outgoing ones, you can send money to an IBAN account from your (internet, or not) banking system. In many countries only transactions using IBAN are supported.
here is a reasonably up to date list of IBAN countries:
@dimpase @g_boccia @williampietri @manux @docpop @Interledger
awesome. so the US should join IBAN. I'd love to see the screens of two people using different banking apps transferring money to each other, and hear from somebody who has programmed for that system.
@wjmaggos @dimpase @g_boccia @williampietri @docpop @Interledger auch, it is so normal to me that I didn't even think it was not the same everywhere. I have been transferring money with just the iban code for at least 10 years now. For free and since two years, instantly.
Josh the Blockaded@docpop @timo21 @williampietri “I’ve got a neat conceptual math idea!”
—Early Blockchain Development
“And I can make it way shittier!”
—Banks and Government