Your comment strikes me as remarkably "privileged American". Sending money from one American with a bank account to another wasn't easy when I lived there (until 2010). We used PayPal. In Canada (where I live now) we have something called Interac, which is exactly as you describe, subject to upper limits on amounts and some fees for using it. The system works.

However, it does NOT work for the ~5% of Americans who don't have a bank account. Or the I don't know how many people send remittances back to their home nations. For these people, traditional banks and Western Union don't work. Crypto is a superior solution for them.

Or consider multinational corporations with assets in myriad currencies who need to settle their books at the end of each day, every day. Crypto, as a neutral means of exchange solves real problems for them.

I agree with you that for middle class Americans, modern crypto does not generate any benefits over their existing options. But for people who live in countries where their central banks are less responsible, or who's governments are less stable, trusting fiat is risky and crypto is less so. As to your point that "crypto is hard" and people can lose their assets: that's true, but less so every day. Bitcoin was born barely a decade ago. Its UI leaves much room for improvement. But software is improving and this argument will be false soon enough.

Speaking as a dude who had some of his crypto assets stolen in a hack a few years back and has since upped his custodial storage game. I haven't abandoned the traditional banking system, but I'm not comfortable putting all of my eggs in that basket, either.

I'm sorry, but I don't understand this comment. Look at BitCoin. Had you bought it in 2010 when Wired first wrote about it, or 2013 during the first bull run, or 2017 during the second bull run and just held on to whatever you bought, you would have made wonderful return. > 100x since 2013.

That wouldn't make you a scammer. It would make you someone who realized that using math, rather than middleman to facilitate economic transactions is a more efficient system and would consequently come to replace the old way of doing things.

You're confusing fools trying to day trade crypto with investors who believe in the long term value of a decentralized exchange where no one needs to trust anyone or anything except for mathematical proof.

Pharmacists should not be allowed to not do their job (dispense birth control pills) because it conflicts with their personal beliefs. Those pharmacists should get a job that does not require them to do things they find objectionable. Like baking!

Bakers are able to reject jobs based on their personal beliefs so long as those personal beliefs do not discriminate against protected classes. Sexual orientation is a protected class. Being a piece of shit who loves Hitler is not. Ergo, the baker has to bake a cake for gay people but not Hitler fans.

Being Jewish has nothing to do with why the baker can refuse to take the job making Hitler's birthday cake.
Being Christian is not a pass for the pharmacist to not do their job.

Iâ(TM)m no expert either! But NPR aired an interview with Californiaâ(TM)s head firefighter and he said that, yes, fires are normal but what is happening in CA now is not. Itâ(TM)s more than just building too many structures near the wilderness, too. He said that global warming is exacerbating all of these problems and we need to make significant investments to protect more rural communities from going up in smoke. That these rural communities are less typically (but not always) less affluent means theyâ(TM)ll need state and Federal help. I donâ(TM)t see Trump helping California anytime soon, and surpassingly the Democrats hold a super majority in the State house and still couldnâ(TM)t get an extra billion $ to support these efforts. Something about not having enough tax revenue vs need at the moment....

The superior solution is hard: change the way humans live to deal with forest fires. And if we do not do something soon, we will see a breakdown of the global infrastructure that sustains us. The fires burning in the West have all these cascading effects â" erosion, changes in runoff, landslides. Fire is not an isolated thing. It impacts the air, water, wildlife, food systems and humans. This is not a problem that will be solved by hiring 10% more fire fighters or buying another firetruck. It requires more dramatic action and retreating from California to some place that isn't on fire is not what we do.

We fix what we broke because California is worth fixing. As is the rest of this planet, as it is currently the only one we have.

What makes you think UFOs, and perhaps the ET that might be piloting them have not visited people who are not prone to confabulation? I am referring to the videos the NY Time leaked from the Navy fighter planes that showed objects that were capable of moving in the sky that are so far beyond our capabilities it's breath taking. There are plenty of stories told by sane, sober pilots in the US military that describe technology not of this earth.

I am a US national who has been living abroad for a decade and I wish more of my fellow Americans would spend more time looking abroad... if not for inspiration then at least for bench marking and copying best practices.

DarkOx's post resonated with me because I can understand the frustration of people who would like to respond appropriately and not be punished by the failure of others to do so. If s/he was living in a rural community that is easy to isolate and whose local leadership who created a response more akin to South Korea's (even without the cellular contract tracing) allowing them to manage their infection rates while minimizing their economic impacts than their frustration is MY frustration!

I am frustrated that Trump thinks his closing the border to China (while not forcing the many who returned to quarantine for two weeks) was a sufficient response. It was not. DarkOx's response would have been superior and their anger is righteous. Or maybe I'm projecting my anger on to them?

California has the 8th largest economy in the world, just behind Italy and in front of Russia. Russia is currently in the news because the sanctions being used against that country are creating real problems for Europe.

So yeah, cell phone vendors care quite a bit about the Golden State market. If the past is any guide, this kill switch will be for all phones sold in the US and soon the world.

Does USD $150M count a "sensible amount of money"?

http://www.vocativ.com/11-2013/someone-just-made-150-million-bitcoin-transaction/?utm_content=buffer6cfd3&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer

The bitcoin market seems to have weathered the storm.

In the States we do it differently. Here we are more concerned with germs and infectious diseases than with the cost of the actual crutches.

So the crutches my g/f received at the American E.R. are hers to keep. Which she did while she flew home to Canada to have the operation.

While going through that process, she was asked repeatedly where she got her lovely crutches and splint, which are the envy of the Quebecois. We'll probably donate them to Goodwill (or burn, do metal crutches burn without magnesium?) when she doesn't need them.

California received $0.78 for each $1.00 of taxes its citizens paid to the Federal Governement.

http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/266.html

If you're ready to give up on California, we'll can take our Federal Tax dollars and screw the rest of you (or at least the majority red states feeding at the Federal trough at the expense of New York, California, Illinois and NJ).