'To unbank the banked': Comments of the Week
August 4, 2017 8:30 AM
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Readers react to USAA teaming up with Amazon’s Alexa, how a new Wells Fargo’s scandal could affect arbitration rules, a digital identity startup’s ambitions, and more.
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On Andrew Barnard, a co-founder of a company that operates a fleet of over 40 bitcoin vending machines in Florida, estimating that about half his customers are unbanked or underbanked:
“It's not clear how Barnard knows this. Probably just a guess. Increasingly it seems Bitcoin's mission is not to bank the unbanked. It's to unbank the banked. Those are Barnard's real customers.”
Related article:Steep fees call into question bitcoin’s promise for the underbanked
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On USAA’s virtual assistant that works with Amazon’s Alexa voice interaction device and corresponding shopping app (via <a href="https://twitter.com/EvanSparks/status/892835230318514176" target="_blank">Twitter</a>):
“No worries, just ‘baring my financial soul’ to [the] most powerful product marketing platform ever known.”
Related article:USAA lets members bare their financial souls to Alexa
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On a digital identity startup’s plan to put data with personally identifiable information in an offline vault (via <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6296725264982372352/" target="_blank">LinkedIn</a>):
“If they are not going to standardize 'Identity vault' technology so that banks and other trusted attributes providers can choose their partner than this is not going to fly, IMHO. It's time we stopped developing (semi)centralized models and embraced decentralization.”
Related article:‘Neither Mad Max nor Orwell’: ID startup walks a fine line
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On how Wells Fargo’s admission that it forced borrowers to pay for unnecessary car insurance could scuttle efforts to fight new rules on arbitration agreements:
“Difficult to understand that there is only one bad apple tree in the orchard. The trick is to protect consumers without having them wind up paying more than the protection is worth. (The same trick applies systemically to taxpayers.) The Dodd-Frank Act is to the financial system what the Affordable Care Act is to the health insurance system. An answer, but not a solution.”
Related article:New Wells scandal harms effort to nix CFPB arbitration rule
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Disagreeing with an op-ed that called for small-business lenders to have to report data on borrower race and ethnicity, among other factors:
"This piece is written to advance a political agenda, not an economic one. The only result accomplished by imposing HMDA like data collection requirements on small business lenders is a sharp decline in small business lending because small banks are not going to expose themselves to politically motived accusations of fair lending violations. Groups like Ms. Ahuja's use this kind of data to extort banks into funding their political agendas.”
Related article:Small-business loans need their own HMDA
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On the Federal Reserve not yet signing off on Territorial Bank of American Samoa’s eligibility for central bank services:
“The Fed can put up trillions in liquidity to (ostensibly) save the US economy, but can't figure out how to process an application? Maybe the Fed needs to earn a little CRA credit.”
Related article:How far does American Samoa have to go to get a bank?
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On the difficulty silos within a bank pose to fighting cyberattacks (via <a href="https://twitter.com/Asif_Pasha_/status/892490423352135680" target="_blank">Twitter</a>):
“So true, sometimes it becomes [a] headache to resolve issues on [a] multiple vendors solution. API and open architecture would make life easier.”
Related article:Bank cybersecurity may need a new mindset
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On the potential for conflating the terms “initial coin offering” and blockchain “token sales” (via <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/6qxfuw/sec_hasnt_quashed_blockchain_innovation_lets_keep/" target="_blank">Reddit</a>):
“'ICO' is too close to 'IPO'. From Wikipedia: IPO procedures are governed by different laws in different countries. In the United States, IPOs are regulated by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission under the Securities Act of 1933. 'Token sale' has greater clarity when describing the sale of tokens.”
Related article:SEC hasn’t quashed blockchain innovation. Let’s keep it that way
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On an idea to establish “universal basic income,” in which anyone below a certain income level would receive a check to cover basic needs (via <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/6qvbom/social_security_for_all_is_universal_basic_income/" target="_blank">Reddit</a>):
“Means tested basic income is just welfare, and it has entirely predictable problems. For Basic income to be useful, it should be universal to avoid perverse incentives of poverty traps among other issues.”
Related article:‘Social Security for all’: Is universal basic income the answer to volatility?
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On Michael Goldstein, a longtime bitcoiner and president of the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute, routinely mocking the notion of application-specific tokens (via <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/tezos/comments/6qd0so/tezos_in_american_banker/" target="_blank">Reddit</a>):
"These maximalists are ridiculous. They are the new-age crypto version of gold bugs like Peter Schiff that dismiss Bitcoin. It's just so short sighted. What do they expect? That Bitcoin will single handedly capture the entire trillion+ market potential that cryptocurrencies have?”
Related article:Blockchain tokens may be the future of finance — if regulators allow it
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