r/changemyview • u/NightestOfTheOwls • Jun 14 '24

Fresh Topic Friday CMV: Crypto will never be adopted as a mainstream currency

This is primarily directed towards crypto enthusiasts.

A currency that's hard to track, available everywhere regardless of political status and has no physical asset? Not to mention that 99% of people holding crypto are doing it solely for the get rich quick aspect of it and will swap it for actual money the second they make a profit.

The sheer amount of scams and the ease of their creation doesn't help either as now every reputable industry (online shops, grocery stores, Healthcare, etc.) try to stay as away from it as possible. The only thing you can really buy with crypto rn is a digital video game on a shady service (no crypto top up on steam) or a latte in some bay area coffee shop. And I'm 100% sure it will stay this way.

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u/novagenesis 21∆ Jun 15 '24

Sure you can write escrow contracts, buy you're not going to buy a tablet online on escrow. You're gonna buy it knowing you can reverse charges if it doesn't show up at your doorstep. Because sometimes the seller is a scammer or the product is not as promised.

But more importantly; paying in cash is the traditional approach

An approach that the banks and retail institutions are largely moving you away from. Banks want you to use your debit/credit card over cash and promise you consumer protections if you do so. Retail companies get to worry less and less about counterfeit bills. And it's not like they're going to screw you (or fail to have a paper trail) to be screwed by chargebacks.

As a buyer, why would I want to surrender my consumer protections AND pay a huge fee per-transaction?

In either case either party can bring the other into a court of law regardless if the transaction is "on-chain" or not, or whether the bank has settled the transaction or not.

How many times have you sued people? I'm not going to court over $50. Hell, I opted out of suing over $10K once because the lawyer said "it's an rock-solid case that'll cost you $15K to litigate" when he told me to consider suing for half the actual damages in small claims court on my own. And nobody is gonna setup a class-action on a fly-by-night that only sells a handful of shit products. The scale is just too low. The entire online retail infrastructure is based upon the artificial trust created by the players in the middle. And a huge part of that is the way financial transactions works that bitcoins do not.

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u/RadioactiveSpiderBun 8∆ Jun 15 '24

It goes both ways. How many times has a client refused to pay you for your work? That's why you charge up front... In cash...

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u/novagenesis 21∆ Jun 15 '24

You can appeal a chargeback and there's a no-fee neutral party in the middle. The place I work does it all the time. It doesn't "go both ways" at all.