The financial sector with its banks, regulations, laws and all the other the little cogs to keep the system running, has been around so long, and people face inconveniences so often, that we stopped second guessing the system.

We even kept on living our lives like nothing happened, after we've been stripped off our savings in the crash of '08.

After reading this article, i wasn't sure whether to laugh or to cry.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/taibbi-is-libor-crucial-financial-benchmark-a-lie-w497305

For those who don't know the lingo: LIBOR stands for "London Interbank Offered Rate".
LIBOR determines which rates we pay, when we lend money for buying a house, a car, student loan etc. In the US about 60% of all mortgages are based on that system

It made headlines in 2012 when an investigation revealed, that multiple banks heavily manipulated these interest rates for the benefit of their own, which is shocking enough on its own. But that is not nearly the tip of the iceberg.

Years ago, we found out that the world's biggest banks were manipulating LIBOR. That sucked.

Now, the news is worse: LIBOR is made up.

Actually it's worse even than that. LIBOR is probably both manipulated and made up. The basis for a substantial portion of the world's borrowing is a bent fairy tale.

And as unbelievable this may sound, sadly its the reality we live in
So LIBOR is supposed to determine, how risky it is for the banks to lend money, based on how much they'd have to pay if they had to borrow it from each other on that particular day.
The system is in place since the eighties, and maybe it was a good system back then, but since the mid 90s, there is no money lending going on between the banks. They found better and cheaper sources to lend money from.

Andrew Bailey (Wiki) recently put it like that:

"The absence of active underlying markets raises a serious question about the sustainability of the LIBOR benchmarks. If an active market does not exist, how can even the best run benchmark measure it?"

To which the RollingStone had the trenchant analysis:

As a few Wall Street analysts have quietly noted in the weeks since those comments, an "absence of underlying markets" is a fancy way of saying that LIBOR has not been based on real trading activity, which is a fancy way of saying that LIBOR is bullshit.

So they create fictional numbers out of thin air and even those aren't created in "their best believe", but under blatant corruption as it turns out:

Written exchanges between bank employees revealed hilariously monstrous activity, with traders promising champagne and sushi and even sex to LIBOR submitters if they fudged numbers.

"It's just amazing how LIBOR fixing can make you that much money!" one trader gushed. In writing.
So the wold's biggest banks, have scammed us out of our money over the last two decades with interest rates made up by sociopathic lunatics. I can only imagine how they laughed.

So, this is a massive slap in the face of everyone who... well in the face of everyone, except if you're working in the financial sector. And since we learned after the crash in '08 that criminals rarely face consequences when they work at a bank, i'm not getting my hopes up now.

But, and here comes the interesting part, this system weights over 350 trillion Dollar.
The current cryptocurrency market cap is a little over 130 billion Dollar.

Therefore:

The threshold for cryptocurrencys to succeed in a widespread manner, is not developing a perfect, not even a good financial system.

The threshold is not to be an obvious scam & the basis for the System shouldn't be fictional.

Thanks for reading
Btw. this is my first Steemit post :)