> As a crypto skeptic, which I think is not fairly categorized as "hater," I think you're painting this in far too black and white terms.[1] "The current financial system is not great" and "cryptocurrency is not great" are not mutually exclusive propositions, right?
They are not mutually exclusive. However often retorts to Web3 or DeFi are along the line of "I can receive my salary for free" or "I can send a bank transfer for low fees and it settles in 24 hours" - the implication being, why do we need anything else this is fine. My question to those who roughly hold this position (whether they be haters, skeptics, curious, critical) would be, if we can agree that generically technology is improving many elements of our modern life, isn't it sensible that we should also be trying out new technologies for finance and banking? Banking and credit cards have largely stayed the same for decades, shouldn't we be innovating here? Regardless of whether you consider Web3 to be innovative or not, isn't it better that people are trying other ways to improve?
> There's very little about the way cryptocurrency and NFTs and even blockchains as a concept are presented that seems politically agnostic; "you shouldn't have to trust anything or anyone in order to complete a transaction" is not a conventionally partisan position, but when you're applying it to government institutions, surely it's political.
There's a line of argument that basically everything is political. But that's often kind of a pointless statement. I would say that Web3 is non-political in the sense that, if you have a credibly neutral trustless global operating system, secured by validators around the world and used by users around the world, this environment is apolitical. It's not Western, Chinese, Russian, no one is gate kept from interacting with it. It is open for all, transparent and unable to be censored. Having you're Paypal account locked because you're from Iran feels intuitively political in a way that the system I described above does not.
You are pretending things like Revolut, Venmo, Zelle etc. do not exist.
They are centralized but solve most things an avg. person dislikes about their bank services.
So, one bank and 2 transfer services with patchy compatibility? I disagree.
My bitcoin wallet isn't looking to trap me in a cycle of debt[1] if I run low on money; most banks are. My bitcoin wallet is auditable down to first mathematical principles, and will never steal my identity[2], create accounts in my name without my knowledge[3], etc. Nobody can cancel my access to my wallet because I said something politically incorrect[4] or because I tripped some opaque anti-fraud system.[5]
Banks are, as institutions normal people are expected to deal with at least, inherently exploitative and lack accountability.
I’m not sure about patchy. I transferred money about 10 times this year and all the recipients wanted Zelle.
All of your other criticisms are valid, but also exist in a system where you trust your wallet with a third party service. the majority of Americans would use a bank like service that manages their key instead of managing it themselves.
You also ignore the other risks that crypto introduces. Like losing your key, password, your exchange gets seized, your exchange just straight up steals your money, or having a 1 character bug in a smartcontract.
All of those failure cases you mention have mitigations. Dealing with banks? Not so much.
And I'd go so far as to call what the majority of Americans prefer wrt. key management a result of inertia due to a few centuries of having always done it that way. That's not necessarily surprising, a lot of this is new and doesn't have a good "real world" analogue to tie back to.
They are not mutually exclusive. However often retorts to Web3 or DeFi are along the line of "I can receive my salary for free" or "I can send a bank transfer for low fees and it settles in 24 hours" - the implication being, why do we need anything else this is fine. My question to those who roughly hold this position (whether they be haters, skeptics, curious, critical) would be, if we can agree that generically technology is improving many elements of our modern life, isn't it sensible that we should also be trying out new technologies for finance and banking? Banking and credit cards have largely stayed the same for decades, shouldn't we be innovating here? Regardless of whether you consider Web3 to be innovative or not, isn't it better that people are trying other ways to improve?
> There's very little about the way cryptocurrency and NFTs and even blockchains as a concept are presented that seems politically agnostic; "you shouldn't have to trust anything or anyone in order to complete a transaction" is not a conventionally partisan position, but when you're applying it to government institutions, surely it's political.
There's a line of argument that basically everything is political. But that's often kind of a pointless statement. I would say that Web3 is non-political in the sense that, if you have a credibly neutral trustless global operating system, secured by validators around the world and used by users around the world, this environment is apolitical. It's not Western, Chinese, Russian, no one is gate kept from interacting with it. It is open for all, transparent and unable to be censored. Having you're Paypal account locked because you're from Iran feels intuitively political in a way that the system I described above does not.