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Comment by survirtual | Hacker News Reader

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And people (especially here on HN) really can't see why so many are invested in and believe in actual money?

Your shitcoins are being hoarded by incompetent people in giant, minimally secured exchanges not to provide you with a better service, but to make a very small number of people bucket loads of money.

They put in minimal viable effort to provide a minimal viable service and make money hand over fist without consequence when their incompetence result in your cryptocurrencies that you entrusted them with being rug-pulled.

Once that crypto is “compromised” it is free for the attacker to use for any reason, outside the ToS defined by the exchanges. They are not held accountable, there is a proven record of no oversight nor any accountability.

Do you really wonder why people are putting their faith and confidence in actually regulated currencies as opposed to these joke shitcoins?

Look around you. The Web3 is going great[0]. Get out while you still can.

[0] https://web3isgoinggreat.com/

The common retort to this is, "well you should be holding your coins in your own physical wallet".

Usually from a person who stores their life saving of dogecoin in some weird 25% APR Ponzi.

Ah, I remember the Ledger customer data leak. Just as incompetent, even for a hardware wallet.

Don’t use an exchange?

This isn’t as clever as you think it is, and it will not age well. Fiat does not have a future within a spacefaring civilization.

Cryptocurrency is not an exchange. Bitcoin is not an exchange. The technology is unprecedented and revolutionary. It removes parasitic intermediaries and allows the common man to transact at light speed directly with each other.

The same old parasites are hard at work to inject themselves in the process. How anyone could conflate centralized exchanges with decentralized protocols is beyond me. May as well complain at the sun for being hot or complain at water for being wet.

Water is a good example actually. You know, it is possible to drown with water, should we all stop drinking it? Some people even take the water, bottle it up, then sell it back to us. Those companies must be water, I don’t like them. We should stop using water because it’s centralized with Nestle.

Your argument entirely relies on the assumption that the OP stores significant amounts of funds on an exchange.

The extreme vast majority of crypto owners are on exchanges

It’s a fair assumption the OP is not one of them given the website we’re on, and their stated opposition to handing custody of their funds to others.

Also, plenty of retail “investors” seem to be moving away from the exchanges:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/cryptoverse-bitcoin-inves...

Don't know about crypto, but for Bitcoin:

~11% of the Bitcoin supply is held by exchanges, and it decreases on average by 2,500 BTC per day or ~5% per year (over the last 3 years).

That just means they are not stored there as often, not that the exchanges are where most bitcoin related transactions happen

PayPal is analogous to an exchange though so the argument could be flipped that people who use fiat currencies should just stop using PayPal.

Clearly ignoring the existence of exchanges doesn’t help further the debate.

Just use Bitcoin. Don't trust anyone except yourself. You can store your coins in your phone, hardware wallet, paper wallet. You can encode it in steel and bury it in your backyard. You can "horcrux" them (e.g. via MultiSig or SSS) and store the parts (and copies of them) at different locations (friends, family, attorney, ...). Or put them in a safe deposit box if you like. Put a small amount on your phone and you can send them in seconds via the Lightning Network to anyone in the world at minimal fees, without relying on or needing permission from anybody else.

Few actual need custodial services and nobody needs the greedy shitcoin casino. Decentralize. Be your own bank.

I’ve had a couple instances of fraud on my Bank account. Every time it was refunded in full within 2-3 business days.

Beyond that all of my cash is insured by FDIC. If Bank of America decided to pull an FTX and scam away my money I’m getting it back.

Bank of America's deposits were 1.4 trillion in Feb 2021. FDIC's Deposit Insurance Fund was 125 billion in Dec 2022.

You aren't getting your money back if BoA loses it all.

https://newsroom.bankofamerica.com/content/newsroom/press-re...

https://www.fdic.gov/analysis/quarterly-banking-profile/fdic...

I’m not going to name my credit union.

I didn't ask you to. You said, "if Bank of America…"

Also, credit unions are not insured by the FDIC, they are insured by the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA).

Just remember FDIC insurance has limits; I know you know how much you have and it might not be over the limit but folks should know “all of my cash is insured” may not be entirely accurate.

Correct, the limit is $250k for anyone curious. It’s $250k per co-owner for joint accounts.[1]

[1]https://www.fdic.gov/deposit/diguidebankers/documents/joint-...

Bitcoin ledgers are public so your data is still out there.

Plus crypto currencies are subject practically zero oversight and accountability so the situation is even worse there. Hence why you hear about so many exchanges going bang.

The problems cryptocurrencies attempt to solve are different from the arguments you’re favouring them for.

Cryptocurrency exchanges are not the same thing as cryptocurrencies. And not all exchanges are created equal.

Yes it is the wild west out there and consumers have gotten hurt. It is unfortunate. But crypto does serve a real and needed function of decentralized digital cash. I'm optimistic we'll have good regulated exchanges someday.

PayPal isn’t the same thing as fiat currencies either — it’s more analogous to an exchange. And since we are already talking about PayPal and crypto currencies, crypto exchanges should be in the scope of the conversation as well

Wow. Haven't seen one of you in a wild for while now.

Trust me, you’ve never seen one of me before.

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