Also possible with cash, but extremely risky for most people. Not an advantage of crypto, not an advantage in general.
> send money anonymously
Only relevant for crime. Disadvantage or irrelevant for most legitimate businesses (you anyway need to provide address for shipment).
> send money [] internationally in seconds without an intermediary
Also possible with many banks, VISA, Western Union. The fact that you're using an intermediary is irrelevant - since either way you're paying transaction fees, and trying to avoid sanctions is too dangerous for most people.
> Decentralization
In practice, it's far more centralized (far fewer exchanges in the world than banks, and the majority of people using crypto hold it with an exchange)
> composibility, programmable money
Doesn't really mean anything. Money is money, it can only change hands with a legal contract, and "smart contracts" are not legal contracts.
Absolute nonsense. There are people who prefer paying with cash for the same privacy advantages.
> Also possible with many banks, VISA, Western Union. The fact that you're using an intermediary is irrelevant
Sending crypto is way easier, faster, and cheaper than sending an international wire transfer or Western Union transfer. With crypto, it is peer to peer and no one can censor you. In the traditional finance world, anyone can have their bank account, payment provider, or transactions blocked by their bank, payment provider, government, or any of the other countless middlemen who need to approve of your transactions.
> In practice, it's far more centralized
Peer to peer money and self-custody is more decentralized than holding money in any centralized institution.
> Doesn't really mean anything
You clearly don't understand the concept, so please educate yourself before you comment. The composability of smart contracts is what enables defi.
> There are people who prefer paying with cash for the same privacy advantages.
Unless they're mailing in cash envelopes, they're usually doing this in person, so while there is some privacy advantage, it's not as great as most think.
> Peer to peer money and self-custody is more decentralized than holding money in any centralized institution.
First off, crypto is not money - it is an asset that you invest in. Secondly, few people ever bother with self-custody, because it is extremely dangerous for any significant sum, and very very hard compared to the alternative - getting someone to take you dollars and give you BTC or or ETH in return (in a trustworthy manner) is much more difficult, so few people do it. And there are far fewer actual exchanges (real money to crypto) than there are banks in most of the world. This also hits on the point about money transfers: for the way people use crypto in practice, it is justa s easy if not easier to prevent them from trading it tahn it is to trade money.
> You clearly don't understand the concept, so please educate yourself before you comment. The composability of smart contracts is what enables defi.
"DeFi" itself is a meaningless notion, just like NFTs were. It has no legal power, and it can't be used to trade real-world goods or even real money (again, crypto in general is not money, it is something closer to stock, at least in the USA). The fact that the technology allows you to trade ETH for Dogecoin or whatever it is is neat, but irrelevant - my income is in RON and things I want to buy are in USD, EUR or RON - and this is true for the vast majority of the world.
Sending money anonymously is speech. Just as there's no reason the government needs access to my Signal text history, they don't need access to my sex toy purchase history either.
Are you in favor of strong encryption for messaging, but not payments? If so, I am curious to hear more of your reasoning on that.
> Money is money, it can only change hands with a legal contract, and "smart contracts" are not legal contracts.
Possession is 9/10 of the law, and low-value transactions are not worth litigating. Smart contracts let a piece of software be the judge and jury on a $5 transaction, and I think there's some value in that. It could also be useful for transacting with people who live in countries with broken legal systems.
Also possible with cash, but extremely risky for most people. Not an advantage of crypto, not an advantage in general.
> send money anonymously
Only relevant for crime. Disadvantage or irrelevant for most legitimate businesses (you anyway need to provide address for shipment).
> send money [] internationally in seconds without an intermediary
Also possible with many banks, VISA, Western Union. The fact that you're using an intermediary is irrelevant - since either way you're paying transaction fees, and trying to avoid sanctions is too dangerous for most people.
> Decentralization
In practice, it's far more centralized (far fewer exchanges in the world than banks, and the majority of people using crypto hold it with an exchange)
> composibility, programmable money
Doesn't really mean anything. Money is money, it can only change hands with a legal contract, and "smart contracts" are not legal contracts.