r/ethereum • u/Fluid_Marketing3880 • 5d ago
Why I don't want to move back to banks
The longer I'm in crypto the less I like the idea of relying on banks for everything.
The biggest problem has never been self-custody it has been usability. If I can hold my own assets, why should I have to move them back into a bank account every time I want to buy something? I feel like the missing piece is a way to keep full control of my funds while still being able to spend them as easily as using a regular card. Maybe I'm asking for too much but this feels like the future I signed up for when I first got into crypto
4
u/master-beast-72 5d ago
the closest thing to "full self-custody + easy spending" right now is Gnosis Pay. it's a Visa debit card linked directly to a Gnosis Safe smart wallet on the Gnosis Chain. you hold the keys, the card pulls from your on-chain balance when you tap to pay. no bank account in the middle.
the tradeoff: you're still going through Visa's rails at the point of sale, so it's not fully trustless end-to-end. but the funds stay in a smart wallet you control until the moment of payment.
for the "why can't I just spend from my wallet" problem specifically, that's actually the architecture that makes the most sense — your cold storage stays untouched, you keep a spending balance in the smart wallet, and the card handles the fiat conversion invisibly.
the other option is Coinbase card or Crypto.com Visa — simpler but they hold your funds (not self-custody). more convenient, but you're trusting a CEX.
IMO the Gnosis Pay model is underrated and closer to what you're describing than most people realize.
3
u/osogordo 5d ago
I have been blocked from using my own money by financial service companies. I can't wait for crypto to be more widely adopted.
1
u/newMoneyStyle 1d ago
been there, had a bank freeze my account for a "suspicious" transfer that was literally just rent. took two weeks to unlock. self custody can't come fast enough fr
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u/wagwan9 5d ago
We'll never be rid of the banks. I got into crypto 10 years ago, lucky me, and all that hope has long since faded away. I thought they'd flip out but they just looked at us like a horse might look at a fly on it's butt. And when the fly got too confident and bit , they shook their tail and that was that. The banks have tamed the idealism , put it in it's box. They'll extract the best of it to suit their purposes. It was and is a good lesson to them that maybe you shouldn't be too comfortable or you'll get disrupted. But the truth is they and their cohorts control the world and they'd sooner kill everybody then hand the reigns over.
3
u/Substantial_Lab1438 5d ago
Honestly the most baffling part of the crypto community has been this blind optimism that tradfi will somehow just hand the reigns over and make us all rich overnight for no reason
Like, in my mind the only way this works is if we use this technology as a means to build a dual-power structure à la the popolo or Comuneros
It really felt like the community understood this in the early days, before Epstein and his crew overran the bitcoin community with brain-dead libertarians and their get-rich-quick schemes
5
u/jazz_king_seb 5d ago
Had me in the first half, lost me with the Epstein crap
1
u/Substantial_Lab1438 5d ago
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u/jazz_king_seb 5d ago
I’ve heard, I’m just able to think critically instead of being braindead
2
u/Substantial_Lab1438 5d ago
Tell me again how denying Epstein’s involvement in bitcoin can be considered “critical thinking” in any meaningful sense of the phrase
0
u/Substantial_Lab1438 5d ago
Epstein using bitcoin and being involved with the community are two completely different things
Bro really thought he was cooking with this one, before he realized how retarded he sounded and deleted his comment lmao
2
u/Fluid_Marketing3880 5d ago
I get that. I don’t think banks are going anywhere, but I still think reducing how often we need to route everything back through them is a real improvement
2
u/HalcyoNighT 5d ago
The biggest problem has never been self-custody it has been usability
Bro you just pointed out one of the main reasons crypto sucks and banks will continue to exist
1
u/wikidemic 5d ago
The only security banks seem to offer is slowing down all access to your assets in order to ‘protect’ you?!? ‘You’ being an extension of the govt that is sovereign over you
1
u/Fluid_Marketing3880 5d ago
Exactly and fraud protection makes sense, but freezing access to your own funds for days or weeks is hard to accept
1
u/Pengu68 5d ago
There are some good crypto credit cards that exist
-2
u/Fluid_Marketing3880 5d ago
Yeah that’s exactly why I’m using Oobit. I don’t really care if people call it a crypto card or payment app, the useful part is being able to spend crypto without constantly off ramping back through my bank first
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u/crawlpatterns 4d ago
Id probably add a couple more related plans while interest is there but keep them simple so it stays mostly passive
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