[jaltekruse]

I think there is an important missing part of this argument that many of the current paths to move dollars around that network in the traditional system take either days to settle and/or cost quite a lot in fees. I see crypto having potential to optimize lots of things and introduce extra trust from a technical infrastructure standpoint. Right now my traditional money is sitting in several digital banks or brokerages that I have no idea how well made they are underneath, I just see a website I can interact with. Crypto doesn't solve problems about where the coins meet the real world, even a stable coin with publicly auditable holdings to back it can have secret debt leveraged against those assets. Those problems seem only possible to resolve with regulation as it has been with the traditional financial system, but standardizing protocols to move money around and reducing lead time and/or fees as crypto evolves could really help the financial system be more flexible. With everyone carrying around a smartphone it really should make us question why so much money needs to move through the major credit card networks, we don't need their special hardware anymore.

[markonen]

You can absolutely regulate towards the goal of affordable, instantaneous money transfers within the context of the traditional finance system. The EU has done just that with SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area).

Here's the SEPA instant credit transfer service (maximum duration of ten seconds): https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/what-we-do/sepa-insta...

[MrRadar]

Next year the Federal Reserve will be launching their FedNow service which should provide equivalent functionality to Europe's SEPA or Canada's Interac service.

[jaltekruse]

Unfortunately the current (and seemingly somewhat inevitable) architecture of cryptocurrency, relies on trustless distributed systems, which I don't see a clear path to making them give similar SLAs or UX to the traditional system with centralized authorities and defenses against "double spending", which really just isn't discussed outside of crypto because it was such an obvious thing to solve for our current system makes it so close to impossible (and that is part of the reason for the lead times discussed in my previous comment).

[twelve40]

how about risk management? when i pay using a credit card, i know if things go sideways i can always dispute and most likely will get my money back. If I pay with bitcoin or even with cash or checks, i'm fucked. Not sure if Visa/MC duopoly specifically is the most efficient way to handle this risk, but it is a thing.

P.S. also too not sure how special credit card hardware is a problem anymore, if you want to pay with your phone, there are more and more options every year to do that, and even tie that to a credit card (for benefit of risk and/or points).

[xapata]

The credit card companies have built trust with merchants around the world that they'll settle up eventually, and that anyone (or most people) carrying their cards will pay their bills. If a cryptocurrency system were to try to supplant that, it'd need a form of revolving credit. I want to pay my bills at the end of the month, not immediately.