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1. Annah (maiyannah@community.highlandarrow.com)'s status on Saturday, 03-Feb-2018 21:24:08 EST Annah
   The banks are running scared from cryptocurrency.  Whatever I think of individual examples, they're looking that change in the eye and are terrified of it.  They want to kill it.
   
   Unfortunately, disallowing easy means to purchase cryptocurrency may just effectively do that for any but fringe hobbyists, banishing it to the ranks of those using it on silk road to buy illicit drugs again.
   1. Verius (verius@community.highlandarrow.com)'s status on Sunday, 04-Feb-2018 05:39:50 EST Verius

      in reply to
      @maiyannah I'm not sure they're running scared of cryptocurrency in general. But they're probably uneasy with the most common forms of it (Bitcoin, ETH) for two reasons: 1. there's bound to be a crash in the market at some point which could use economical issues if the bubble becomes too big (banks don't like economical issues, it cuts into their profit margins) and 2. anonymous currency is a completely alien way of thinking for banks which are used to heavy regulation and KYC laws so they have a hard time wrapping their head around it. There is some experimentation in bank land with more regulated forms of cryptocurrency though, the whole distributed ledger thing is something many banks are at least interested in understanding.
      1. Annah (maiyannah@community.highlandarrow.com)'s status on Sunday, 04-Feb-2018 10:06:37 EST Annah

         in reply to
         @verius "Banks don't like economic issues" tell that to the mortage crisis.
         1. Verius (verius@community.highlandarrow.com)'s status on Sunday, 04-Feb-2018 12:50:52 EST Verius

            in reply to
            @maiyannah Ok, let me be more precise. They don't like economic issues where they don't make a profit on first.
   2. Verius (verius@community.highlandarrow.com)'s status on Sunday, 04-Feb-2018 05:42:31 EST Verius

      in reply to
      @maiyannah At this point I doubt cryptocurrencies are actually used as currency (as opposed to as an investment) in a statistically significant way for non-illegal purposes. The use as tender in legal activities seems to have gone down compared to a few years ago due to bitcoin's transaction fees going up and due to price volatility.
   3. lnxw48a1 (lnxw48a1@nu.federati.net)'s status on Sunday, 04-Feb-2018 10:16:19 EST lnxw48a1

      in reply to
      @maiyannah @verius From what I've read in the past, banks love #Ripple, and would prefer that #cryptocoin to become the primary surviving !cryptocurrency. I always assumed that means it contains a means for them to control manipulate it easily where other coins may not.
      1. Annah (maiyannah@community.highlandarrow.com)'s status on Sunday, 04-Feb-2018 10:20:48 EST Annah

         in reply to
         @lnxw48a1 @verius Oh its certainly about control.  They fear what they can't control.
         1. Verius (verius@community.highlandarrow.com)'s status on Sunday, 04-Feb-2018 12:54:13 EST Verius

            in reply to
            @maiyannah @lnxw48a1 Frankly, when it comes to currencies, I very much prefer those that central banks control. If anything the eurocrisis has taught us that too little control over a currency by a central bank is a bad thing (Greece couldn't devalue its currency to help fix its economy).
            1. Annah (maiyannah@community.highlandarrow.com)'s status on Sunday, 04-Feb-2018 13:01:01 EST Annah

               in reply to
               @verius @lnxw48a1 Yes, but the central banks aren't the ones restricting purchase of cryptocurrencies (they don't deal directly with consumers anyways, they deal with private banks).  It's the private banks used by citizens doing this, and a startling number of them too.