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Comment by dymk | Hacker News Reader

None of which support chargebacks, fraud prevention, anti money laundering, or the other benefits to a centralized reversible money system.

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None of the things you list are "benefits" if you're an individual. They are only "benefits" to governments because it gives them additional means of controlling the bleating flock.

Really, fraud prevention and chargebacks benefit the government and not individuals?

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.

I would imagine these (anti) features could be implemented by signing transactions with government recognized private keys.

I'm from Belgium, which has one of the highest income taxes in the world. Why do you put "anti money laundering" as a benefit?

Not OP

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

Money laundering is typically tied illegal behavior, things such as tax evasion, extortion, trafficking, etc. Having the means to deal with money laundering helps inhibit the illegal activity tied to it.

So why is it a benefit to the user of the money?

Assuming that you're an average Belgian, the effect of money laundering is that you pay taxes while the criminals don't, so the money that your government could and would have spent in things that benefit you gets stolen instead.

Less money laundering would mean that you could either get more gov't services or lower taxes.

Just like cash.

Since cash and open/decentralized crypto are bearer instruments.

Cash's physical nature makes transactions with parties less anonymous, meaning there are other routes of remediation (i.e. small claims court, etc.)

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