Banks are competing for deposits; this rate pressure is already hitting earnings. And they take maturity-transformation risk. PayPal has found ersatz depositors without depositor protections who will accept zero yield in a high-yield environment. They could literally just roll into Treasury bills and overnight funding and ink a decent profit.

Note that I'm not defending Tether. I have no use for it, I'm just pointing out a bigger picture. The solution is to spread savings across different asset types.

It could very well be the same idea for paypal where they're worried that whoever is in charge of the newsroom will have a vulnerability.

Also the parent comment is out to lunch, crypto will likely never replace fiat simply because there’s nothing preventing states from implementing the parts of crypto that succeed.

You should really try to see it from anything other than a consumer to get it, which most of you are not and never will be; inflation and fees are killing small businesses, which is why you're seeing more and more consolidation of market share. COVID exacerbated an already growing issue with diminishing market share in many Industries. Effectively by using these merchants who offer short term convenience you are slowly ensuring a monopoly will take place.

Hence the grow at all costs VC mantra; they're greedy but not stupid because they know most consumers are the most part uninformed in the value chain and will gravitate toward the path of least resistance even when the end outcome is that they're worse off than when they started. You're to be harvested in every sense of the word.

Consider that, if we are to focus on developed Western nations like the US, small businesses employ a majority of people so appealing to them with lower to no cost fees, with instant transactions and settlement, and include built-in accounting and auditing (no need for complex tax lawyers/accountants) this could be the nail in the coffin if you're really asking that question. Much needed regulation is always no where to be found in the traditional monetary system because financial institutions whether they be large mega banks or corps operate in an opaque, shadowy realm where they can have 0% tax liability yet record ever growing profits.

The real question is have we reached a breaking point of this by now? I'm not convinced this will be a matter decided at the nation-state level, it is in there interest to keep business as usual; it will be when enough people decide to opt-out of this system of perpetual exploitation and theft.

I also want to go on a rant about a topic about BS jobs qt the crux of my argument, but for clarity's sake I will remain on topic but I'll let your imagination run with how that would go.

The only real question left to answer is whether enough of the general public (of any nation) will ever be receptive to seeing Bitcoin in this light rather than the current mantra that it's a scam and to this end we need to improve. In the under developed nations, or where hyper inflation/currency collapse or even capital controls are common this has already taken place.

Moreover, the cost of maintaining these immense monoliths like Visa or Mastercard, are not only costly in a financial sense, but are prone to continuous hacks and breaches: which if you take as anything but an externality becomes the real sink on time and energy than anything like mining ever could,

Honestly, this is an optics issue because the tech is there; improvements are needed but LN has been making huge strides since the drop in the latest bubble (when the real work is done when no one is looking) and things like splicing are finally offering the privacy component that should have been built-in at the base layer.

Cash has a purpose, primarily that of privacy and fungability, but I think I'm speaking about something that like most who promote the use of spyware for a living that FOSS is the only way to operate in the 21st Century because of the inherit threeat to to one's privacy: the point is likely to be lost.

As for NFTs and such... while I dislike the term waste of time when we are still in the experimental phase, it has certainly detracted from overall progress more and more over time; because the narrative changes from an actual financial system to one of a hyper accelerated boom and bust cycle, and sadly the most hyped parts are often the biggest waste of resources--we've been here before with ICO and Crypto Kities.

In conclusion, I had to buy something on Saturday evening when banks were closed: the price warranted the extra effort and in the end I had to use 3 work arounds, using BTC no less, because the current fiat financial system didn't work. II had the funds, I just couldn't use them for this purpose.

It was a 4 figure purchase and getting that amount of cash or having a private party accept such a sum came with ever more complications the further I deviated from BTC and no staff from any of the typical merchants were there to make it happen.

Crypto backed: DAI, LUSD (backed by ETH), crvUSD, FRAX

EURO based (with full e-money licenses): EURe (monerium.com), EUROe (euroe.com)

Well, thank you for the kind words, but it is a very emotive topic for some of us as we lived through the consequences of inaction: especially for some of us that have gone through the myriad of phases of despair--despite supposed forms of success--and our emotional baggage comes with us.

I wish I could tell you in a dispassionate stoic demeanor what has gotten us to this point, but I grew up with mass fire season in SoCal coupled with endless droughts and it made me acutely aware from a very young age how catastrophic just small degrees in changes to an unsustainable system can be. It's made me incredibly sensitive to broken systems as a result--in 2018 I worked at IBM and told a few C-level execs wanting to use Blockchain that wha tthey really should be focused on is that the JIT supply was unsustainable and would end badly when even a small amount of stress was applied to it, whether it be the rising rising geopolitical instability, or climate change etc... to deaf ears. The COVID Happened and proved me right, but I didn't feel righteous, I felt despair that foresight isn't used and at scale can create mass panic.

I was dismayed despite this being what I thought was a critical position to be embraced rather than fall haphazardly headlong into the abyss of unknowns because it was deemed to be in order with chasing the endless gains from ruthless 'efficiency at all costs' in order to prop up this system.

What has unfolded since COVID was entirely predictable for some of us, and for those who sounded the alarm were shown the door as we were seen as pariahs.

But, honestly I agree that there are a myriad of causes that exceed man-made cause for climate change (evidence that shifts in sun patterns/activity that create less cosmic rays and lessen cloud cover for example), but the fact remains that these things are happening and we have to live with it. I honestly feel this is like the provurbial re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Again, I could coax myself to make the arguments in a dispassionate and Stoic manner possible in the hopes that something is done, but as we have seen these last Summers we are beyond the point where we can prevent this: we have to build systems that are resilient to these problems. Hence, my loss of idealism to pragmatism and practical applications.

Carbon sequestration is what interests me most, particularity using the largest advent of Human ingenuity and thus largest source of economic generation in the Global economy (so large it cannot be accurately quantified): Agriculture/Food. And the fact that we have the tech to incentivize a positive impact via monetary systems: now Bitcoin is going to landfills and capturing the methane (much more potent GHG) to run miners and offsetting expenses for local municipalities and helping to secure the Bitcoin network in the process.

This is how we should be framing how to build resilient and perhaps anti-fragile systems; instead of succumbing to the endless patchwork of processes that make us more vulnerable as they do not accept the realities for what they are, which we are marred by in the West--we fall victim to fanciful stories about inconceivable and entirely false things like China and Russia being swayed by Capitalism and not just using those resources like they have for millennia as authoritarian despots who wreak havoc when they have an advantage or the chance to assert themselves. It's like we are drunk on our own failures and simply refuse to sober up to see the mess we've made--it's terrifying to realize that no one in a position to do anything about it really knows what the f' they are doing!

Ultimately the reason(s) is because I realized that Human conduct can be most easily understood by the incentives placed in front of them towards a desirable end. And the fact that I've been doing it almost my entire professional career to some degree, whether it was in the Automotive Industry, Farming, Tech, or Cooking.