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Comment by B8MGHCBekDuRi | Hacker News Reader

> Can you imagine if some newspaper interviewed a recent lottery winner [...] But to the ignorant, it all sounds very impressive

the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect described by Crichton comes to mind here.

It is quite potent when media talk about crypto and usually involves evident logical fallacies that are not dissimilar to Orwellian double-speak.

Like the idea that cash is freedom so crypto supporters also support no cash limits, even though you can't buy crypto with cash and crypto cannot be converted directly to cash and people who won the crypto lottery keep their money in a good old bank when a good old investment manager handles them to buy good old banking products using good old FIAT money taxed by the good old government, because "freedom propaganda" is the best tool to sell a fraud to the ignorant.

But media don't write about it, I don't know why.

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> even though you can't buy crypto with cash and crypto cannot be converted directly to cash

I have bought and sold crypto primarily using cash for the last ten years, what are you talking about.

Yes, many people use an exchange. Many do not.

Physical cash? How?

Presumably a Bitcoin ATM

One simple option: Hand someone some cash, they send you some BTC

Precisely this. There's nothing complex about it either. You get a bunch of cash, they get btc, or vice versa.

Not that simple. You need to validate the transaction on the chain and that takes hours

You only need a single confirmation these days. It takes 10 minutes.

Source: have been doing this for years.

How much do you pay on the transaction cost

Bitcoin Local offers the opportunity to meet a seller at a physical location. Same with Local Monero. If you're planning to exchange $10M, you'll probably need a couple of bag-carriers, and perhaps some muscle as well.

You can also trade for non-physical "cash", e.g. local bank transfer via escrow. As far as I'm concerned, that's a cash exchange.

Won't the usage of escrow trigger a KYC/AML "event" of some sort? That would tie the two parties' identities in a way that a cash evades.

I think local traders are expected to execute some level of KYC. In my experience (under £1K, online) that's a photo of me, holding my driving licence and a piece of paper syaing "I'm buying X from Y". I've never tried a physical cash trade in person.

You arrange to meet someone online, meet up, exchange cash for btc/whatever, done.

Never had a bad experience with it. You just sit in a coffee shop with the person for the few minutes it takes for a transaction confirmation.

Really hard to underestimate how bad and old the doublespeak is.

You ever thought about how a credit card is a debt card?

Whereas, it's the debit card that actually spends your credits?

Credit cards create credits (a liability). Debit cards create debits (a nearly immediate transfer from your account). Seems accurate enough to me although I can see how debt and debit could be confused.

But no:

When your account is credited, that means you gain money. That's the definition of "credit."

So yes, you are creating credits for the credit card company, against you. What you are gaining is debt/liability. Which why it's weird for it to be "your" credit card.

If I have a Chuck E. Cheese game token card, that doesn't mean I owe Chuck E. Cheese tokens.

No. “Debit” isn’t “debt”.

A credit card offers you credit.

credit: noun An arrangement for deferred payment of a loan or purchase.

A 'debit card' is one where funds are debited from your account. A 'credit card' is one where you're buying on credit.

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