I would also note that the benefits the author states about fiat can equally apply to crypto:
> There's an inherent fragility built into cryptocurrencies. If your physical bank notes are damaged, the bank will replace them. If you are defrauded, the bank will reimburse you. If your loved one dies, and you inherit their assets, the bank is legally obliged to give you access.
Damaging bank notes is probably covered by the fed. Fine. But fraud is a real expense. It's just not generally borne directly by the victim. Someone still pays it (normally the bank) but they make up for it by lending out your cash. As for handing over assets to someone that passed away, that's currently done through the legal process. Wouldn't it be great if there was a technical solution such that there is no ambiguity about what happens to your money? Seems like crypto would help there as well
> someone still pays it (normally the bank) but they make up for it by lending out your cash.
You're skipping over large parts of the things fiat can do and crypto can't. E.g. there are chargebacks for fraud. There's the legal process that can be used by the bank to recover money from the fraudster (maybe not always, but also not "never").
> Wouldn't it be great if there was a technical solution such that there is no ambiguity about what happens to your money?
No, it wouldn't be great, it would be horrible. Real world is messy and hard to encode in a "smart contract". What if the will says something but the law invalidates it? Going through the legal process is a feature not a bug... remember how people complain about e.g. automatic bans that are handled and appealed by robots? How your Google account can be disabled with no recourse, and no explanation from a human? Yeah, that can happen to your grandma's crypto - it doesn't go to the family, and there's no way to appeal that or even find out "why".
The legal system still exists though, and people can still be forced to do things. That leaves the non-automatable work to humans and takes away the automatable things rather than forcing everything through humans to manage edge cases where you need them.
For my will I literally enter into a form what I want to happen, but then when I die it'll be down to another human to go through it and manually carry out my instructions.
Chargebacks can be opt-in and escrow is a tutorial for smart contracts. I don't need chargebacks on a cup of coffee, and I've been unable to make a payment due to high chargeback risk - despite me being entirely willing to take on the risk of non-fulfillment.
Have you ever dealt with an estate, or a disputed estate? I have, and I can tell you that technical processes would probably not accomplish very much. I have seen people go to court over whether or not a person was mentally competent when they wrote their will. What is the technical process for resolving that? If anything, a technical solution would make things worse in cases where an elderly person really was taken advantage of when they were planning their estate by leaving less room for a dispute.
The fact of the matter is that we have had the ability to create a technical process for executing a will for a long time. Banks allow you to designate a beneficiary who receives your assets after you pass away and that is executed automatically. We do not have to allow people to dispute that, and cryptocurrency does not really add much over such a system -- but we do not want that system because some objections are legitimate and disputes need to be resolved.
A technical solution could be implemented by a bank as well, but I'm not sure it is even legal in most jurisdictions. Same goes for any solution on the block chain.
> There's an inherent fragility built into cryptocurrencies. If your physical bank notes are damaged, the bank will replace them. If you are defrauded, the bank will reimburse you. If your loved one dies, and you inherit their assets, the bank is legally obliged to give you access.
Damaging bank notes is probably covered by the fed. Fine. But fraud is a real expense. It's just not generally borne directly by the victim. Someone still pays it (normally the bank) but they make up for it by lending out your cash. As for handing over assets to someone that passed away, that's currently done through the legal process. Wouldn't it be great if there was a technical solution such that there is no ambiguity about what happens to your money? Seems like crypto would help there as well