Privacy: crypto to the rescue.
Coin tumblers exist for all these currencies. But these a) cost a small fee, and b) are back to centralization, requiring you to trust the tumbler maintainers not to record the transactions.
ZCash[1] is the only cryptocurrency I know of which attempts to actually be private, but the unpopularity of ZCash relative to Bitcoin/Bitcoin Cash/Litecoin/Ethereum shows that most people involved in cryptocurrencies actually don't care about privacy.
[1] https://z.cash/
And while Bitcoin is written to a public ledger, there is a key difference in that you only see “this address sent money to this address.”
That’s still fairly public and you might not want that. But unlike a bank there is nothing linking those addresses to any individual, no name, address and phone number is associated. Plus you can receive funds to a different address every time, so you don’t have to use the same one for each transaction.
It doesn’t mean it’s not public but just to put it in context.
The main issue with crypto is the confirmation time, but 0-conf is probably acceptable in the same way contactless is for small things.
I'll look into that. At first glance some of the privacy claims seem a bit strange, but I haven't looked at the proofs enough to be sure.
> That’s still fairly public and you might not want that. But unlike a bank there is nothing linking those addresses to any individual, no name, address and phone number is associated. Plus you can receive funds to a different address every time, so you don’t have to use the same one for each transaction.
Okay, but trivially this allows you to trace transactions back to institutions (i.e. Coinbase) which are tied into the traditional banking system just like banks--unless you put your coins through a tumbler, coins purchased from an exchange are exactly as private as traditional currency at a bank. Arguably less private, since coin exchanges are under more scrutiny right now than banks.
And unlike banks, if you expose a receiving address for transactions tied to your name, you're exposing every transaction you receive. You're depending on pseudonymity for anonymity, which doesn't work if the only reason you're receiving coins in the first place is a reputation tied to your name. And if a pseudonym can build up enough reputation to receive coins (i.e. Dread Pirate Roberts) then all you have to do to break the anonymity is to tie the pseudonym to the person (we know all the transactions received by Ross Ulbricht because they were received pseudonymously not anonymously, so knowing Dread Pirate Roberts = Ross Ulbricht tells us all the transactions Ross Ulbricht received). In short, pseudonymity is not anonymity.
> The main issue with crypto is the confirmation time, but 0-conf is probably acceptable in the same way contactless is for small things.
There isn't a single "main issue" with crypto--it just has properties, and people only have issues with it if they use crypto for purposes where those properties are unsuitable. If you use Bitcoin for anonymity, your main issue is that Bitcoin isn't anonymous, but that's your main issue, not the main issue with Bitcoin.
I personally have never used cryptocurrency for anything where I cared about waiting for 6 confirmations.
I don't think there are any crypto implementations today that could compete with existing mainstream systems, which in itself is a statement that opens a can of worms on HN, but maybe someday.
Dispute handling and chargebacks are also very disputable for wire transfers. I have to give my ID to the bank every few years, yet people get scammed with wire transfers all the time and get a "sorry can't do anything about your lost money" from the bank.
It's not instant. According to https://www.crypto51.app/ the cost to 51% attack ethereum for 1 hour is $92k. This means it's $2.2 million for one day or 24 hours. Let's say you want to transfer $10 million via ethereum. Then the party who gives you the eth can perform a double spending attack, only pretending to give you the $10 million while getting something else from you in exchange as part of the original deal that takes one day to be transfferred to them. As long as that something else is worth more than $2.2 million, that other party has made a return. The only good remedy is waiting for the double spending cost to exceed the contract volume, but it means that the currency isn't instant any more, or at least is instant for small sums of money only.
https://blog.qtum.org/how-proof-of-stake-renders-a-51-attack...
Bitcoin requires a validation cycle or two in order to be certain that your transaction is going to be on the main chain, so it's 10-20 minutes.
For traditional infrastructure, the RTGS (real time gross settlement systems) accessible to banks and large customers handle transactions in seconds. If you're in a treasury department of a company who routinely needs to move large amounts around, doing so nearly instantaneously is absolutely a solved problem.
I'm going to sell my car on Sunday to another private person. I will hand over the documents and keys, while he instantly wire transfers me 20k.
Now all of a sudden it's not a solved problem anymore is it?
And Bitcoin, please, that's old tech. There are way more advanced cryptocurrencies now that have high TPS and < 10 sec validation.
Also crypto isn't instant. Bitcoin takes 10 minutes if you're lucky, even longer if the network is maxed at 7 transactions a second (comparatively, Visa handles 42,000 transactions a second).
Many other coins have the capability to support orders of magnitude more transactions per second and have been successfully demonstrated to do so.
In theory, with 10GB blocks or so, it could scale to Visa-levels although I’m not sure anyone has tested at that scale.
Cash does not provide dispute handling, chargebacks or any of those other things either.
If you have your debit card stolen and someone spends $10K of your money, you (an individual!) get that money back.
I'm very much pro-cryptocurrency, but I don't think it does anyone any favors to pretend there are no benefits to traditional banking.
Most people would agree that not allowing criminals to enjoy the spoils of their crime is a good thing.
If you think that your taxes are too high, and would like to be a law abiding citizen, you've got options:
ballot box (you might need your own party)
move to a different country
Less money laundering would mean that you could either get more gov't services or lower taxes.