Stealing is wrong, but also... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2026
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Can you steal monopoly money.
You can, but it's hard to pull off unless you're the banker.
Not using the decentralized part of your decentralized currency is kinda crazy.
All the hacking risk of keeping your money in a regular bank, but none of the protections that come from reversible transactions and KYC laws.
KYC laws still apply to all these major brokerages
Not in the context I'm alluding to. With conventional banking, the only place to move money to is another bank. You can withdraw cash at an ATM, but large transfers have to go to another bank. If someone hacks my bank account and initiates a large transfer, that transaction can be reversed. And moreover, it will be going to an account at another bank that is owned by a known customer.
But crypto exchanges must have the ability to transfer to unvetted crypto wallets. No crypto customer would accept an exchange that simply didn't let you transfer coins to your own private wallet. So even though the accounts themselves have KYC, you can still hack a crypto account and send the entire balance to an unknown person.
The equivalent for regular banks would be if your regular bank offered you the option to send a large cash withdrawal to a physical address of your choice. Enter any address, and any amount of your funds can be sent to any address you specify. The closest banks have to that is bill pay, and even that is just a bank to bank transfer in the form of a check in the mail.
The closest real banks actually get to this is wire transfers, and those are pretty locked down nowadays. They often require going to a physical branch, showing ID, etc in order to initiate a wire transfer. They're locked down precisely because they're the one irreversible transaction built into the regular banking system.
Crypto bros often fail to realize what actually secures the banking system. The banking system is not secured by foolproof cryptography. The cryptographic security of crypto solves a problem that doesn't exist. Every bank is not the gold standard of IT security. Rather, what really secures the banking system is that there's not much you can actually do with stolen bank login credentials. Pretty much every way you could move money out of said bank account would require you to show your face somewhere or transfer funds to an account traced to your real ID. And pretty much any method of moving money out of a bank account can be reversed.
The cryptographic security of crypto solves a problem that doesn’t exist.
The point of crypto wasn't to be more secure than money, it was the ability to move it around without having to rely on a third party allowing you to, and charging a large fee for the privilege.
Yet we're talking now about crypto exchanges, which is just another word for bank. And the fees you pay to move money via Bitcoin are far higher than the fees you pay to move money using the conventional banking system.
Yeah Kyc laws basically neutered crypto.
The people actually buying and selling crypto don't care about the decentralized part nor the currency part, it's just an extremely speculative investment vehicle.
Yup. Crypto was supposed to solve this but cryptobros are idiots.
I know right, total insanity.
You can lead a horse to water.
but you can't burn them when they get there.
Lol
Lmao, even
ROFL, I dare say.
ROFLMAO perchance
ROFLMAOBBQ mayhaps?
All the 90s kids on lemmy having a nostalgic time remembering the irc era.
Lemon to scroll too far for this. Beautiful.
I give you this, a Lemmy Lemon. Use it well 🍋
...thanks?
your funds are SNAFU
Turns out centralized banking has its benefits
Seriously (why are you downvoted?). How do you even go about refunds or fraudulent charges in crypto? Are you essentially powerless against scammers and thieves/hackers?
Apparently private wallets are not safe as those are seemingly hacked most commonly, every virus and crack looks for it. Online exchanges get constantly hacked and online wallets have a tendency to randomly rug pull.
Entire crypto scene is basically banking but "we got blackjack and hookers so we are better"
It's gambler mentality. Maybe you might make some money, maybe you'll lose it all.
This is a centralized exchange. This attack could be mitigated by encouraging users to move their funds to their own wallets.
It's easier to revert a fraudulent bank movement than a crypto one.
But yeah, he's gotta point. Why don't central banks loose money like this? Is it because their cash isn't in a Blockchain?
Because it's the bank, financial institutions and the trail of transactions registered to known entities who say whose the money is. For crypto you only need the keys and it is yours.
Banks also have control of their own ledgers and can just issue a reversal transaction. If it's between two banks, it'll be more complex, but overall that's still the case
Since crypto is more of a trading asset than currency, they're not that useful in your own wallet because then you constantly need to move them in/out of the exchange and pay all the fees related to those transactions.
Yeah yeah "actually they're currency" blah blah, except they're not really usable as currency in the functional real world (just like stocks)
Closest by far is Monero. They are actually willing to spend it as a currency, and when looking at statistics from companies that accept different cryptocurrencies, Monero is always either number one or number two on the list.
companies that accept different cryptocurrencies
But this is the issue, that's like 0.0001% of possible places you can use your funds (probably I'm way too generous with that number), and none of it to not die from hunger, cold or dehydration.
And the volatility is still absolutely absurd for something to be used as currency, like all other Cryptos it is dominated by instability and speculation to an excessive degree.
I have been buying groceries through giftcards for over 3 years now and i have not died of hunger or dehydration. The cold is admittedly a bit harder. I dont have that one figured out yet.
But I am able to take my Monero and use it to interact with the brands and companies that everybody else uses.
What I was saying above is that for companies that accept different types of cryptocurrency directly, Monero is always in the top one or two spot.
I have been buying groceries through giftcards for over 3
Fair enough, this seems very regionally specific though. I can only buy gift cards for local supermarkets with my credit card for example. And in all the countries I've been to (granted mostly on the European continent) I've never seen an option for using crypto for gift cards.
they're not that useful in your own wallet because then you constantly need to move them in/out of the exchange and pay all the fees related to those transactions.
Hot wallets are for small amounts for daily spending
It's the same as constantly going to the ATM to get cash in your wallet....
Nobody carries around their whole net worth in their pockets
What that statement ment was, that you can't use it to invest and diversify you portfolio if its not in an exchange. So unless you keep the majority in the exchange, you can't trade it without paying the transaction fees every time.
You can use decentralized exchanges.
I don't think that word means what you think it means.