I Don't Want to be My Own Bank

There's a funny little quip when people get mad after they lose their coins:

"I want to be my own bank."

"I lost the keys to my bank."

It's tongue-in-cheek, but it's actually quite accurate. Being your own bank is a ton of responsibility, and if you wanted that, you pay the price if you mess up.

But I, and I think many other people as well, really don't want to be our own bank. We're very happy to pay a small fee for someone else to store, manage, and secure our wealth.

Banking itself is not the issue. Banking is a useful, free-market evolved service that many people (like myself) absolutely love. All I need is to hold my wealth in a currency that isn't controlled by someone else.

Let's say the risk free return on capital is 6%. I'd be happy to take 4%, and have whoever does my banking take 2%. It'll be someone super familiar with private keys, and backups, and scams, and hackers. That's what I want. To pay for a banking service the same way I currently do, but a service built on top of a non-inflationary, decentralized asset.

I think being your own bank is extremely overrated, and "not your keys, not your coins" is not a tenable long term situation. It puts an extremely large burden on every citizen to spend hours and hours studying security and technology, just to secure their wealth. It ignores the entire driver of modern civilization: specialization.

No one can print more Bitcoin. The ability to create currency out of thin air (or essentially free credit) and give it to your constituents is the real problem. Banking itself, again is simply a useful, free-market industry which there will still be plenty of demand for in a Bitcoin world.

I think "banking" and "central banking" have gotten confused over the last decade. Every industry is corrupted when it's in bed with government, and banking is no different. Banking itself is not the problem, and banking built on top of a deflationary currency should be quite a useful service in the future.