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0 pointsthrow1010101y ago0 comments

> Maybe for you. Not for everyone.

Hence why everything tends to be public and open source for Bitcoin, so anyone who is conscientious and capable *can* do this.

Trustlessness is a scale, not a binary. It just so happens that in traditional banking you start at the very bottom of the scale and you pretty much stay there. With Bitcoin you get about as high as you can get on this scale for a form of money.

> That's a skill that many people have a much easier time picking up than coding or public-key crypto.

As much as they learn about the meanders of the traditional banking system, it still won't make them more in control of their assets, the more custodians and regulators you add between you and your assets, the less in control you are of them. And we aren't even talking about another form of control you lack with fiat currencies, their almost constant expanding supply.

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lisper1y ago

> anyone who is conscientious and capable can do this

Anyone who is conscientious and capable can navigate the traditional banking system too. In fact, that's pretty much what "capable" means.

> in traditional banking you start at the very bottom of the scale and you pretty much stay there

You don't have to any more than you have to with bitcoin. You can even start your own bank, and then you can keep your deposits there and you will have a 100% guarantee that your bank will not screw you. It's not easy, but neither is writing your own bitcoin client from scratch.

A very plausible route to that kind of security is joining the board of a credit union.

> As much as they learn about the meanders of the traditional banking system, it still won't make them more in control of their assets

That's not true. The more you learn about how the system works the more in control you can become. It is exactly the same in both cases. The only real difference is:

> almost constant expanding supply

That is a real difference between fiat and bitcoin (though not crypto in general). But that has nothing to do with control, and it has nothing to do with crypto, it has to do with policy. It's easy to make an inflating crypto currency. You could even fork an inflating bitcoin. You could likewise make a non-inflating fiat currency, e.g. the U.S. dollar during the Great Depression. But there is a reason this isn't done very much -- it's because a return to the Great Depression is not generally considered something to aspire to.

throw101010OP1y ago

> Anyone who is conscientious and capable can navigate the traditional banking system too. In fact, that's pretty much what "capable" means.

This is a funny contrast, under the article above... and the thousands of similar horror stories with centralized custodians ignoring their "customer" and never being held accountable for their shortcomings.

It seems to be more than being capable when it comes to banking, it might just be that you need to be rich/powerful enough for the banks to actually care. Another difference with Bitcoin, the same access is provided to anyone. The almost 2 billions of unbanked people on this planet are not this way because banks can't reach them, but because they are seen as liabilities/risks they don't want... Bitcoin does not make such discrimination.

> You can even start your own bank, and then you can keep your deposits there and you will have a 100% guarantee that your bank will not screw you.

I do not understand how this is supposed to address my point about trustlessness on a scale. You don't describe a system as Bitcoin by holding you own deposits... it is a full system for transfers/payments/messaging. It seems like a diversion to not address the fact that the trust put in custodian is not comparable to a system based on self-custody and self-sovereignty like Bitcoin.

> But that has nothing to do with control,

It absolutely does for Bitcoin. Nobody is following the chain that changes the emission rate and supply cap. This is control by the participants of the network, and it isn't limited to miners, we have seen users and other economical actors signify this to miners when there was an attempt to fork to larger blocks. Please show me how you can make such choices with fiat, the end users have generally no direct say on the policies of their money's central bank.

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