Why is everyone a bank? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@kaushikktiwari/why-the-f-k-is-everyone-a-bank-6576de9d262d <comment><USER2> Another answer: because regular banks are awful to deal with. They don't have nice APIs to just move money around. They apply velocity limits at surprising times. They can terminate your account suddenly for opaque reasons. They charge high regular fees and even higher "gotcha" fees if you make a mistake. They can take back money sent to you for up to 90 days, but often can't get back money you sent to crooks even if you discover your error the next day. And 100 other complaints.

So if you're doing something involving moving a lot of money around, you may need to be your own bank to make the whole system work well.

<comment><USER3> Honestly, I wouldn't trust Google (or any other tech giant) to be my bank.

My bank doesn't have a history of locking people's accounts when they post "the wrong" political opinions online.

My bank doesn't have a plan to monetize access to my account, or to limit use of the account to only those activities of which the bank's army of woke employees approve.

I think I'll stick with a real bank, thanks.

<comment><USER4> Oh, so not true. Banks often close accounts of types of people or businesses they don't like at the moment. Just ask a PE/VC with a BofA account!

<comment><USER3> That, though, is mostly about risk management -- and even if they close your account, you get the money back.

(I also would never do business with Bank of America, because they're awful and they hate their customers even more than Wells does)

But even BofA doesn't do things like read your Twitter posts and YouTube comments so they can blackhole your account if you have have the wrong politics.

The tech giants, on the other hand, will seize your stuff in a heartbeat if you step out of Silicon Valley's definition of acceptable beliefs and opinions.

My credit card works at any merchant -- and the fees are the same. I don't get hit with a temporary ban if I buy a Chick-fil-A sandwich, for example.

<comment><USER5> > But even BofA doesn't do things like read your Twitter posts and YouTube > comments so they can blackhole your account if you have have the wrong > politics.

Yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Another asnswer: Because the people making the business decisions in these companies is the only thing they can do.

When you have no vision as a company or no visionary in your team, you get served by the countless consultants and ex-bankers who went to big-tech because of its the new Wallstreet. Of course, they have no idea what Tech does and is and of course no clue how to provide something of significant value. Instead, they steer the companies into direction where is familiar to them through their finance classes and/or their Private Equity, Venture Capital backgrounds.

The fact that everyone wants to become a bank is not engagement, is not profits. Its a sign of a failing economy where capital decided that the best thing it can do is to invest in itself.

<comment><USER7> Also: Debt is cheap these days, and regular people are in desperate need of cash - so it's a sellers market.

Where I'm from (Norway), we've seen an explosion in these offshoot banks - i.e consumer loans / credit card providers. Airlines, big box electronic stores, etc.

Ans surprise, surprise, many of these banks are raking in cash. And triple surprise, defaults in credit cards / consumer loans have also exploded.

It should also be mentioned we have some of the most creditor-friendly laws / system in the world. It's almost impossible to get rid of debt, because there's an automated pipeline from banks to debt-collectors to government instances that will do the final debt collection via wage and welfare garnishments.

These banks will foreclose your house, repo your car, and whatnot on defaulted / outstanding debt as little as equivalent to $10 (but of course, by the time many have noticed this, that measly $10 has grown in to thousands, through a battery of fees and compounding interest of said fees).

I've been calling it for some time now: Our next global recession will come from consumer debt and credit cards. Banks are handing out credit to anyone with a pulse

<comment><USER8> Yeah the whole credit thing is nice, but I wonder how many people are pay check to paycheck with less than 1K in savings driving brand new cars, living in a large house with a brand new iPhone and flat screen. Then when people are closed to paying off their mortgage, they refinance or take out a second mortgage.

However there is someone who says if you need a new car, only pay cash so if you only have 500 bucks, get one off of Craigslist to get to point A to point B but in a way I feel like that's bad advice as wouldn't be reliable and you'd end up spending a bunch on repairs.

So I feel like credit is good, but in a way people use it for too much instead of saving. My favorite idea is to just use credit cards no differently than a debit card, don't spend anything you know you won't be able to pay off. Then instead of paying banks, they pay you! Sounds like cashback is worthless with interest. So I guess a different mindset than the majority of people, but the credit card companies are probably hoping you slip up at some point.

Then as for credit in business, I feel like the best way to use credit is to scale up something that is already working out for you... Maybe you need more inventory because you are selling fast but still waiting on your supplies to pay you, so throwing in a bit of credit you know you can for sure pay back would help keep up with the demand.

I know some people hate credit, but having a good score might help you when you get a job, auto insurance premiums, apartment but laws vary by states too in what companies can use your score for. For example I know California doesn't allow them to use it for auto insurance, and I think credit checks for job applicants is limited too but Ohio doesn't care really what companies use your credit score for.

So if you are 18, get a credit card just to treat yourself to some McDonalds once a month, then pay it off fully when you get your statement you'd be better off credit wise than someone who didn't have any credit at all. A lot of stuff they don't teach in school, you can get a better financial education on YouTube.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > It also happens to be an incredibly sticky product. Think of the last time > you saw an overdraft charge on your statement and swore to yourself that > this was the last straw — you are taking your business elsewhere only to be > confronted with the downstream effects of moving your "financial address" — > telling HR where to send the next paycheck, calling up each utility company, > changing autopay for each credit card bill and so forth!

Here's the thing. The stickiness of a bank is only a mental illusion. If you actually rationally calculate the time it takes to switch a bank, it's not that bad. Changing where the next paycheck is deposited takes five minutes. Changing where each credit card autopay draws money from takes five minutes. Once you have resolved to leave a bank, it probably takes about an hour to actually do it. (And for typical Americans that one overdraft fee is well more than an hour's worth of salary.)

I find this interesting because it illustrates the difference between the mental workload and the actual workload can be great. Coming up with a checklist of a dozen places to change the routing and account number seems overwhelming. It is actually not.

<comment><USER10> In the UK we have the "Switch Guarantee"[1]. It was setup when there was stickiness in current accounts (English term for checking accounts). Now when you sign up for a current account you can opt-in to this service and they do payment redirection. So if someone tries to transfer your old account money, it'll get forwarded onto your new bank. That's on top of them organising the migration of payments.

1\. [https://www.currentaccountswitch.co.uk/Pages/Home.aspx](https://www.currentaccountswitch.co.uk/Pages/Home.aspx)

<comment><USER11> In the Netherlands we have a similar service, but I am often surprised that almost nobody knows about it and people hesitate to switch banks.

[https://www.overstapservice.nl/](https://www.overstapservice.nl/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Related: In Denmark (where I live), we have an officially designated "NemKonto" (translates to "EasyAccount"), which is where most employers, public institutions, etc. put paychecks, payouts, etc. automatically. So if you change banks, you can simply designate the new account your official NemKonto, and the money will automatically be routed there - no need to contact anyone.

This, in addition to how easy our PBS (DK version of ACH) is to use means switching banks is something that can be done easily. I know of people who will regularly contact 5-10 banks with their current mortgage details and ask for a better deal, and then go back to their current bank and tell them "match this offer or I'm switching".

We also have a simple interest on overdraft (usually 8-15% annually on any amount over draft), though excessive overdraft will get your account locked. But beyond that, no fees for hitting negative $0.05. Is there any US bank that offer a similar fee structure? I imagine people would migrate in droves if that was already the case.

<comment><USER13> > I know of people who will regularly contact 5-10 banks with their current > mortgage details and ask for a better deal, and then go back to their > current bank and tell them "match this offer or I'm switching".

That's common in the US and has nothing to do with ACH in any way. That's a transaction where you likely would not use ACH at all and would use a wire transfer.

> Is there any US bank that offer a similar fee structure?

Yes, there are many. One of my banks, Capital One, calls this "Overdraft Line of Credit" and the current interest rate is 12.75%. They also offer "Next Day Grace" where you have a day to cover the overdraft and "Free Savings Transfer" where they just transfer money from your savings account as options as well to avoid overdraft fees.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is this going to be the sort of phenomenon that we will eventually look back as a signifier of the dumb money economic bubble we're in, similar to past trends like the wild access to credit in the Roaring Twenties, the run up to the S&L crisis in the '80s, the worthless tech IPOs of the Dot-Com Bubble, the liar's loans of the 2000s, and another examples of rampant finacialization?

If the environment is one in which non-financial institutions can easily create banks, easily find customers for their banks, and not invite regulator scrutiny, does that mean behind the scenes something is going horribly wrong?

<comment><USER15> The tech companies aren't even underwriting the accounts. They are just resellers of accounts from actual banks, throwing on a fancy web interface and then data mining your transactions.

<comment><USER14> I'm not exactly claiming that Robinhood checking accounts or the Apple Card will blow up Goldman Sachs and kick off the next recession, but it does feel like that if we're at the point where companies unrelated to finance are jumping into it just because it's easy to, we're in a time of irrational exuberance. Extravagantly so.

<comment><USER16> Can you explain why you think Robinhood is unrelated to finance and is jumping into it just because it's easy to?

<comment><USER14> Not the best example, perhaps, but a stock brokerage app getting into banking (especially with shady marketing [0]) feels like feature creep.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18699995](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18699995)

<comment><USER17> Really? I'm struggling to think of any major stock brokerage that doesn't offer banking services.

<comment><USER14> One wouldn't normally consider an app-based brokerage, six years old and less than 500 employees, to be considered a major brokerage.

Is it common for boutique brokerages to offer banking?

<comment><USER17> I'm not sure why you consider Robinhood to be a boutique brokerage or what having an app (as opposed to... physical locations?) has to do with anything.

They have over 6 million accounts, which is more than E*TRADE and within a factor of 2 of Charles Schwab or TD Ameritrade. And these brokerages apparently felt enough of a competitive threat that they all adopted Robinhood's commission-free model.

Regardless, even if you don't consider Robinhood to be a major brokerage, they clearly aspire to be one, so offering banking services makes perfect sense.

<comment><USER14> Guess I underestimated them based on their youth and company size. Didn't know they had disrupted the market so quickly. If jumping into banking services is an industry convention, I suppose that goes to show that even a brokerage of Robinhood's age and size must have the stability and temperament to provide reliable banking services that customers can trust despite their breakneck Silicon Valley startup ethos and lack of prior experience in checking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Looking at the situation in Sweden, I would say the cause is the bank themselves. Banks here are currently trying to remove every aspect of the banking industry that is not a digital service. Offices are a cost center. Physical money are a cost center. Talking with customers is a cost center. By shedding all those cost centers the bank can focus on the parts that make most money and raise stock value.

Google, Apple are likely looking on and discovering that digital products is something which they too can do, and their size allow them to jump into the same market. All the parts of the banking industry that would prevent them is exactly the same parts which the banking industry is removing.

<comment><USER19> Cost/profit center is such a bogus concept. I can't believe almost all big companies use it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The points make well enough sense, but the author is also the professed founder of this: [https://betterbank.app/](https://betterbank.app/)

<comment><AUTHOR> does that make the points less valid? I felt it added to the credibility of the piece? Looking forward to your criticism on that

<comment><USER21> No, it does not make your points less valid, _if_ they are valid. But it is reasonable to assume that the arguments of this piece form the foundational assumptions of the product you are selling. People will want to take this into account when considering your arguments.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right! This one is more of a general overview of the space. I will write one about the assumptions we are making wrt to betterbank.app

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's easy (and fun) to complain about the bad (or just weird) product experiences that banks regularly churn out. Believe it or not, most banks are trying their best. But as other commenters have noted, banks aren't staffed by technologists, so their choices for how to solve these problems begin and end with buying one of the available off-the-shelf software products. Spoiler alert, these products generally are both expensive and not very good.

If you want to understand the toolkit bankers have at their disposal, take a look at FIS, Fiserv, and Jack Henry. These three companies represent approximately $170 billion in market cap. Your interactions with your bank, whether it's a click in an app or a conversation with an actual banker, almost certainly bottom out with a call into one of these company's software systems. These systems are (almost) all mainframe software originally designed in the 1980s. Every product the bank delivers is built on this shaky foundation, which results in all sorts of workarounds and weirdness at every layer of the stack.

That all worked fine back in the '80s, but in the decades since, not only have our expectations changed (most bankers don't know what "API" stands for, by the way), but also banks' regulatory reporting requirements have expanded dramatically. Governments wants to know (very reasonably) that a terrorist or money launderer won't be able to make payments. But when you mix in the inertia of old enterprise software and the relative dearth of good alternatives, the result is a broken product experience (like the random velocity controls like @tlb cited above).

Being a bank is big and complex. And since deregulation and the Internet happened, being a bank is no longer about geography (remember branches?), it's about software and product. This seems like a pretty natural fit for a startup: break off a desirable chunk of the bank's customers and deliver a modern, specialized solution that's 10x better. There's ~$12 trillion of bank deposits in the U.S., that's a lot of market to go after.

* * *

Full disclosure, my company, Treasury Prime ([https://treasuryprime.com/](https://treasuryprime.com/)) sells software to banks so that we can expose developer APIs for banking. If you have a fintech startup and you need a bank partner with good, modern APIs, email me: email@example.com.

<comment><USER23> I have to imagine that you get used a bunch in the backends of FinTech products, but any chance better IT starts to reach consumers? My inability to know _exactly_ what's going on with my money on my own terms is endless frustrating. The aggregators help, but are still quite limited.

<comment><USER24> I don't think the new breed of fintech startups is going to help here much. The reason you can't see what's going on with your money on your own terms is because banks want you to use their software in order to upsell you financial products. The articles point out that the new fintech companies are also interested in exploiting the stickiness and eyball-attracting aspects of banking, if not for direct upselling then for something else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Fintech only provides better UX on the same old system of banking. The real issue with banks is the staggering amount of regulation which acts both as an innovation killer and as a high barrier to entry, which in turn stifles innovation even more.

It's the golden cage dilemma banks find themselves into.

Fintech looks cool until it stops working, then you discover it's the same system, only run by a startup.

</comment><comment><USER26> Everyone is a bank today for the same reason everyone was a social network in the 00's.

A few startups started encroaching into financial services territory, took all the risk (including regulatory), and now that it's clear it's something worth pursuing Big Tech is following, expecting to leverage their existing products/services/ecosystem to lock you in by yet another aspect your life.

<comment><USER14> As the engineer and writer Alex Payne put it, these startups represent "the field offices of a large distributed workforce assembled by venture capitalists and their associate institutions," doing low-overhead, low-risk R&D for five corporate giants. In such a system, the real disillusionment isn't the discovery that you're unlikely to become a billionaire; it's the realization that your feeling of autonomy is a fantasy, and that the vast majority of you have been set up to fail by design.

\- No Exit: Struggling to Survive a Modern Gold Rush (2014)

<comment><USER27> That's an interesting perspective. Related to it, I often feel like entrepreneurs in tech don't realise how much their innovation is restricted by capital markets.

OP's startup is actually a great example of this. Medical debt is indeed a troubling problem in the USA, but OP's solution is yet another financial product, something that can get funded. VCs can't fund single-payer healthcare policy entrepreneurship even if that's actually what would solve the medical debt problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a very good point! I agree!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I dread the raise of the tech company banks. I think we need EU level regulation to ensure you are not orphaned by companies that decide they don't want you legal business because you offended some third party that is applying political pressure to the bank. A digital and financial rights charter.

</comment><comment><USER29> Because there is so much free cash it's easy to build one just to pass your cash to your grandkids?

Ironically, fiat coins and banks are going to become so virtual , that bitcoin will look real in comparison.

also ironically, the author makes another bank

</comment><comment><USER14> You know what also provides most of the services of a bank? A credit union. Why aren't companies launching those?

<comment><USER30> Because they don't want to. Why would you want your members to be a part of it, just sticks with the super low interest rates, fractional reserve, rampant speculation and all of the profits

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> There are only two uses cases left for money center banks. (1) You might be able to get a branch safe deposit box. (2) Same day payment on credit cards, that bank. Fidelity, and perhaps other zero fee brokerage accounts handle everything else.

<comment><USER9> Does Fidelity allow you to deposit cash?

<comment><USER32> "Integrated cash management" (a debit card, etc) is abundantly available from discount brokerages, and is systemically important to their businesses. Fidelity legally can't call it a checking account so they call it a Cash Management Account; brokerages that own banks (Schwab, etc) just call it checking.

<comment><USER9> You did not answer my question. As far as I can see, the Fidelity CMA allows you to withdraw cash using their debit card, but I see no way to deposit cash. Nor does it provide features like cashier's check.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This article seems to just be an advertisement for the authors new bank account?

<comment><AUTHOR> its not an advertisement my friend. Just explaining how I see the world as someone who is working in it. Tried to be as unobtrusive as possible!

<comment><USER34> I'm with you. You're contributing a thought piece and unobtrusively include a link to your bank at the bottom. It's not overtly biased, and it's neat you're getting attention for your banking app by, instead of describing it, simply saying you're doing something "interesting."

I think, by focusing on the $5000 emergency cash proposition, your customer segment will generate more costs and hassles than their debit card fees and whatever interest spread you eek out in today's world. You'need a way for your customers to generate more value-- what have you thought of? Ads?

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks perspective1! I find overt self-promotion to be distasteful, so glad it came across well. We are using the interchange fees to pay for the $5000 emergency fund, they have to move their direct deposit over to switch "ON" the safety net. We do break even based on our current estimates of annual spend and claims, but looking at a few different ways, upselling insurance is the big one! Will write about it and make sure to post on this comment thread!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I think the article more or less nailed it, but the topic probably deserves journalistic attention of the kind journalists complain no longer exists.

The basic "fintech" startup theory is fairly reasonable:

(1) financial services have a lot of fat and/or profit.

(2) financial services is/should be a tech subsector. Debit/credit cards, current accounts & such are nearly commodities, one is as good as another. Apart from customer service, UX is all that differentiates them^, from a meaningful subset of customers. That's software.

(3) The competition is soft. Many banks have terrible consumer facing software, for example. Many have costly legacy structures.

</comment><comment><USER36> Because it looks easy. And in an age where VC money doesn't care about profits its easy to create a bank. When the fraud, regulatory compliance and low interest rate horsemen come knocking most of these efforts wont last.

</comment><comment><USER37> Is the overwhelming debit spending vs credit spending an emotionally charged and risk averse rationale decision by the general populace or just unfortunate financial illiteracy?

<comment><AUTHOR> Access is the big one, risk-averse because of being burned in the past. Even missing a single payment means 25% APR+late fees, so likely to not put everyday expenses on credit. Use it more for planned stuff, like travel etc. The biggest irony is credit card rewards are a tax on the poor for the rich--- merchants jack up prices for all but the rich spend and benefit!

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> The problem is that no direct to consumer fintech company has found a legal way to make money other than 1) processing transactions 2) holding savings. The examples of struggling companies in the article underscores this point.

</comment><comment><USER39> Is that a trick question? it's because banks get to make money without doing any work. It's a wonderful position to be in, the middle-man who just takes a cut of everybody else's transactions.

<comment><USER40> In 2009 the Fed tore down the wall between retail and investment banks. Which allowed the Fed to pump the latter full of cash. Stands to reason that every other large non-finance corporation wants to get in on that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Reminds me of a great talk my a16z about the holy grail is the bank account.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gK9owf0PSZU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gK9owf0PSZU)

<comment><USER42> EVERYONE should watch this one. thanks:-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> It has never, at any point since the introduction of electronic transfers, made the slightest bit of sense for 'payment processing' services to charge a fee which scales based upon the amount being transacted. Yet, every means of transferring money has always come with a percentage-based fee. This isn't just a simple matter of rent-seeking on the part of the financial class. It's outright dangerous, and really shouldn't be tolerated by any government. The cost to transfer money does not scale based upon the size of the numbers involved. And as the vast majority of transactions overall in our economy are now electronic, this puts payment processors essentially in the role of taxing authorities. They have the power to counteract the monetary policies of the government should they feel like doing so. Imagine if the Federal Reserve decided to print more money in order to encourage lending or something like that, but the CEOs of the largest payment processors disagreed. They could simply raise their processing fees, making it more expensive for money to be used, compensating and making the actions of the Fed ineffective. There is no law preventing them from doing this, as far as I know, and it would have immediate monumental impact on the economy.

That's a juicy target. Any company willing to clear those regulatory hurdle gets to become not just a company, but effectively a taxing authority.

<comment><USER44> Hmm... it seems to me that the service is exposed to more risk for higher transaction amounts (say, something is crooked, or just goes wrong and the service winds up holding the bag).

That's not to say that the current fees are necessarily fair, but it does make sense to me that larger transaction amounts should be charged more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> The thing you tend to hear about banking services is that everyone is dissatisfied with them. This is probably why a lot of startups think they can jump in and disrupt.

People should lend directly to each other, or have sensibly priced investments, or people should have simple bank accounts that don't surprise you with charges, or be able to change FX cheaply. Those kinds of ideas are pretty easy to suggest for outsiders, and the answer is always "I'm gonna make a website that's better than the incumbent".

To be fair, startup FS sites have tended to be easier to navigate, and focusing on an area like FX does create a simpler user experience.

The question is whether any money can be made. For instance we now have a load of challenger banks that have a slick app for sending money to people. But how much is the customer actually worth? Do they stick around or open a whole bunch due to it being so easy? Also what are you gonna upsell them on other than the metal card?

What about the lending markets? How come Lending Club has issues making money as the premier business in the direct lending category?

What about the investment businesss? Competing on price is generally something they tell you not to do in business school, but that seems to be the main value proposition as far as I can tell. I reckon Google could jump in here though. They have credibility among the general populace as being pretty smart with ML, and I bet they could morph their bank into a super hedge fund.

The FX niche, I don't know how TransferWise are doing, but it's fairly easily encroached on by the challenger banks. The backend is fully commoditized, it's a question if getting customers. Which is probably why TW are offering bank account like services.

</comment><comment><USER46> When you're a bank you get rent from many economic transactions without providing anything of value except being rich to start. And even better, if you're a real bank, then you can create money out of thin air as debt on your balance sheet via fractional reserve banking. There's effectively a universal basic income for banks. What company wouldn't want to get in on that?

<comment><USER47> Thin air? What are all the employees doing then?

<comment><USER48> Yup, thin air. When people borrow money, the bank just creates the money out of nowhere. That money doesn't actually exist until the debt is paid. Banks are ultimately responsible for the extreme inflation of virtually all currencies currently in use.

<comment><USER49> That is not at all how the money multiplier works.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_multiplier](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_multiplier)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> If you're interested in this space, we're building a fully-regulated platform bank to essentially power all of these consumer/business facing banking applications.

This is us: [https://griffinbank.com](https://griffinbank.com)

</comment><comment><USER51> Some cryptocurrency communities push the idea of "Be your own bank", especially with hardware wallets specifically because of this problem of having to trust / rely on custodians.

My sister-in-law had her accounts frozen for a year for something a business partner did. If she had all her money in her own hardware wallet, she wouldn't have lost access to her funds.

Obviously, being your own bank is hard from a security perspective, which is why most people are happy to outsource their banking to a custodian. Heck, even crypto people outsource to custodial accounts like Coinbase.

<comment><USER52> Hardware wallets can protect your assets, but they can't protect you from bad rep. People won't make transactions with you if transactions are monitored or at risk (every business with someone having problems with the law are hinerently risky)

Just like sanctions against states they could not freeze your accounts, but they could prevent you from spending your money or collecting payments or making regular business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> I've encountered several startups that have founded banks through American Indian Reservations, instantly creating an international money laundering vehicle, which they use as a tax haven for wealthy people while also being able to create money directly by loaning it to separate corporate shells. This may be "smart" but I steer away from anyone with this type of "strategic thinking" because they are playing with fire.

</comment><comment><USER54> > Think of the last time you saw an overdraft charge on your statement and > swore to yourself that this was the last straw — you are taking your > business elsewhere only to be confronted with the downstream effects of > moving your "financial address" — telling HR where to send the next > paycheck, calling up each utility company, changing autopay for each credit > card bill and so forth

Isn't this what CASS is for? Is there really no US equivalent?

</comment><comment><USER55> Because that's where the money is. -- Willie Sutton

</comment><comment><USER42> Sounds crazy --- I don't want to start a billion (trillion $$$) bank. What happens if "my bank" has never more than $10,000 in total assets. Our loans never go above $100. Do want to offer ATM cards, just we're nano-sized.

Do I somehow slip under all the banking laws? Just as an "experiment?" Is this something that I could do? OR is it just a crazy idea?

</comment><comment><USER56> Traditional banks have a consumer tech problem. This has led to the rise of Robinhood, Venmo, etc. Partnering with tech players like Apple and Google allows them access to their customers.

Big tech wants access to financial services for a few reasons laid out in the article in addition to FOMO and bypassing regulation.

</comment><comment><USER57> But they aren't banks, they are just partnering with banks and putting a smooth veneer on top of old/greedy banks. The current trend seems very similar to when retailers all launched their "own" credit cards.

</comment><comment><USER58> >Why is everyone a bank?

Seems to me that sensible ones would have more capital than they really need, and it would be so poorly-performing that they can loan it out for better returns than they would get using it for their own growth purposes.

</comment><comment><USER59> Existing banks' customer service totally sucks. These tech-focused banks have an enormous opportunity to just provided better customer service. Insightful article, I never thought about interchange as a business model.

</comment><comment><USER60> Isn't it just data mining? I assume the big credit card companies aggregate spending by vendor for their customer base and make projections about each vendor's quarterly revenues then sell metrics to hedge funds.

</comment><comment><USER61> > for a large credit scarred portion of the populace, it's their primary > spending account!

As a European, this sentence seemed weird. Why wouldn't it be? Do people not use debit cards in the us?

</comment><comment><USER62> It would be nice to have a system where you can avoid getting put on the credit bureaus at all.

Be your own bank? No agreement to have your credit monitored by those toads.

</comment><comment><USER63> I was always wondering why Microsoft sunsetted MS Money and Google didn't built something like that. This is a treasure of information

</comment><comment><USER64> Interest is profitable. You take cash, you make interest. It's just a step away from the oldest game in the book—loan sharking.

</comment><comment><USER65> I work at a bank -- it wants to be a tech company. In fact a lot of banks aspire to be a tech company merely selling financial products.

</comment><comment><USER66> Literally everyone could be a bank with Bitcoin

</comment><comment><USER67> Not "everyone" is a bank. Some big companies can afford to be a bank.

Becoming a bank (or an insurance company) while it is actually not that hard (information mgmt wise) is really expensive due to regulatory bumps. Thus only big money can afford to start up banks (or insure'ers). These rules ensure that you always have capitalists running these shows. Thus making the world even more unfair. I guess the rules that make it so artificially hard to start up in those sectors are prolly lobbied into existence.

</comment><comment><USER68> I am very grateful for my local credit union. Six years and they haven't fucked me over once.

</comment><comment><USER69> Because banks are where the money is. (yeah, lame pun, but I had to write it :))

<comment><USER70> I can't see a pun there. Am I missing something?

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> The article doesn't touch this, US-centric, but I feel worth mentioning is the EU's PSD2 (Payment Services Directive 2) which is driving a lot of consumer banking Fintech/Regtech.

An article from 2016 which I think gives the best tl;dr especially highlighting the roles of ccount Information Service Providers (from roboadvisors to replacements of traditional 3rd party transaction layers such as Visa) and Payment Initiation Service Providers (which essentially turn any traditional bank into a whitelabel product) [https://www.finextra.com/blogposting/12668/psd2---what- chang...](https://www.finextra.com/blogposting/12668/psd2---what-changes)

</comment><comment><USER72> "Heads I Win; Tails You Lose" \--Banks

</comment><comment><USER73> sounds like we need more taxes cause these balance sheets are way too high

</comment><comment><USER74> Because in capitalism there are really only two things that make money: real estate and finance. Everything else is just combining real estate and finance in interesting ways.

McDonalds is a real estate company that happens to make burgers.

The traditional car manufacturers are banks that happen to build cars.

</comment><comment><USER75> > Why is everyone a bank?

Banks usually make a shitload of money, I guess.

</comment><comment><USER76> Because that's where the money is.

</comment><comment><USER31> "It's the dominant payment method when it comes to everyday expenses — think milk and diapers at the supermarket or a quick bite at the corner deli."

For financial ninkompoops.

<comment><AUTHOR> too harsh brother, I agree it makes way more sense to use a credit card and pay it off immediately. It's just not that easy for a lot of people.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do I own the content I pay for (code/artwork) on freelance sites? - <AUTHOR>

Some other questions that will come up:
Is it overkill to be concerned that a contractor may claim to have only licensed the use of the work and not allow resale?
How are 3rd party claims of content ownership handled?
What if these problems arise months or years down the line? <comment><USER2> It all depends on how the sale is structured. Not being familiar with any particulars, I would assume it would be work for hire. In the US work for hire means who ever did the hiring is considered the author of the work. In Europe they often have moral rights which can muddy the waters in such cases.

3rd party claims of ownership would be handled just like any other claim of 3rd party ownership.

<comment><AUTHOR> I imagine these sites would be more prone to this and that they would have a built in way to handle it already from being barraged with claims all day long. Not the case?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This sort of thing is spelled out in the contract. If you aren't signing a contract, you should be.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, a contract is a must, of course. I'm wondering if I'll need to add that step in myself via external communication (I'll send them a contract to sign and return.) Do these sites have this (i.e. a generic contract for services rendered with some kind of checkbox) built into their workflow already?

<comment><USER4> Generally they have terms of service - designed to cover them - and maybe some dispute resolution stuff.</comment></comment></comment>


Tim Cook: New Apple CEO and Most Powerful Gay in America - <AUTHOR> http://sfist.com/2011/08/25/tim_cook_becomes_most_powerful_gay.php

<comment><USER2> As far as I know, Tim Cook has never publicly discussed his sexuality, though there has been much discussion on the topic. All of the articles about it only cite "two well-placed sources" as evidence.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Must say I feel a swell of pride today! I had no idea Cook was gay.</comment>


Resonance NodeGroup: Create complex animated transitions in React - <AUTHOR> https://sghall.github.io/resonance/#/documentation/node-group <comment><USER2> I used to have a bad rep at my last job for always being a negative nancy about animations in our UI. In my opinion it's extremely easy for people to get overzealous with them and abuse them, which just makes an interface feel sluggish. It's especially annoying when a common action is animated and I'm sitting there waiting for the animation to finish over and over.

Animations can be useful to prevent disorientation during a transformation of the UI - hinting at something disappearing or perhaps showing the difference between two states when that difference in important. But I find all too often people simply put them in because they can and I feel like I'm back in 4th grade watching my classmates' Powerpoint 2003 presentations.

<comment><USER3> I agree with your general point but I will say that the "State Circle Pack" demo is actually a great use of animation; particularly when you slow down the animation to ~2sec.

You can see which groups resize or drop out, and which groups take there place. Much more illustrative than most animated pie charts or bar graphs you'd normally would see for the same info.

[https://sghall.github.io/resonance/#/redux- examples/packed-b...](https://sghall.github.io/resonance/#/redux- examples/packed-by-age)

<comment><USER2> Yep, I'm not trying to talk down this library (some of the examples do look nice). And React's core is a UI diffing engine so it lends itself nicely to the useful types of animation I was trying to describe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Respectfully, these animations are more gratuitous than beautiful. Animations are meant to add to the information and demonstrate relationships over time and place.

For the Simple bar charts, the animations should only show growth and decay, not fly around the screen nor flash through 16 decimal points of precision if the final value only needs 3.

The Pie Chart handles growth / decay very well, but it's only half-complete by starting with visible text markers around a pie that's not there.

Alphabet and State Bar Chart are simply bad, but I did enjoy the States Circle Pack animations. Curiously, I found the Circle Pack can't really display more than a dozen states at a time (at that size), and showing fewer is equally incomplete. So does it actually need a count slider?

Finally, the duration slider in the State Circle Pack doesn't add much to the information since all animations are slowed down, including fade out / in. It might work better if it simply paused on the informative steps (all old states, remaining states, all new states).

<comment><AUTHOR> Have to disagree. If you look at the link on the states bar chart example... [https://sghall.github.io/resonance/#/redux- examples/states-b...](https://sghall.github.io/resonance/#/redux- examples/states-by-age)

That's a recreation of an example done by Mike Bostock which is really part of the canon on object constancy... [https://bost.ocks.org/mike/constancy/](https://bost.ocks.org/mike/constancy/)

Same with the alphabet example. It's considered a reference example on the enter, update and exit pattern... [https://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/3808234](https://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/3808234)

The "bounce" animation is, in my mind, just a bit of fun.

<comment><USER4> I'll concede they're accepted patterns, I just don't find they add much value since there's a lot of information flying around the screen at the same time. If the change in values are important enough to animate, steps w/ overlapping action would be stronger.

Your examples are certainly stronger than the Resonance pack. The General Update Pattern uses color to add anticipation to the changes.

I'm fine with bounce animations when whimsy is appropriate the the audience. I also appreciate that Resonance uses ease functions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Maybe animations are a good idea, maybe they're not. It depends on the use case, obviously. But this is still a nice bit of work, and we ought to just recognize it for that. After all, if practicality were a strict prerequisite half the world's hackery would be disqualified.

</comment><comment><USER6> Demos look good, and at first glance this might be the most easy to grok animation api I've seen for react. Excited to try this out!

</comment><comment><USER7> Opened the URL on my phone.. noticed that the HTML demo content is misaligned on the right side..closed the page

</comment><comment><USER8> When will it be enough with the "Beautiful" nonsense in webdev titles? It seems "beautiful" has become clickbait for the webdevs. Anything is "beautiful". Please set the title to something a lot less click bait, such as "Animations in React".

<comment><USER9> It's just part of the trend for every tool to come with a sales pitch</comment></comment>


Show HN: Halik, next-generation time traveling debugger for Java - <AUTHOR> http://halik.io <comment><USER2> Congratulations, it looks very good. I like timeline and that you can monitor single variable for modifications. Will give it a try over weekend.

Does recorder handle multi-threaded code?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. Looking forward for more feedback!

Yes, there's a basic support (more is on the way). Example here: [https://preview.halik.io/browse/3471d7c0-5e0b-41c8-8699-5346...](https://preview.halik.io/browse/3471d7c0-5e0b-41c8-8699-53460fbd1e9b).

It records what happened in all threads, and allows you to correlate data changes across threads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This looks awesome!

Does Halik upload any data from IntelliJ to halik.io or does it keep everything local? In the video, I see halik.io being used, but in the background screenshot image on the site, localhost is used.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

It keeps the session local. It will upload to halik.io when you tell it to. There's a share option in the top right corner. Once shared, your session can be accessed by anyone.

I will make sure to clarify that better going onwards.

</comment></comment><comment> java-man This is great! When will it be a part of Eclipse? The masses want it now! :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! It's likely to be the next item on the backlog: [https://trello.com/b/V1KuKHeE/halik- roadmap](https://trello.com/b/V1KuKHeE/halik-roadmap) :D

<comment> java-man Seriously, very impressive. Even seeing a simple 10-level history of return values from function calls would be a much needed addition to any debugger, but this idea goes beyond that. Well done indeed!</comment></comment></comment>


Kirk Goldsberry's Quest to Track Every Shot in the NBA - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/10/faster-higher-stronger/?mbid=synd_digg

<comment><USER2> Nice link with the season tipping off tonight!</comment>


184 year-old Indian library goes digital, including 444 yr-old book on Alexander - <AUTHOR> http://www.nextbigwhat.com/kerala-state-library-digital-available-online-297/ <comment><USER2> As a history amateur, it is painful to force myself never to probe into south indian history [of which I've heard so much, growing up there] simply because I've learned by experience that it only leads to frustration and disappointment at the lack of information and research. This work is incredible.

<comment><USER3> What "lack of history and reasearch"? This field is full of amazing works. Three great examples (there are many more): [http://books.google.com/books/about/Symbols_of_substance.htm...](http://books.google.com/books/about/Symbols_of_substance.html?id=znFuAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y) [http://books.google.com/books/about/Languages_and_Nations.ht...](http://books.google.com/books/about/Languages_and_Nations.html?id=0W0oVIZgyEwC&redir_esc=y) <http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780198063124.do>

<comment><USER2> Those three books talk about the 1500-1700 Nayaka rule, languages in 1700-1800 and the third book's summary says it talks about the 12th-14th centuries. That doesn't qualify as evidence of anything. Here is what I'd pay to learn about -

1) Origins, dating and translations of the literature - the sangam lit, the andal songs, etc.

2) Exactly what the fuck was happening in south india from 500 BC to 500 AD? There are Roman coins found in south india and south indian coins found in Rome. One of the Ptolemies refer to a pandian king. Pliny the younger complains about the amount of money spent on indian goods by the roman people. Apparently the romans also had a huge space reserved for indian peppers. One of the chinese explorers have some descriptions of a port in tamil nadu. All this more or less sums up what we know about this period. I know I have to cite sources but it will take a lot of time to hunt them down and I'll do it over the next few days. What else was happening? How did the people dress? Did they know about the greek and the roman ideals?

3) The pallava kingdom - Why were they so into sculptures? Why did they practice so much religious tolerance unlike the later cholas, for example? How did they come to power?

4) The chola kingdom - are the names of the kings really all that we have about the early cholas who ruled around jesus's time? How come they went out of power and then came back into power after five centuries? What were the pandavas doing when the cholas were in power? Were they hunted? Why were aditya karikala's murderers pardoned by raja raja chola? Is it truly about their caste? We have a shitload of kalvettus from this time - can we translate them all and upload them online, please?

5) Do we have anything at all to go by in terms of the food they ate at any period in history? How did the language change over the two millennia?

Edit: There simply aren't that many books published about south indian history. There isn't all that much digging up either. There is one Nilakanta Sastry who is cited by everyone who talks of Cholas, but his books have been out of publication for decades. In comparison, we have hundreds and hundreds of books published on every conceivable aspect of a number of other civilizations - about the changes in english, greek and latin over the years, the mayans, the rise and fall of rome, histories of the various european monarchies, the aztecs, etc. [all of which interest me hugely].

<comment><USER4> The problem is something like this, the government of India is currently totally disinterested in projects of this nature. What we do currently is take development work as the sole requirement and work towards that.

Indians have never shown interest towards quality research in history. Heck we don't even respect the symbols of history we have amidst us. We either demolish archeological evidences(Many demolished during new Airport road construction in Bangalore) or use them as places where lovers hang around to escape from their parents. Just look at the state of historical monuments and how badly they have been maintained, if it was not for some tourism value even those would have long vanished.

Apart from that much of the historical research comes from the archaeological work carried out during pre-independence era during British time or immediately post that. Archeological Survey of India is a joke, and much of the historical research is left to curious professors from universities who are severely underfunded.

I think even if research is carried out now, we are only likely to find out half truth and much of the story will have to reconstructed piecing things together.

<comment><USER5> but they still care about our heritage. isn't that why all the cities with 'English' names were rechristened? :p

<comment><USER6> > isn't that why all the cities with 'English' names were rechristened? :p

Interesting choice of words there - 'rechristened'. In any case, many of the names were reverted back to their original forms (not just cities, but things like surnames too).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The cynic in me wants to say, "Just wait until descendants of Alexander the Great sue you for copyright infringement."

I think this effort is great. I hope more and more history can be put on line and made accessible. I am a firm believer that knowing the past is the only way to know where you are going.

<comment><USER8> "How _dare_ you digitize books from the library of Alexandria. That's theft!"

No idea what I'm trying to say here, by the way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> You can easily download the books from here: <http://statelibrary.kerala.gov.in/rarebooks/site_media/>

</comment><comment><USER10> Hailing from Kerala, really happy to see this happening. This is indeed a great achievement, and hope there will be more initiatives of such kind which will help to bring together the vast amount of information scattered around in the sub continent.

</comment><comment><USER11> While I commend them for digitizing, I'm somewhat disappointed that they are just scanned copies instead of selectable/searchable text. I wish they made them more accessible for reference by truly converting them to text.

<comment><USER12> This is something I know about.

If you waited until stuff was selectable/searchable (i.e. transcribed) then you'd never get these types of documents online. The scanning part of this process is tough considering that either a) very decent equipment must be bought, staff must be trained, extreme care must be taken handling old documents, all this costs money and takes time; b) the scanning must be outsourced because the archive doesn't have the competencies or tech and this is done at a cost.

Archives regard documents in there special collections as assets belonging to the institution. There is a resistance to putting them online. Once they are online they can be 'stolen'. If you want to have the whole lot transcribed first it could take decades because of the sheer volume of documents and the lack of researchers and archivists (and its not really the job of an archivist to transcribe stuff, merely to synopsize for a descriptive list and catalogue). For instance, The University of London, a liberal institution founded by Jeremy Bentham, wanted to get all of Bentham's documents online. Except the guy was a prolific correspondent. It was taking them years and years to transcribe the Bentham archive and they had only gotten (I don't remember exactly but something like) 2% through it. In the end the crowd- sourced the task[1] by scanning everything, putting the scans in a wiki and letting everyone on the net have a go at transcribing the documents - they are 94% done now. And that's just one historical figure. Take into account that documents need to be semantically marked up using standards like TEI (Text Encoding Initiative; an XML format) and that researchers in these areas are not known for their techie skills and wouldn't know a programming language if it came up and bit them on the bum and you can see ...

Finally, the institution may never have done research on the documents in the archive and may want to vet everything before it goes online, or may be reluctant to 'give away' its jewels. There is a serious tension between enabling global research and respecting the 'property' of the archive. This is something that needs to be dealt with now and is what I'm a part of, at the moment we call it the digital humanities.

Hope that gives you an overview. Well done to the Kerala State Central Library.

[1] <http://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/transcribe-bentham/>

[2] <http://www.tei-c.org/index.xml>

<comment><USER13> This is something I know about, too, having once supervised this lab (in its previous incarnation as part of UVA's eText center): <http://www.digitalcurationservices.org/>. We used a pair of PhaseOne P40 scanning backs[1] with Hasselblad prime lenses, mounted aiming directly downward at a custom tabletop with adjustable book mounts. We used standard studio lighting (not strobes). Software-wise, for books and manuscripts we created batch jobs in Photoshop to minimally post-process the images (adjust levels & contrast, rename files, not much else). For 3D artifacts, everything was custom & manual. Files were scanned into a pair of Mac Pros for processing then burned in duplicate to archival CD for filing and shipping to the Indian company[2] that had been contracted to transcribe and encode (SGML at that time) the text. We chose manual transcription over OCR because it gave us roughly 99.9% accuracy versus 95% accuracy (at that time -- 1997-1999), and Apex only charged $.03/pg. That rate bought us two transcribers encoding each page and then compared against each other's work for error correction. In general we were quite happy with them.

Not including the staff, I think there was about $75k in hardware and about $5k/yr in consumables (mostly repairing book stands, buying CDs and replacing CD burners we wore out).

If anyone is curious, here are two projects I worked on: Early American Fiction (1789-1875): <http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/eaf/> Walt Whitman Leaves of Grass archive (a whole bunch of versions): <http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/whitman/>

Note that these were both created 12-15yrs ago and offered both high quality scans and searchable text, and even basic comparison (split screen view of two texts: <http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/whitman/whitframe2.html>).

Subsequently, UVA's library has joined TEI and I'm sure things are much more modern now, but I wanted to provide a little more flavor to what you posted, with some more examples. Obviously, manuscripts in any language are time consuming to transcribe. They are often in poor condition and handwriting can be downright illegible, and don't get me started on issues with accurately transcribing original authors' own grammatical and spelling mistakes! Argh!

[1] <http://www.phaseone.com/en/Camera-Systems/P-Series.aspx> [2] <http://www.apexglobal.in/apextranscription/index.htm>

<comment><USER12> That's extremely interesting. Thanks for the detailed description. How many pages were your transcribers able to get through and at what rate? I've heard about the Whitman archive (it's often cited and quite famous I think). Are you still in the field? You know about Nines (<http://www.nines.org/> for those that don't) I presume :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Does anyone know what archival format the library is using?

</comment><comment><USER15> The city's name is Thiruvananthapuram not Trivandrum.

<comment><USER16> Trivandrum is what the English called it. Bombay = Mumbai, same way. Let's not nitpick :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Glad to see it online, but a 444 year old book on Alexander the Great is still ~ 2,000 behind when he lived.

</comment><comment><USER18> >3,28,268 >1,84,321

That's an odd way to represent a number.

<comment><USER19> Indian number system.

3,28,268 = 3 lakhs 28 thousand and 268

1,84,321 = 1 lakh 84 thousand and 321

<comment><USER20> yes, in simple

1 Lakh = 100 Thousand 1 Crore = 10 Million

They fall in between the million-billion range.

1--> billion 0--> 10 crore/100 million 0--> crore 0--> million 0--> lakh 0--> ten thousand 0--> thousand 0--> hundred 0--> tens 0--> ones

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think the library and the books survived because the Kochi-Thiruvithankur area was never under foreign rule.</comment>


Blockchain technology is on a collision course with EU privacy law - <AUTHOR> https://iapp.org/news/a/blockchain-technology-is-on-a-collision-course-with-eu-privacy-law/ <comment><USER2> Well, yeah, there is a rather straightforward solution - just don't store any personal information on a blockchain.

Is it practical? Sometimes yes. Some usecases won't be able to do that, and this is fine, they should just consider technologies other than a blockchain. Or if they really want to have blockchain, perhaps consider storing personal information in an external database with references to its fields on a blockchain. Possibly with a salted hash stored in a blockchain, so that it's possible to verify whether a value was changed. A matching checksum or an empty value (meaning a value removed due to GDPR requirements) would be fine.

Edit: A removed comment suggested storing an encryption key in a database to decrypt data on a blockchain. This is another way of looking at it - essentially keep two parts, one on a blockchain, another outside of blockchain - and you need both to decode the data while the part outside of blockchain could be removed.

<comment><USER3> Yes, I wish more people followed your advice... for anything, not just blockchain.

If you don't want your personal information leaked, never post it anywhere, blockchain or not.

Now, unfortunately, as you comment, this isn't necessarily always practical. So what do we do about that?

Well, ugh! This is why buzzwords of "blockchain" like this article is trying to cash in on, are annoying.

A blockchain does NOT have to be an immutable ledger, all a blockchain has to be is cryptographically signed/linked data. Sure, Bitcoin uses a blockchain that is computationally difficult to rewrite, and therefore for all practical purposes immutable, but it also isn't scalable for storing everybody's personal information.

Instead, you can store people's personal information in a blockchain, and since they are the cryptographic holders of that key, they can null out their data if they want!

This will actually make it easier to comply with the laws they reference, not harder, because people are self-sovereign over their own data and identity.

In fact, we've already implemented a system like this, check it out at [https://hackernoon.com/so-you-want-to-build-a-p2p-twitter- wi...](https://hackernoon.com/so-you-want-to-build-a-p2p-twitter- with-e2e-encryption-f90505b2ff8) .

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Clickbaity headline. It's not the "blockchain technology" as a whole, but some specific use of it that can _potentially_ violate the GDPR. You don't need a blockchain to violate the law: you can do it with paper or mysql or usb keys.

Bottom line is: don't put your customers' personal data onto anything that you don't control.

Nothing to see here.

<comment><USER5> I don't think it's clickbaity. There is a legitimate conflict in goals between this legislation and the increasingly popular use of public blockchains to store personal data.

You don't _need_ a public blockchain to violate the law, but it's hard to have a public blockchain _without_ violating this law, if you use that blockchain to store personal data.

<comment><USER6> That is a simple problem to solve.

You encrypt all data stored on the blockchain. You have the private key to your encrypted personal data on the blockchain. You can share this key with private corporations who want to use your data. In order to invoke your "right to be forgotten", you just ask the 3rd party to delete any record of your private key. Now they can't access your data. Simple.

<comment><USER7> What if the cryptography gets broken? Who's responsible then?

<comment><USER6> What if a bad actor hacks a centralized database? Which is more likely?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There's a very naive assumption in the article that Blockchain being incompatible with GDPR issue can be resolved by altering GDPR.

I think it is impossible: GDPR is specifically designed to prevent sensitive personal information from leaking and information about one's financial transactions is one of the most sensitive pieces of information there is.

So, if GDPR versus Blockchain case ever reaches any EU court the only possible ruling is to outlaw the Blockchain technology (at least in it's current incarnation).

<comment><USER9> Laws are mutable, in general blockchains aren't. It is the case that the law can be modified.

> I think it is impossible

Unless they create an exemption for technologies which effectively partition transaction details from identity details. Or they could require the use of masking/ambiguation features like Ring signatures, mixer/tumblers, etc.

<comment><USER10> > Laws are mutable, in general blockchains aren't. It is the case that the law > can be modified.

Or storing someone else's personal information on the blockchain opens you up to an effectively unlimited liability: Not smart.

It really depends on _what_ is being stored. Is it that there is €30 in account 123 and €50 in account 234? It's unclear if this is personal information if someone can have multiple accounts and access them anonymously.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Well yes and no.

The prevention of fraud countermands GDPR, so keeping the financial transactions of anonymous IDs in a public, reasonbly immutable format, is not going to be a problem, infact its going to be encouraged, because data portability is also another key feature of GDPR.

Storing people's personal pictures, well then yes, you have a problem. But then its a stupid place to keep private, non-public interest photos.

</comment><comment><USER12> Definitely it was a good read, but let me just focus on the main point.

It is true that Blockchain technology has been thought as a replacement of a trusted third party like a notary or central register, but usually those are public registries: household ownerships, public offers... And those registries are usually exceptions or are treated in a different way (and usually they are explicitly regulated by each country). A few of them are even public, like the defaulters list in Spain.

Also, it is quite naive to think that an European citizen can erase "any personal data", that could be quite convenient to erase your fresh new mortgage or obligations. You are only allowed to ask for irrelevant information to be removed not for specific business related log even if they have your personal data in them.

<comment><USER2> Even in case of mortgages, you need to be prepared for requests. At least where I live, it's legally allowed to remove all information about a loan once you paid the entire cost of it.

<comment><USER12> I am not an expert on Spanish regulation, but I can tell you that sometimes the regulator oblige enterprises to store this records for long times (eventually it will expire).

Public records are store forever (unless broken)... =), at least, up to date.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Wouldn't it easy for a blockchain to just reference external data which then get deleted to comply with GDPR? I know, breaks some ideas about storing data in the chain, but if that's the compromise that works. In the end it will all be about the specific implementation of each blockchain, the idea of blockchains in general will never be endangered like u/mamon suggested.

</comment><comment><USER14> If you put data that's considered personal into a public blockchain, or any decentralized system, who becomes the owner of that data? Was it the company/service that originally published it on the blockchain? or is every node required to treat it as their own GDPR-compliant data?

<comment><USER15> Not just a _public_ blockchain, any blockchain. Say an employee leaves, they should have the right to have records removed. The internal Enterprise Blockchain doesn't allow that.

But because of hype, every big company has to have some sort of blockchain somewhere, for no good reason. The EU will get a lot of bad publicity while actually doing something very reasonable.

<comment><USER2> Huh? If that was the case, it would go a bit too far, as it would make technologies like e-mail or git illegal to use internally, considering those are likely to have a real name of a person who sent an e-mail/committed.

<comment> vertex-four Git history can be modified, as can email headers, but yeah - the law is more about e.g. disciplinary records, stuff stored on your section of the company file server, and other things which the company really has no legitimate use for once you've left.

In practice, the best solution to this is for companies to check over their data retention policies and making sure they're not holding on to data for longer than they need to - which may involve creating processes to take information out of emails and put it somewhere more structured/permanent - rather than being blindsided with a request without the infrastructure to handle it. The best response, after all, is "we deleted/modified that data so as to comply with your request already", rather than "we'll be back to you once we've read through your 50,000 emails and decided which ones we need to keep".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Some of the comments By interviewees in this article are so backwards it's comical:

> "From a practitioner's perspective, it sounds to me that it was drafted by > trying to implement a certain perspective of how the world should be without > taking into account how technology actually works," Steiner said. "The way > [public decentralized network] architecture works, means there is no such > thing as the deletion of personal data. The issue with information is once > it's out, it's out."

My answer to this is - don't put personal information in the blockchain then! What's the purpose of technology that doesn't serve human needs?

It's a bizarre worldview that positions technology as the master, not the servant of mankind.

<comment><USER17> > It's a bizarre worldview that positions technology as the master, not the > servant of mankind.

Your comment is at odds with this statement. Blockchain and smart contracts appeal to those who want lines of code to have the final say in transactions. Most people want our institutions to make those decisions!

<comment><USER8> Current technology is great but still sometimes it fails. It's comforting to know that there's an actual human being that you can talk to and ask them to fix the mistake made by software.

That's what makes technologies like Blockchain at odds with human needs: unless you can formally prove that your software does not contain any bugs and therefore does not make mistakes there always has to be the room for manual intervention (like deleting personal data from blockchain).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This assumes if it's a direct fork of Bitcoin and not focused on privacy like Monero or Bytecoin.

</comment><comment><USER19> GDPR is not only conflicting with some Blockchain use cases but with old- fashioned ledgers and paper-based accounting as well because the same principles apply here, too (an entry cannot be deleted, its effect can merely be reversed).

If followed to the letter GDPR would've major repercussions on tax regulations because as a company you're legally bound to keep accounting records for at least 10 years whereas according to GDPR you're required to delete any record if asked by a person whose personal data appears in that record.

The solution in that case is that GDPR only applies if it doesn't contradict other, already existing laws.

So, where Blockchain applications facilitate legal requirements or don't manage personal data this should be perfectly fine but yes, other types of Blockchain applications are pretty much ruled out by GDPR.

<comment><USER10> > If followed to the letter GDPR would've major repercussions on tax > regulations because as a company you're legally bound to keep accounting > records for at least 10 years whereas according to GDPR you're required to > delete any record if asked by a person whose personal data appears in that > record.

[http://www.privacy-regulation.eu/en/recital-65-GDPR.htm](http://www.privacy- regulation.eu/en/recital-65-GDPR.htm)

False. You're allowed to retain the data where it is necessary to comply with other legal obligations, or to protect yourself legally (e.g. failure to pay invoices), among other reasons.

<comment><USER19> That's exactly what I said. For instance, you have to retain accounting records such as invoices even if the invoice recipient asks you to delete the personal data on that invoice.

Anything else would open up new avenues for tax fraud.

<comment><USER10> You are allowed to ignore (refuse) to delete personal data from the Invoice: You may need their name to file suit against them for refusing to pay the invoice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> 1\. Encrypt your personal data with a private key that you control.

2\. Put encrypted personal data on a blockchain.

3\. When a 3rd party wants to use your data, give them your private key. They can store this in their own database so that they can access your blockchain data whenever they wish.

4\. To invoke your "right to be forgotten", simply ask the 3rd party to delete your private key.

Am I missing something?

<comment><USER20> This is cryptoshredding, more or less. There are a couple of wrinkles to your good idea.

* It potentially makes updates complicated.

* In the event of a key compromise, you're forever hosed.

* You probably shouldn't hand out your private key like that.

* They wouldn't need your private key to read the data you've described, requiring your _public_ key instead.

* You have no ability to revoke someone's access - grant it once and it's eternal.

It's a good start! Cryptography is very powerful and can do a lot to solve this problem. Thank you so much for caring and putting forward an interesting idea.

<comment><USER21> How about if the owner of the blockchain (here I'm assuming, say, a land- ownership database run by the state) have a private key for each person in their own system which they use to put the relevant data into a blockchain. Then they delete the private key for that person to scramble entries that need deleting so no one can ever access it again. The person doesn't need to have or know their own private key since it's a backend for the municipal service.

Now why anyone would want to do this with a blockchain instead of a simple encrypted database... well, maybe someone else can explain that. I'm still assuming you visit deeds.mass.gov or something and have an interface you would use to find out who owns what, so the end user isn't actually touching the blockchain in this case.

<comment><USER20> As I understand PKI, and my understanding is limited so I could of course be very wrong, but in the scenario you describe the deletion of the private key would do nothing to prevent people from decrypting data readable with a public key.

This would work with a symmetric key! But as you say, I'm struggling to think of any real advantages to using a blockchain here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> one drunken night you decide to put some random piece of private information on the bitcoin/etherum blockchain. can you invoke your "right to be forgotten"? if so, can you c&d every node in the EU to take down your info?

<comment><USER23> That would be completely your own fault. Drinking and banking is risky too, or drinking and driving. Make it a best practice to only interact with blockchain systems when sober. Not a very strange idea IMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> blockchain technology is the most transparent</comment>