Topic: Is it possible to live without banks? - page 33. (Read 7781 times)

Guys, you're looking at this scenario wrong...

Can you buy a can of Pepsi from a shop without using a bank? Yeah of course you do!!!!
Can the shop buy a can of Pepsi to sell it to you without a bank? It gets harder!
Can Pepsi produce and sell it to the shop without a bank? Nope.

Without banks you might be able to live, but only as long as the others will still keep using banks!
My family sells meat from a small shop, we still accept cash, and we could still sell products without credit or debit cards. But the moment we close out bank accounts we won't be able to pay our suppliers, gas, other partners, access credits line when we don't get the payments in time, so we will close the shop down and you will have to go to another store.

Just because a guy can live in the woods and in 8 hours of searching he finds enough berries and mushrooms to survive it doesn't mean all 7 billion people could regress to being hunters and gatherers

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Banks have nothing to do with tax.
I paid with BTC for multiple items here and always I was taxed and paid VAT on it.
People who think that with cryptos they can avoid taxes are living a fairy tale, you will still be taxed on your wage unless your employer will try to avoid the law and do this unlawfully, you will still be taxed at the stores if they will follow the law and issue receipts, it doesn't matter if it's crypto or cash.

You are slowly looking down on the function of a bank to the economy. Without banks, businesses cannot become as strong as they are now. The majority of businesses now owe a lot to the bank. All startups like us need capital to run the project and maintain it for a long time. If there is a shortage of banks, there will probably be lending services with high interest rates and the financial market will become chaotic. We need big and reputable banks, they divide money among the whole economy and help a lot for businesses and individuals who need it.

Of course possible. I believe, the day is not so far when people would able to live their normal life without a bank
I agreed with you. Now we can buy any product from online and locally, anything we need in our life, by using credit/debit cards. Put up our money in credit/debit, is also safe way. So no need bank. But now our country & emonomy both are depend on bank, a lot. So Although there would be some problems cope with new technology(without bank) but those would have solved with time

Living without banks is still possible but transitioning from a living where we are dependent on banks in some cases to a living where we are using digital assets like crypto will take some time or worse it will never happen.

We know already that most of the people are still using fiat currency right now and who are printing it? Central banks. Banks are giving out loans to other people so there are still some people who are depending on banks thru loans. It would be hard for them to get a loan thru crypto since it is decentralized. I know that this is possible but it will take centuries in order for the world to make a transition from our current monetary system to another one.

One thing more is that I don't think that most banks will allow this to happen. It will be disastrous for them too alongside with the employees who are working for the banks. Most of them will be out of jobs if there are no banks. Don't take me wrong with this but I just see it that way since it can happen too.

If the whole world is switching to cryptocurrency, then most likely yes. People will be able to live comfortably without the services of banks. But in fact, the system will not change that way. When switching to cryptocurrency, banks will also begin to use cryptocurrency as a means of payment. Representatives of large banks will not allow the crisis of their companies.

We can live without banks! But every countries economy will be shit. There will be no tax for people so the development of the country will not happen, every public place and roads are not going to be develop and the real people that are going to suffer is the poor people that are relaying only on the government. Public health care, education etc. Will be paid service, the private sectors are going to do it.

Banks are needed and it's impossible for a country to work normally if there's no bank that will regulate their peoples money.

So then that would mean you could not live without banks because there isn't a centralized authority to collect taxes then? I'm not sure of the point you're making here.


Fair point but to be clear, it's not like indigenous people are included heavily in the financial market. If you take the GDP of indigenous communities, I can't imagine it would be much. They tend to be the lowest income group on the U.S. as well.

But even they have access to technology if USD crashed and they were forced to use digital currency.

First thing, world economy wont collapse. I have see the housing crisis and several more "recessions", but the system never breaks because of certain things that are kept in place, which is better not to be thought of by common people.

Secondly, the purpose of a bank and a payment system are different. Banks are needed for loans mainly being the biggest asset being debt. So you need money in emergency you need a bank that you can trust. Does bitcoin allow you the same thing? Essentially it should, but practically you need a lender who you can trust with a collateral to get a loan.

Similarly do people give you deposit schemes to get 5% interest rate? Essentially some projects like Celsisus had done this, but can you trust then with money? No.

Thing is, there will always be banks even if people think they have turned the tables, they really have given away the table to the financial institutions because they are blind in their approach to how the world works. Refute me if you think the opinion is unpopular but the truth always hurts and so people overlook it.

The main purpose of the bank is just to print money, and monitor the banking system that they have given the license, I am talking about the Central bank.

While with bitcoin, I think bank is not need anymore because the goal of bitcoin is to do banking without bank, which is possible since we already have the supply being created and we can transact using the blockchain which is a decentralized system. Now,  what we only need is the government to support crypto so they can give license or legalize the payment processor that would help bitcoin transaction to be faster and cheaper, and by saying this, it means we will stop using fiat and bank will stop printing money too.

Yes, we could live without banks, and it is really hard for us, citizens of the community. The governments are the regulator of the money in a certain country, especially money of the people and the taxes. If there is no banks, there's no taxes that the government can collect and it will become not that effective and we will not have enough budget for the expenses and growth of our country and economy.


Centralized bank are essential especially that we need the authority to regulate our money and produce fiat or paper money so that we can use cash in many transactions. Digital money is not that guaranteed to use in most of our payments because sometimes not all of us have an access to internet especially those indigenous people. It is still effective if we use paper money that's provided by our banks and spread it all over the country so that we have a tangible thing to use.

The system has been designed in a way that Banks still contribute and remain significant in our societies. Bills, school fees (basic and high schools and universities) are paid through the banks. Since it has got the full backing of the governments, it is very difficult to live without until cryptocurrency is able to accomplish the payment systems for the above.

By destroying the nature of the bank, the system of fiat would probably collapse, or at least, be reduced to what is seemingly a useful but useless asset. The first thing that cropped out of my mind when banks were said to be gone would have been the era of the past, trading items for items instead of using cash. After all, the government regulates the supply of fiat cash BUT the central banks are the one responsible for producing the fiat. Sure, you could ask someone else to create it, but the process required to create it is also connected to banks purchasing assets or lending money to other institutions. There's also an issue of Central Banks being the one most involved in regulating the inflation of the market and growth of the economy

In the past.What do you think why the words "past" were used? It was because something better came up, which was the fiat system, so using it as an argument to defeat the one that changed it seems kind of weird imo.

^^ This. As much as we wanted to live without banks, At the current situation it is really hard specially in countries where people are relying on bank for their everyday lives. There are still a lot of people who really believes that it is far safe to keep your money there, and I do believed that this is still case as we all know that banks have been part of our lives for centuries know and I would say have "brainwash" generations after generations already. So it will be very difficult for them to adjust and simply adapt crypto in their lives. The question is, why not take advantage of both systems?

Without any kind of bank? Not just the current form of bank that we all know? I really doubt it.

Rudimentary forms of banks could be traced back thousands and thousands of years ago. This early, even before the peak of the crypto age, we already have what are called crypto banks. So I don't think the banks will perish soon with the advent of crypto. It could transform, though, as it always has been. With our virtual currencies, we could very well see virtual banks as well.

For now, I cannot live without banks. I cannot even live with crypto alone.

In current situation a lot of people are willing to adopt the digital assists instead of banking system in most cases it quite volunarable most of the people are beware how to live life without banking system in the same time the government should provide the suitable mechansim hence they would also integrate the  digital assists instead of banking system i think in future a lot of people moving towards the digital terminologies to used the crypto assists instead of banking system to live their life.

I have started a poll just a couple of days ago about this exact topic: Anybody here trying to live bankless (using Bitcoin / cryptocurrencies)?

Response has bit a bit underwhelming, but there were at least three or four participants who lived "bankless" at least for some time, some of them (I think) from lesser developed countries. Tax payments and general service payments have been mentioned as obstacles, to a lesser extent also volatility.

In my country, I can pay some of my taxes in cash or with a digital wallet managed by a financial company which is not a bank (something like a "local PayPal"), but e.g. for the tax for small businesses a payment via bank transfer or debit card is mandatory, because the government wants to discourage payments in cash (although no "cash abolition" is planned).

This depends heavily on the country you live. In my country I can pay almost all services with cryptocurrencies, but only via a third party payment processor company (which again, are not banks but also regulated and mostly have KYC/AML procedures).

In theory this can be covered by Bitcoin P2P lending, or even by "Bitcoin banks". The main problem here is, however, volatility. If you borrow 1 BTC and just there is a Bitcoin rally, you'll have problems to pay it back. Thus, at this moment, the P2P lending market is not very developed (it exists mostly to provide capital to short sellers) and is not adequate for the "average Joe".

Volatility is also a problem if you got your salary in BTC and don't want it to lose value if there is a crash. (For the volatility problem I'm reseaching for a solution "without" centralized providers, see here).

Also here ... Joe would have to lend Bitcoins to someone and he would get paid interest for that. But the volatility-related risks are still to high for "average Joes".

I agree partially - banks will continue to exist even if Bitcoin was perfectly stable and had replaced fiat totally. They'll still have advantages managing risks, as they have the best algorithms for risk management (BlackRock's Aladdin, for example) and lots of connections to the local economy (or to the "blue chip companies" in the case of bigger banks). But it's possible that some typical banking services, like a savings account, could be "taken over" by cryptocurrencies.

I mean, you could live without banks, but having absolutely no regulation over someone's funds essentially means there is no purpose of government. The federalism system was partly created because of taxation reasons. A centralized authority needed to maintain consistent currencies between states and have the authority to collect taxes among all residents. The federal reserve is, at least by part, a bank and I'd argue there'd be no way to run a country without some centralized bank.

Hypothetically if Bitcoin were the sole economic currency, how would tax collection work?

Yes, it's really possible if we incentive the exchange crypto to goods, food and all kind of service that money is used. In the distant past they used gold, silver and precious metals in these exchanges, now everything is digital with us.

This movement is happening just for early adopters with persistency.

We have to do more, more and more simple softwares to mass adoption.

I doubt though, majority is still dependent with banking system per se.


Of course everyone has this thought of exiting the banking system to be fully independent of them. However, as of today, it can't be done, we are still need them for support, like you said, credit/debit card remains as the most used mode of payment today, and not cryptos. So it will be difficult to just abandon the banking system right now.

I think as far as fiat is there, banks will be inevitable. You might not need it but there would be a lot of people that will do. Even though there is this freedom that crypto currency offers, there are those that will still use banks for something. It might be because of the small and boring interest, maybe for other things but there are some people that are actually living without using these banks, though they are having a hard time getting fiat for themselves too.