Visions of Blockchain Magazine S01E04 | Page 34

Megaphone Satoshi wrote: „Internet commerce has come to rely almost exclusively on financial institutions acting as trusted third parties to process payments (...) completely irreversible transactions are not really possible because financial institutions cannot avoid conflicts of mediation, while the costs of mediation increase transaction costs in return.” In our western countries, we are totally dependent on the banking system that forces us to pay fees in order to dispo- se of our own money. Do you realize that your bank requ- ires you to pay „accountable” fees by imposing transaction ceilings, whereas it is actually your money? Today, more than 50% of the world’s population does not have access to a bank account; yet we observe in our developed countries their proliferation on every corner. Which kind of makes sense since the banks create money. „MONEY” - Do you actually think you have Euros in your bank account? Haha! Nobody really has Euros, we all have a stack of “units of account” - simply just that. I am even inclined to say that buying Bitcoins is as risky as saving on your Livret A, with a derisory return. French commercial banks have only a maximum of 7% of their money in real cash. (Against for example, the 19% in Swit- zerland, the highest in Europe). What this means, in other words, is that: if everyone deci- ded to empty their accounts today, that would certainly be impossible (one has to check out what happened in Greece in 2008 to get a sense of it). If you pay a merchant who uses the same bank as yours, not a single Euro has actually been spent for it.