Bitchat – A decentralized messaging app that works over Bluetooth mesh networks

Cryptocurrency transfers are irreversible, publicly verifiable and pseudonymous. For a privacy focused application, these attributes make crypto a better choice than USD and the traditional banking system.

How?

Irreversible is bad because mistakes happen. I lost ~$1,000 in a bad transfer because of a typo.

Publicly verifiable -- not good because I don't want the public knowing what I buy.

Pseudonymous is the worst of both. Is it or is it not me? them?

I am thinking digital cash using pub keys on a network run from space on something like starlink sats.

Only pseudonymous so far as you never accidentally link yourself to a wallet then everyone can know your entire transfer/spending history. It gets people all the time just look at the investigations into various alt coin rug pulls or other fraud.

Irreversible is also not a good thing just ask anyone who had their NFTs stolen during that craze. If someone hacks my bank account or skims my card and transfers the money out the bank can reverse a lot of those transactions. Irreversibility wipes out decades of consumer protection advances.

> For a privacy focused application, these attributes make crypto a better choice than USD and the traditional banking system.

So is cash. What we really need are ways of scanning a piece of fiat currency that instantly transfers that money to an account while then disabling the physical copy from the registry as valid. That's how silly I see crypto for anything other than illicit transactions

> I lost ~$1,000 in a bad transfer because of a typo.

Was the option of doing a much smaller amount available to validate the account before following up with the full transfer? I've never understood not doing a test transfer first.

You can still make a mistake after the test transfer.

> Only pseudonymous so far as you never accidentally link yourself to a wallet then everyone can know your entire transfer/spending history

See Monero

Handing someone a $1 is irreversible if they won't give it back. All transactions are anonymous and private when using a physical dollar. Crypto has the primary advantage of allowing you to launder money by converting the "Coin" in criminal friendly countries to a fiat currency (dollars) that actually buys stuff. Especially useful when hackers hold your data ransom. Usually what people mean by not like "traditional banking system" is unregulated/lawless.

Or you can mistakenly think the test transfer worked as intended.

Not to mention that the necessity of "do a test transfer" already shows how massively broken the process is

USPS will happily exchange your cash for a money order without an ID as long as it’s under a certain amount, if you’re willing to take the risk you can mail the money order and transfer reasonably sized checks fully anonymously, there are good reasons large transfers of cash probably shouldn’t be anonymous

Advice: next time pay attention before sending, all wallets ask for confirmation prior to sending, for what is it worth. Always double check, or triple check.

That's not enough to get people to actually use Monero though given it's got 1/10th the transaction volume of BTC and that's just counting the directly on chain transactions for BTC not those happening on the lightning network. Being off most of the exchanges also makes it difficult for most people to consider using since it's disconnected from the normal market precisely because it's impossible to do KYC to the satisfaction of regulators.

If you’re really paranoid, you can mail cash directly if you’re willing that risk. I’m guessing the number of grandparents sending $5 for birthdays is getting smaller, but I’ve seen first hand the number of people willing to send cash to avoid having checks/credit card charges for specific places. There is no more anonymous method of payment than cash regardless of what cryptoBros tell you. This isn’t X-files where wanting to believe is enough

>There is no more anonymous method of payment than cash

Very much depends. Cameras, fingerprints, banknote ids, cell tower/GPS or just people seeing you.

Or maybe that "broken" design is just the result of the actual goal of decentralized P2P...

People who don't like traditional banking system just want a system where they have more money. If they actually wanted to fix fairness etc creating a new system is not a way, you can make the old system fairer like you can make a new unfair one

and then what?

I just got sent real estate documents because the sender used my uncommon firstNameLastName@ gmail, but because they had a typo of the last name it landed in my inbox.

The old system is a centralized one where there is one entity in charge which gets to set the level of fairness, unless you mean the meta-system whereby anyone can create a new system where they will be the dictator.

Are we talking about cryptocurrencies? Because they are not based on e-mail.

In fact, I have no idea how your comment is relevant to losing money.

You accidentally got someone else's document. How is that relevant to losing money?

As a reminder, you said: "I lost ~$1,000 in a bad transfer because of a typo.". How can you lose ~$1,000 because of someone else's typo in which an e-mail landed in your inbox?

Nobody ever addresses the money laundering issue or wash trading that goes on that gives Bitcoin the illusion of liquidity.

>".... one entity in charge which gets to set the level of fairness"

Exactly what is unfair about the current system? The way we insure fairness is with laws and regulation. A system without those will suffer - well - lawlessness.

How is it centralized? The vast majority of dollars only exist as bits in computers in multiple banks all over the world. Doesn't get more distributed than that. Not only that - if you don't like dollars trade it for Euro's or Yen - you can pay your rent, mortgage and buy things with them also.

Other benefits of the current system. If someone steals my credit card I'm only on the hook for $50. My transactions are confirmed in a matter seconds pretty much anywhere in the world. I AutoPay many of my bills. If I set up automatic payments with Bitcoin I wouldn't be able to sleep at night.

There are problems that Bitcoin could help solve - it just isn't replacing currencies. I see a technology in search of a problem.

If you don't think the government is corrupt, I don't know what to tell you. You can keep on using your "fair" government currency (which the government prints by the hundred billion and gives to its billionaire friends) for everything, I'll be over here wishing for alternatives to Bitcoin.

Do you even hold significant government currency, or do you only hold the layer-2 bank currency, and stocks?