May Crypto Strike Thee Down
Credit https://global.handelsblatt.com/finance/dark-days-for-deutsche-bank-416652
My bank is pretty awesome.
It sets the standard for how banks could/should be.
It currently offers:
-No Monthly Fee
-No Account Minimum
-Zero Transaction Fees
-Unlimited Transactions
-Free Interac e-Transfers
-Member Equity (Free Money!)
-Free Online/App/Branch Services
(Disclosure - My Bank is a Credit Union)
To me, this sets the bar pretty high when it comes to Cryptocurrencies and related services.
Personally, I have been in the crypto space since 2014-ish. An original owner of two Butterfly Labs Jalapeno ASIC Miners, one of which burned out only a couple months in.
I have watched innovations and developments of this space with bated breath like the rest of you. I have lurked bitcointalk, BFL, Reddit and other spaces for years.
Therefore, I offer to you, my 2 satoshi's worth of opinion on the current cryptocurrency market.
First, there are two distinct types of people in this space:
-The Investor
-The Speculator
This article isn't for the speculator. If your goal is simply to make money off crypto, any crypto, then you have an entirely different mechanism of differentiating value than I. Your value system is based around appearance, charts, immediate data points (news, hype, social media) and how that translates into potential price growth.
Therein, whether a coin/token does well long-term (5-10 years) is of little to no consequence to you.
Whereas if you are an investor, you are someone who is looking for price growth, community, technology, stability, scalability, and other metrics of value.
All of these elements are very important, but to an end-user like myself, I demand more from emerging tech than some flashy website and a loud-mouth CEO, or even 'slight' improvements upon other existing technologies.
They are competing with my Bank, and my bank is pretty awesome.
FEES:
I hate transaction fees. HATE.
Using a currency in this crypto space, where there are literally over a thousand options, means - competition should be fierce, technology should be developed and tested, and innovation should be challenging to incumbents.
When I see a crypto that charges me a fee, to use their product, I think 'Bitcoin'.
For when Bitcoin first came out, it had a fee to 'support the network'. The fee was a micro amount, and nearly irrelevant. We paid the fee because we, the users, wanted to support the network.
What happened?
The network grew, blocks didn't, storage requirements increased, as did hardware and electricity costs overall (to stay competitive and profitable). The dynamics of the system changed.
Since then, other coins/tokens came that push the same narrative: asking for a micro-fee to 'support the network'. Litecoin, Stellar, Tron, Bitcoin-Forks, Ether, etc etc.
My bank doesn't demand a fee to support the network. In fact, they even refund ATM fees from other providers in some cases (their ATM's are free of course)
They pay me equity. I don't pay them.
ACCOUNT MINIMUMS:
Recently I was reading about Stellar, which requires a fee (currently about $0.15/USD) to open a wallet account. They claim security, stability, and I'm sure have good reasons for this.
Further, they were discussing how an account requires a minimum amount of coins in order to send coins.
Source - https://www.stellar.org/lumens/
This is not innovative to me. I understand the issues they are attempting to solve, but I think their solutions are limiting.
When my money is in a bank or wallet, that's my money. I should always and forever have access to 100% of my money. I will not settle for 99.9% access.
Also, if I attempt to spend the last of a few 'lumens', and my balance drops too low - the transaction is declined.
Perhaps for security purposes, I have a few different wallets. Now, because one wallet I was spending from is low, I have to break the security of another paper wallet or exchange to move money into the 'broke' wallet to finalize a transaction...
What year is it? 1918?
Reading the Stellar whitepaper reminded me of Louis CK's bit about being broke... :)
"Ever get so broke the bank starts charging you money, for not having enough money..."
"Sir you have insufficient funds."
"I know that... I find my funds to be grossly insufficient."
-Louis CK
FREE e-Transfers:
I find myself using this service a lot more, since its free. I take a friend out to dinner, and perhaps they pay the bill in full. I go on my app for 20 seconds and split the difference. Technically, the service is a little slow, coming in around 5-15 minutes to process and requiring the receiver to actually login and accept the payment.
But! It works, it's free, and it's dependable, and if I make a mistake and send the funds to the wrong cell number, the transaction is secure with a password. Add-on to this the ability of the receiver to decline a payment, and my ability to cancel after I sent it... It's a pretty good system for 1980's banking.
What I don't like about these older cryptocurrencies is the wallet addresses. Seemingly random numbers and letters used to identify an account.
Take this BTC Core address:
It is near meaningless to me. As my eyes scan it, I look for identifiers that I can associate, such as the 'Qikhw' string at the beginning. Then I would make up a meaning... such as 'Qik Hodl Wallet'. Or my previous wallet address had a 'Yip8' near the end.
"Where's my money?"
"Yip Ate it"
One of the things I like about EOS is their (soon-to-be) use of wallet/account names to associate to an address. This is great not only for mass-adoption purposes, but also general security and peace of mind.
If I want to donate (which I do a few times a year) to non-profits like Mozilla/Firefox or other Content Creators, it will be nice to type into the address bar 'Mozilla Donate' as opposed to a random series of letters and numbers.
On the other hand, this does present some interesting privacy complications... Should be interesting to see how they handle this eco-system.
What makes e-Transfers nice to use is you are sending the cash notification to a cell phone or email address. Easy and quick verification that doesn't require checking the digits entered and can otherwise be easily remembered.
My bank is pretty awesome. :P
FREE MONEY (Equity):
My bank rewards its members through equity programs. I get bonus interest on my savings account, interest reductions on loans, and small payments to my equity account for just being a member and sharing the profits of the bank.
The more business I do with the bank, and the more profits they make overall that year, the more equity I accrue.
I like being rewarded for 'staking' or investing in a service, and I like how they distribute their profits to their base members.
When I look at crypto, I don't see this option very much. For most cryptos, when I buy and hodl, I am merely speculating on the price appreciation. When I invest a portion of my time, money, or knowledge to a system, I am rewarded with an upvote or a follower... but these are in most cases not very valuable.
Steemit, as we all know, has changed this. Other services are coming as well.
I like Steemit/DTube and their potential, and I look forward to a Twitter version where if I don't have the time to write an article, or if I perhaps don't have the interest to link and source every media item, I can still share without fearing the wrath of ideologues and moderators.
Community is important, even for a lurker like me. Having a stake in a community would probably incline lurkers to actually invest more in that community instead of read/run.
My bank supports the local community, usually on projects I don't care about or have no interest/passion. My bank rarely asks for my opinion on these topics, though I'm sure they would listen if I gave it.
The people who use my bank are disconnected entities. They don't know each other generally speaking, and they rarely show up to invest (time/energy) in the community they share. We are all wallet addresses on a centralized ledger.
My bank also conforms and bends to the will of government departments and political power. They would report me to the revenue agency if they even suspected a strange activity (regardless of how innocent it is). They would denounce and abandon my wallet address the moment they disagreed with me. They would block and censor my speech if I attempted to enter it into the conversation.
I don't get invited to special events they hold for their 'valuable' members, because my account is not valuable. Yet they still call me on occasion hoping to up-sell my account services or sell me a new product.
My account manager has full-access to my transaction history, and reviews my account on a periodic basis. He knows more about my spending habits and activities than I do. I consider this a violation of privacy - he would consider it an account value assessment, security risk assessment and/or legislative requirement of compliance.
My bank is pretty awesome, compared to your bank.
My bank is pretty awesome, compared to most cryptocurrencies.
My bank panders and begs its regulating authorities to allow it to stay in existence and keep its various licensing and insurance schemes so they can continue to operate.
I hate banks.
I hate my bank.
I want to close my bank account and never open one again.
Therefore, we as crypto-users must demand more from our service creators and providers. Right now, in comparison, my bank is pretty damn good compared to a lot of over-valued currencies.
That is troubling to me, but this is still a young market.
EOS has the potential to build the stable infrastructure, so that others in this world can build the services and applications on top that will destroy my bank once and for all.
I look forward to the day when 'my bank' isn't so awesome or useful.
What I demand is everything my bank currently offers (No Fees, Easy Transactions, No Minimums, Equity) and everything they cant or wont (Privacy, Freedom, Fast Transactions, Real-World Deposit and Withdraw, Invested Community and Innovative Growth).
If you want to speculate on a currency, speculate your face off.
If you want to invest time/money/energy where you have a voice in a service that does everything the offline world does coupled with everything the online world has the potential to offer...
EOS looks to be the true 3.0 of Blockchain, and the only service (thus far) that offers the potential I seek.
Emphasis on 'Potential'.
I'm 99% in and I'm not afraid to loose it all. I can always earn more money.
Thanks for reading.
-Dark