TCB13@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Blockchain and/or smart contracts try to solve problems that were already solved in multiple ways by adding a ton of overhead that makes them unable for large scale deployment and long term usage.
Here’s what’s stupid about the people who say that blockchain will revolutionize the financial sector: why add a blockchain and all the computing power to store transactions when you can take the obviously efficient route and simply store transactions on a SQL database? Before anyone screams the word “decentralization” do you really think banks will cease to exist? NO. The most likely scenario - if people keep pushing this bullshit - will be to have some kind of closed blockchain that banks use to transact money, so it essentially becomes the same thing we’ve now with added overhead, environmental impact and technical complexity. We have efficient system in place with safeguards, operations can be tracked, reversed etc.
Frankly it would be a better use of everyone’s time, money and effort to simply fix the REAL problems in the banking industry, such as the fact that the US still doesn’t have a decently working, standardized digital system to transfer money between account holders in different banks. Europe has this with SWIFT/IBAN and people can transfer money between accounts, banks and countries almost instantly by just providing the amount they want to transfer and an IBAN number (nothing else required). Now tell me, how many people in the US have bank account with IBAN numbers? Most likely only millionaires. The majority of people use a combination of poorly structured system of account and routing numbers that often fail and lead to delays. Oh btw Russia has a similar system to IBAN. There are tons of other weaknesses in the US banking system around the way credit and debit cards work.
You don’t need many of the features you listed to make a blockchain. Its basic form is a Merkle tree. For which there are many practical uses, some of which predate Bitcoin, and which you’re probably familiar with.
Git is a blockchain. It’s one of the most important tools for free and open software, which in turn powers huge parts of internet and technology.
I live in Europe and have some direct experience with how the banking system works (I was pentesting the system that shares transaction data between banks over their closed intranet), and I had no idea that US doesn’t have something like that. That’s interesting, that sounds like a lot of inconveniences.
There is actually a system in the works called FedNow that banks here can sign up to be a part of to allow national money transfer between any two people. Probably a lot of banks aren’t taking part yet since it’s barely a couple weeks old, but it’s promising.
Just an FYI for those that don’t know - outside of America everyone has been able to transfer money between any 2 people’s banks whenever they want without issue for decades.
Tbf, this isn't entirely true (it's as true as it would be for the US). This is more about the time required. Europe has had instant transfers for approximately a decade.
Edit: to be clear, I'm just refuting the plural of the word decade. The US is still behind by quite a bit though.
When were getting technical about it being one or two decades behind something as simple as this, we’re at the point where the distinction is irrelevant.
Yes it is, and I hope it actually fixes the issue. But I’m not sure how it works in detail and it doesn’t seem to actually replace the mess that banks made but instead just add a bandage. At least is seem to use ISO 200022 message standards but as I said would it be THAT hard to simply ditch all the crap and model a baking system around what the EU/Russia does?
Whirlybird@aussie.zone 11 months ago
Great post.
One of the big things all the crypto shills constantly said was that banks are bad and crypto was the saviour because of the decentralised nature. Then they realised that it was complete shit to use without some sort of centralisation, so they made exchanges……which are just banks with less regulations………and then those exchanges went bust and everyone lost their money and started calling for more regulation 😂
There’s no real world need for blockchain tech.