What you described is how a banking system in many countries works.
I can send a wire transfer for free to any other person in Poland at 4am on saturday night, and they will get it instantly (some exceptions apply).
I can even send them a direct code to withdraw a specific amount of money from most ATMs in the country, instantly and anonymously. (Could be to an unbanked person, but we don’t have those really - aside from some very senior citizens).
What you described is not so much a flaw in the banking system in general, but in the US banking system specifically.
Crypto has a ton of awesome use-cases - DeFi is the most promising one. Sending money to other people wirelessly can, and will, be solved by centralised institutions.
> I can send a wire transfer for free to any other person in Poland at 4am on saturday night, and they will get it instantly (some exceptions apply).
Depends on who you are, or who he is (or who he knows) and how much money you're sending, how much you've sent overall in the past X weeks/months, etc...
The concept of having electronic money that no one (banks nor governments) can touch is just incredibly appealing to me and has been so ever since I first discovered Bitcoin. I guess it's the anarchist/libertarian (I'm not politically affiliated) side in me... It goes hand in hand with what made the internet (and BBS's before that) so incredibly exciting back in the 90's.
Bitcoin definitely has its issues, but the attraction is still there, I can't shake it.
Huh? No, ot doesn’t depend on who anyone is, or their account usage patterns. That’s another thing - literally anyone can open a bank account as long as they have a mailing address. There are no requirements, and you get the same service.
Instant transfers are not supported by every single bank yet, and there is a limit to 15k€. As a fallback you have electronic wire transfers that are usually free (or 0.25€), and have a guaranteed delivery of one working day (usually sooner).
You can literally 1M€ for 0 fee, and it gets delivered within 2-4 hours if you send it before 3pm, and if later - by 8am the next day.
After my first date with my gf, she wired me 15€ paying back for dinner, and I wired her back 7€ saying that 15€ was too much. Yes, you can literally flirt with wire transfers - that’s how cheap and common they are :)
As for having money that nobody can touch - sure, it has an appeal. I won’t argue that. But for person to person transfers, most of the world has already figured it out.
As far as i'm aware it's usually not the case in most countried.
In canada we have Interac Online that allows you to send money instantly to anyone in the country but when it comes to international transfer it's usually really slow. (3-10 days). Bitcoin allows tou to send that money anywhere almost instantly.
Great that it works like that in Poland. It doesn't work like that in most places in the rest of the world, and certainly not between X <> Y places in the world (for example, how long time would a US > Poland transfer take?).
What cryptocurrencies enables is border-less transfers, where geographic location doesn't matter anymore, as long as you have a internet connection.
> Sending money to other people wirelessly can, and will, be solved by centralised institutions
I wish I could be as optimistic as you. I have been living in three different countries for the last 20 years and heard that "instant wire transfers anywhere in the world" is coming for the last 20 years. Seems only Instant SEPA has been doing some actual work, but it still doesn't even cover 50% of the world.
And why wait for a centralized solution that might come 20 years in the future when you can use the decentralized solution that works today?
Is Chime or other similar fintechs who aren't going to extend credit for overdraft and similar on a deposit account not an option? In my activist social work, I find it continually getting easier to get the unbanked banked, including finding them accounts with orgs that support Zelle for instant funds transfers [1].
People keep arguing crypto when internal fiat is likely to end up as central bank digital wallets [2] and cross border transfers will be facilitated by fintechs like TransferWise, with central banks essentially assuming more and more of the cross border infra over time [3].
Anecdote: A friend needed financial help due to COVID, and I was able to get their Citi deposit account setup with Zelle in ~2 minutes and send them cash from our reserves. The transfer was effectively instantaneous. IMHO, the problem isn't the transfer mechanism, it's ensuring that everyone has a a bank account [4].
In my country, at least, having a bank account is a right. You walk into a bank, say that you want an account and they open it on the spot, no questions asked (aside from a mailing address, but you can get that one even when you’re homeless).
The only time they will ask you questions is if you start with putting in huge amounts of money fast - then AML applies.
I know there is an issue with unbanked population in US, but it’s a regulatory one - it doesn’t have to be that way.
I can send a wire transfer for free to any other person in Poland at 4am on saturday night, and they will get it instantly (some exceptions apply).
I can even send them a direct code to withdraw a specific amount of money from most ATMs in the country, instantly and anonymously. (Could be to an unbanked person, but we don’t have those really - aside from some very senior citizens).
What you described is not so much a flaw in the banking system in general, but in the US banking system specifically.
Crypto has a ton of awesome use-cases - DeFi is the most promising one. Sending money to other people wirelessly can, and will, be solved by centralised institutions.