The same flaw applies to cash. If you give someone $5 there is no way to revoke that transaction. You only can ask them to make a new transaction and give you the $5 back. Just like how additional layers were built on top of cash,new layers will be built on top of cryptocurrencies leading way to the "crypto 2.0" you are waiting for.
But bitcoin isn't being billed as a value-store like gold, it's being sold more as a replacement for payment systems like credit cards, ACH transfers, or PayPal.
There is a reason nobody goes around trading tiny bits of gold for goods and services. It is useful to have an abstraction that makes transactions easier and helps mitigate risk.
Credit cards, paypal and all the rest existed before bitcoin. I mean it's nifty that I can do it without a single intermediary authority, but it's not that special.
I think the lack of revocation available to bitcoin is a (and I had myself for saying this) 'a feature'.
If somebody sends me payment in bitcoin, I definitely know it can't be charged-back for example. It's like sending cash in the mail.
Now that comes with the flip side, that they are putting all their trust in me.
But there are far more consumers than there are sellers. Any system that is tilted in the seller's favor as opposed to the consumer is naturally going to have a hard time becoming the standard. This is at least in part why PayPal has been so enormously successful. It puts the customer's mind at ease.
The way I see it, people with money want to drive crypto adoption because it will tip the balance of power further in their favor. A fully unregulated currency and transaction system can be much more easily controlled by the people with the most capital without having to let that pesky democratic process getting in the way by letting the poors have a say.
As a consumer though, chargebacks and disputes are an important feature for me, particularly when exploits and bugs exist and I can't and shouldn't have perfect trust that bitcoins will only leave my wallet when I intend for them to.
Maybe some people were hyping it as a PayPal replacement back in the pre-2017 days, but that narrative has largely failed to gain followers and is now very out of favor.
The digital gold narrative and layer one of the new global, open, permisionless, and fair financial system narrative have been big and growing ever since I got involved in 2015ish.
In fact, it was only the emergence of the lightning network that proved the layered system approach that has made me consistently bullish for these past 7 years. If we had to scale payments on the base blockchain's 7tps limit, it would absolutely be an absurd, silly speculative bubble doomed to collapse.
Luckily, the layered approach is proving itself and winning.
> But bitcoin isn't being billed as a value-store like gold, it's being sold more as a replacement for payment systems like credit cards, ACH transfers, or PayPal.
This used to be the case years and years ago but it's been understood that without some additional layers this will never be the case. It is being billed as a value-store like gold by large institutions on and off of Wall Street though, so that's far more likely (and to be fair has proven to be fairly stable for a few years now).
It's not quite the same. With cash, I have to meet them in person. I probably know their name or where to find them again. I can file a lawsuit, a police report. They have incentive to make things right for me because it can have real life repercussions for them.
I'm not saying that it's an impossible problem to solve, but our society and legal system aren't structured in a way that makes it easy.
I'm not starting a fight, I'm having a discussion, which I think is the point of HN.
> Crypto means you will always know who has your money and where it goes.
If a stranger in another country steals $500 from me I'm going to have a really hard time doing anything about it. And knowing their wallet doesn't mean I know who they actually are, as those aren't tied to an identity.
What about exit scams? How many people have gotten their money back in those situations, or had any justice? You can make the argument that these people are investing in something that may not pan out, but we have a ton of legal regulations around that with fiat - lawsuits, criminal charges. Elizabeth Holmes is going to jail for misrepresenting what people were investing in. Institutional investing is limited to high-net-worth individuals or accredited investors to keep uneducated people from getting fleeced.
>If a stranger in another country steals $500 from me I'm going to have a really hard time doing anything about it. And knowing their wallet doesn't mean I know who they actually are, as those aren't tied to an identity.
So how is this different from Cash? Except you actually have an idea of where the money is going and can track it, e.g. if it goes to a CEX. This is way better than cash.
Why would someone in another country steal your money unless you give it to them.
Don’t get involved in shady schemes and try to double your money.
I encourage you to put a tiny bit of fiat into the system and play with it. Low risk. Buy some Bitcoin. Make a wallet on your phone and transfer it.
I think it’s something that needs to be seen to understand. Stop fearing what is designed not to happen.
I don't usually mail physical cash to online retailers when I make a purchase. The context of your typical cash purchase precludes most of the outlined scenarios where being able to undo a transaction is a desirable feature.
