This coming a Venture Capitalist...

Marc isn't investment in a large number (relatively) of entrepreneurs. He can afford to take the time to incorporate "across the table" into his decision making process.

(If I've misunderstood your point please let me know..)

This is the single most fundamental misunderstanding in the bitcoin camp.

First of all it is only in some countries like the U.S. where fees are in the 2-3% range. Others have regulated that fee away already. In fact, the U.S. just recently regulated debit card interchange down to 0.05% + 21 cents.[1]

Second -- and this is really important -- most of that fee goes back to the consumer in the form of reward programs. That's primarily what they are funding: 1-2% cash back programs, free travel, etc. Not the "100,000 people and 1970s mainframe computers" that Marc describes.

So, the opportunity to lower fees (1) doesn't exist in many places, and (2) where it exists it consists of taking value away from consumers.

So no rational consumer will voluntarily transition over to a lower-benefit instrument. If U.S. merchants really wanted to experiment with the future of "lower fees", just try accepting debit cards only (not credit cards). See how consumer like it. Great for merchants, not so much for customers who want their cashback programs.

Even where lower fees have been forced through regulations (Australia), it did not result in a general 2-3% reduction in consumer prices. Guess what, merchants kept that margin.[2] This is why big merchants like Walmart are resisting Apple Pay in a futile effort to push their own CurrentC, a new instrument that bypasses card networks and deducts directly from your checking account. But guess what: it takes value away from consumers. Exactly the same problem with bitcoin for consumer payments.

This is why it will have an extremely tough time replacing credit cards -- and that's before we even get to the matter of consumer protections. You need a trusted intermediary to be able to enforce chargebacks, which protect consumers against ripoffs. You can't do it with insurance alone; you have to be able to reverse transactions. So by the time you add intermediaries back in, Bitcoin is just another centralized card network with an exotic protocol for moving money. It's the next Discover card, sans card.

There may be more specific niches where bitcoin is useful. But this notion that bitcoin will save us all 3% on purchases is just plain uninformed. And unfortunately it's at the foundation of so much of the investment in this area.

[1] http://www.heartlandpaymentsystems.com/Durbin/What-is-the-du...

[2] https://www.competitionpolicyinternational.com/assets/Hot-Tu...

"Another predictable result is the absence of evidence that consumer prices have fallen as a result of lower merchant discounts. This is not surprising because the cost savings are too small to be measurable with any degree of confidence. However, based on the economics literature on pass- through effects, we believe that it is highly unlikely that consumers have received any significant benefit over the period of time considered given the likely sticky prices and high concentration in the Australian retail sector."

I don't really buy this. Why not just not have the fees and let prices be lower so that consumers have more cash? Cash is always better.

I assume most people never take advantage of most of their points, essentially sacrificing that 1-2% to the credit card processor. The processor knows this, which is why they do it.

For the same reasons that coupons are immensely popular. You can target consumers who have the greatest price elasticity, and take advantage of those with the lowest.

So what we have here is most consumers only see themselves getting rewards, nothing on about themselves wanting the best rewards card being the root cause of higher prices.

scenarios:

consumer: sees total price -> easy to calculate 1-2% rewards merchant: sees increase in transaction fees -> increases price

problems for:

credit card companies: getting rid of higher percentage rewards program might cause customers to use competitors cards instead.

merchant: accepting cash/debit only would mean losing sales for those that don't have those mediums available.

consumer: looking for the best deal. I'm the problem, I have about 5 cards, each optimized for a type of spending (restaurants, groceries, gas, foriegn transactions, etc).

Read about rewards causing the increase in transaction fees about 2 years ago, something I never thought about. The problem with increased rewards card is fairly invisible to most. Consumers love better rewards, merchants only sees increasing rates (but I think we're pretty jaded and just accept it or start using things like Square, Level Up, etc. Not thinking about root causes.), credit card companies recoupe losses through higher transaction rates.

As an example: Mastercard (let's say) offers American Airlines cobranding, marketing (in the form of newsletters and emails pushing me to use miles whenever i pay my bill) and service perks (read: lower transaction processing fees) in exchange for frequent flyer points (note - not even dollars, a point is some fraction of a dollar in terms of flight purchasing power) for tickets on flights that would otherwise probably have a seat empty. Nice seats on full flights cost more points, of course. I get these points if I use my card often enough.

I'm fine with this arrangement - both parties are gaining here, and maybe I as a customer get a nice perk occasionally when I finally have enough incidental points saved up to go on a flight - but none of us is under the impression that there's some one to one relationship between fees charged and amount of money paid for redeemable rewards, and I expect that in volume both parties are actually making money off of this arrangement, not sacrificing revenues.

There's also a feedback loop at work here - Mastercard pushes points for American Airlines, more people use American Airlines, more of them end up using the same airline regardless of points due to familiarity and customer stickiness, so Mastercard gets more AA transactions and more fees overall - even though they've dropped the per-transaction fee rate, the increased volume makes up for it...

the interchange fees for Visa and Mastercard have a surcharge for rewards cards.

It is definitely not the case that the rewards for your card are free (to the merchant/consumer).

Me:

> And the rewards aren't paid for with the fees charged to the customer;

I don't see a conflict with these statements, do you?

Chicken-or-the-egg problem. It won't even theoretically lower prices unless everyone switched over and credit cards are dead, but few will adopt it if it means missing out on cashback and other benefits they currently enjoy. (And yes, plenty enjoy them especially savvier, wealthier consumers.)

And here's the crazy thing: it doesn't even lower prices in practice. Even where fees have been regulated down, the savings did not get passed on to consumers in the form of lower prices (this happened in Australia). Merchants kept that margin. It just didn't move the needle enough to overcome price stickiness and make an impact at the individual purchase level.. whereas annually 1-2% cashback or other rewards can feel more meaningful.

Exactly what they did in Australia. Except guess what? Didn't result in lower prices. Merchants kept that margin for themselves.

Ahh, macroeconomics.

I would like to point out that the "specific niches" you mention but leave unspecified are far more important, and frankly, dangerous than cheap transactions.

In fact I know of only one "niche" that Bitcoin serves well at all, which is that it provides absolute control over wealth in a way that gold cannot, in addition to providing far superior fungibility.

I don't know what you've been reading.. perhaps it's an indication of just how off the descriptions have been in these parts?

Chargeback costs are borne by the merchant, by the way, so they don't really impact the fee. I mention them because they require a central, trusted intermediary to enforce them, meaning that it's not just a "detail" for bitcoin to implement later.. If you want to enforce consumer protections, it changes the whole system back into just another "Discover card"-like new network.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_card_fraud

EDIT: I guess the exact figure's disputed but even at 1% there's plenty of margin for reward programs.

That figure from Wikipedia is utterly wrong. The true figure appears to be about 15 times higher

I happen to know it's wrong, because I pointed this out to you on two previous occasions when you cited the same figure from the same Wikipedia page to support identical arguments against bitcoin. In fact, you even acknowledged that I was correct then.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7529461

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7506327

Yet, here you are again, citing the same number and the same Wikipedia page yet again. How many other times have you used it to bolster an argument?

This is deeply depressing. What's the point of having a discussion if you simply ignore or forget facts which don't support your preconceived ideas? You're never going to learn anything.

I hope you won't find this insulting, but I suggest you ask yourself honestly why you keep citing a number that you've repeatedly been shown is inaccurate, in order to support the same argument over and over again.

I suggest you ask yourself honestly why you keep citing a number that you've repeatedly been shown is inaccurate, in order to support the same argument over and over again.

That's my last word on this matter.

The discount fees in no way pay for fraud. Fraud risk is entirely on the merchant.

Interesting (or sadly?) enough, merchants even pay the discount fee on chargebacks :)

In other words, payment tech that makes life easier for sellers without driving a wedge between credit card companies and buyers is going to suffer opposition from two directions at once. Here again, the winning play comes down to satisfying the end user first.

First of all credit cards are primarily a US phenomena for a number of reasons, one of the biggest being credit score.

In most of Europe your credit score is defined negatively and not like in the US positively. I.e. you don't have to prove yourself to be credit worthy by paying back debt "they" trust you from the beginning and you can then kill that trust.

In the US you often have to get into this weird setup where you have to build debt to show you are good with money which to someone like me is an absurd logic but non the less it's the logic we have here in the US.

Second. Europe isn't really that advanced in the whole point system. Besides airline miles and perhaps the UK system I am not aware of any broad acceptance of points/coupon systems until recently.

Third of all. The 3% isn't really important when it comes to normal transactions.

Where it matters is in the ability for Bitcoin to 1) be a truly global wire transferable currency (there currently aren't such a thing) and 2) the ability to do micropayment which BTC will allow for

Lastly although the protocol doesn't allow for the puritan version that some of the biggest dreamers hope for, using the protocol as an open payment gateway will be a quantum leap compared to the proprietary systems we have today.

The reason why you need to build in risk with the current system is because you only need to get in one place to compromise it all.

Thats not the same with bitcoin and the very fact that it's build around NOT trusting IMO makes it very different and will be the reason why it could be winning in the long run. But yeah it might take a long long time to get there.

But I do welcome your more balanced view on the matter.

And any consumer using a debit card in the US is not the brightest bulb on the tree. Why shift the fraud risk from the issuing bank to yourself? There is zero benefit for the consumer here, and only helps the banks and merchants.

Yes, some banks will give you a "zero fraud guarantee" but I'd much rather 1) not have my bank account involved in a fraudulent transaction and 2) have the option of simply closing an account during a "difficult customer service event" and tell them to sue me if they think I'm lying. Even using a debit card as a Visa/MC is much better than entering your PIN and using as debit. No chance of someone stealing a PIN either.

Using a debit card removes most of your options as a consumer when dealing with fraud, and greatly expands your attack surface. No thanks.

I actually don't disagree with your premise, but vehemently disagree that using a debit card as a consumer has any benefit whatsoever to you. It's simply shifting risk (however small) onto yourself for zero gain.

If Bitcoin has a place - it would be more as a replacement for wire transfers and international transactions done between relatively trusted parties.

I honestly can't say I've ever seen someone type in a PIN code on a PoS terminal in recent memory. I also tend to pay attention to this stuff. That's of course not worth anything as a data point, but I'd have expected if they are used 50% more than credit transactions I would have at least noticed it once or twice.

Just to be clear here: A debit transaction is identical to an ATM transaction (from the UI point of view). Just swiping your combined ATM+debit card at a terminal and treating it like a normal Visa/MC transaction is not what I meant. I also (used to) prefer the debit card in that scenario for the reason you mentioned. Then I got financially responsible and realized I was simply taking on more risk than I needed to - automated payments on my Amex work just as well.

Edit: I just re-read the data, and it looks very much like they are treating bank cards with a Visa or MC logo as debit card transactions. If so, the data is extremely misleading as no PIN codes are involved, and your fraud protection is nearly identical to an actual credit card in that case. This would also jive with my personal experience as well.

Except it already exists. It's called debit cards. 0.05% + 21 cents. Still has some consumer protections (it can do chargebacks), just not the overhead of rewards. Accepted everywhere.

Just take the word "cryptocurrency" out of whatever you're proposing and you'll see that it's just adding techno-sheen onto what will inevitably be just another centrally-mediated payment network.

Probably noise into the system. Also likely, unless you can take advantage of these fees across millions of people (which, by definition an individual cannot), it probably isn't something you can account for.

Consider, the number of stores that can refuse credit cards in an effort to save these fees for themselves is effectively nil. That is, it is worth it to most stores to pay the fees on the transactions that have them and not discount those that do not, versus force all transactions to not have them.

Without fees it would be possible to have a service provide 25 cents worth of value and only be billed per month. Apps that had to use ads before or that had to hope to get bought by bigger companies, could make a reasonable about of money per month. This would lead to permanent jobs.

In the end, assuming your argument that fees == consumer deals, I submit the total value created by a micropayment service will lead to a better life for the average consumer. Therefore, they should drop fees.

Couldn't we replace them with merchant's own loyalty programs instead? Merchant would issue loyalty points to the user, redeemable for future goods and services. They would lose money, but gain repeat business, so it's good for them. The users would get their cash-back value, so they are happy as well. For example during slow times of the year my favorite steak place kicks back 100% of the steak price, to be used by the end of the lull period (Jan 1st - Apr 15th).

There could be also a secondary market for loyalty points - even if you're going home and don't plan to come back to the same Hawaiian restaurant, you could sell your points to someone fresh off the boat.

Then the restaurant owner could even moderate traffic by selling/buying his own loyalty points on the secondary market, replacing groupon and their likes. Exciting stuff!

What would be cool is an easier way to sign up for and manage merchant loyalty programs..... but that doesn't require a new payment method.

(Not sure about the secondary market though.. that seems to be an intentional choice on the part of merchants, not a technical limitation.)

Whether there is an actual incentive to such adoption, is a different question, though also very interesting.

As to the management overhead, it doesn't have to be - it's all just bits. There is no reason software couldn't just sell/trade your points for you automatically.

Who is going to run the marketplace? What is their overhead going to be? It would require quite a few chain type trades because situations like you point out with getting some points on vacation would be difficult to trade otherwise. (Why would someone in LA have points for the small shop I frequent in NYC with which to purchase my points for XYZ in LA?).

That's ignoring the fact that most stores would be opposed to such easily traded points as unspent points are a major boon to them.

Same as the bitcoin itself - nobody, it's just software (that needs to be written yet).

You don't need a chain trade, just list you points for sale for bitcoins directly. There might be no one to buy it right now, but there will be someone tomorrow or a week later, who is going into that restaurant, and loads up on the points before they get there.

>unspent points are a major boon to them

Of course! The points must decay or expire. It would be foolish to carry debt without expiration.

There is nothing complicated about deciding how big your loyalty program is going to be. Start off at your current credit card processing rates about 1.5%, and go up from there if you feel generous (like the stake house I talked about earlier), or based on repeat volume for a given customer (e.g. spend $100 get $10 back). Most places will be fine with a default for a given industry (e.g. large for restaurants, small for sandwich shops).

>Start off at your current credit card processing rates about 1.5%, and go up from there if you feel generous

But what if 1% is a better ROI? Or 3%? It's not difficult to pick any number. It's difficult to pick an effective one.

This really isn't true. The VAST majority of Americans don't use credit cards — debit cards are 3-4x more common – and thus aren't earning any rewards. In fact, the rewards for affluent Americans are subsidized by the less well off. A pretty sad state of affairs.

But doesn't it make more sense to try to solve your problem in the simplest way possible? I'd argue that there is rarely a case in which a bitcoin-like solution is the simplest way to solve whatever problem you're faced with (baring the problem bitcoin was intended to solve of course).

Traditional credit ratings are "tremendously imprecise"? That's an insane statement. FICO is a proven model and has weathered multiple business cycles. Virtually all of the alternative models being experimented with today haven't. A lot of these models are going to fall apart when the current environment, which has seen record low credit default rates, changes.

I'd love to see a $50,000 auto loan or $400,000 mortgage approved on the basis of eBay purchase history alone.

> “The hypothesis is that there are many other similar sources of consumer data: credit card bills, social-network behavior, potentially even search history. Lots of people, both in the big Internet companies and at start-ups, are trying to get at these large pools of data and figure out new ways to do scoring. What they all have in common is that they are all being done outside of banks.

Notwithstanding the fact that credit payment history ("credit card bills") is factored in to a FICO score, a couple of things should be pointed out:

1. Many of the companies trying different models are doing so in an attempt to serve thin file borrowers. Not surprisingly, established players like Fair Isaac aren't sitting around twiddling their thumbs. They have their own solutions for these borrowers, like the FICO Expansion Score. Just because startups don't want to pay for somebody else's solution doesn't mean they're the only ones innovating.

2. Credit scoring has never been a core bank function so Andreessen's comment about this taking place outside of banks makes no sense and raises the question: does he even know what he's talking about?

> “The minute any of these new credit vehicles can show any level of repeatability and reliability, the hedge funds come in and provide the funding. Hedge funds are very comfortable with analytic models. If you have sufficient stability, you can get leverage.”

The hedge funds are looking for yield. Putting aside the fact that a lot of this money is going to dry up when the interest rate environment changes, the hedge funds are less interested in analytic models and more interested in demand. In other words, it's about customer acquisition. An underwriting model alone won't cut it; you need to be able to find the borrowers.

Also, Andreessen seems to be viewing hedge fund participation as some sort of meaningful validation. Looking at hedge fund performance it should be obvious that most hedge funds are not "smart money" by any stretch of the imagination. When the current market turns, a lot of them will lose their shirts just as they did in 2008 betting big on junk like subprime mortgage-backed CDOs.

> “Bitcoin is like technology that’s arrived from Mars, and so regulators don’t know what to do with it. That’s a good thing. What a lot of financial technology entrepreneurs will tell you is that if you’re going to innovate in financial services, you want to do something so new and so different that the existing regulatory system doesn’t know how to react to you. That is your window of opportunity.

This is silly and untrue. In early 2013, FinCEN issued guidance for virtual currencies, and the IRS weighed in earlier this year. Not surprisingly, just because Bitcoin is "new" and "different" doesn't mean that the standard rules and regulations don't apply, as some have learned the hard way[1].

[1] http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/09/04/bitcoin...

Make of that what you want.

Having said that, for you to have a valid FICO score, you do need to have at least six months of credit history (credit card, loan, mortgage or otherwise).

Its far more than just in name.

But I would still consider him a smart guy just not a clairvoyant.

By 'write-only visionary', I mean someone who no longer has a working feedback loop telling them they're sometimes wrong.

well put. kudos. i hope you don't mind as I'm sure I'll repeat this in the future.

Business wise of course he doesn't have to be right all the time obviously only right enough to have some big scores. Besides people rarely do follow ups detailing the missed predictions and even if they did they would mention the successes that made up for the failures and how that's kind of the VC model.

Warning: <rant>

Hmm ..., let's see: As I recall, in the 1920s some "unregulated banks" were a major part of the mechanism that caused the US economic boom of the 1920s, the stock market crash of 1929, the banking crisis soon afterward, i.e., runs on the banks, catastrophic shrinking of the money supply, massive price deceases, massive unemployment, bankruptcies, the Great Depression in the US, the US slowing buying from Europe, the Great Depression spreading to Europe, the great economic stress in Germany, the rise of Hitler for a command economy, which actually did get the German economy going again, WWII, the deaths of maybe, what, 50 million people, maybe 100 million, ah, why sweat over few tens of millions of people more or less (right, Marc?), and, then, some really severe laws for the regulation of banks.

We said, "never again will the banks do that to us". Indeed, from now on the banks will be creatures of the US Federal Reserve.

But, in 2008, with not enough regulation, the banks did it to us again. Hurt a lot of people, and we got some more banking regulations. BTW, we are still cleaning up the mess the banks left behind, once again, in 2008.

Paulson, Bernanke, etc. remembered with full clarity and had no doubts: "Your banking regulator is sitting right here, and if you don't take this money you will be declared capital deficient on Monday morning. ... You will not leave here before you sign the paper in front of you." Paulson, Bernanke were just determined, as immediately was Congress, that the US banks would not fail; there would be liquidity; the banks would be well capitalized with plenty of reserves with no doubts; there would not be runs on the banks; AIG could be $85 billion in the hole and cause no problems, etc.

Bernanke was just determined not to be the Fed Chair who presided over the second Great Depression, e.g., from banking regulation failures.

Marc, in the US, we regulate the banks. The US Federal Reserve, etc. has the banks by the short hair, holds on with a tight grip, and just will not let go. Marc, are we learning, now? Are we getting some clarity about banking "regulation"?

In many ways, in social and psychological capital, the US is still recovering from the severe damage and losses of the Great Depression and WWII: People that lived through those years, and many didn't, often suffered horribly and, thus, did some relatively poor parenting, passing on a lot of really strong anxieties and not nearly enough in security, insight, social, psychological, emotional, artistic, and intellectual capital. The anxieties led to stresses led to depression, incapacitation, more stresses, more depression, clinical depression, a huge range of social problems, including some suicides. I know far too much about what I am describing. We're talking big deficits in social and psychological capital passed from parents to children. We have not recovered yet. It appears that full recovery will take a few more generations. E.g., I can believe that a tribe in Brazil that never saw civilized people is generally much happier than people in the civilized countries that went through the Great Depression and WWII. Those tribes have no banks, bubbles, and Great Depressions.

The Great Recession? Still a lot of people are not yet back to work, and that situation is well known to lead to more in abused wives, abused children, alcoholism, drug abuse, crime, infant mortality, divorce, and suicides, little results like those. Marc, you can understand wrecked families, right?

It seems that banking regulation is just crucial unless, of course, we want to kill tens of millions of people a few times each century. Ah, let's don't just mince words, kill a few hundreds of millions of people a few times each century? More? Sure, maybe more! Right, Marc?

Sure, I know; I know; we can agree that the dangers of unregulated banks won't last very long. I mean, that is, don't you see, another WW will mean we no longer need any more banking regulations, or coal, natural gas, oil, cars, houses, plastics, trash pickup, clothes, schools, hospitals, restaurants, smart phones, libraries, the Internet, venture capital firms, venture partners, or people -- there won't be anymore people, puppy dogs, kitty cats, birds, etc.

Gee, "Look, Ma, no more banking regulations! Ma? Ma? Are you there, Ma? Ma, where are you? Ma!!!!"

Thank you Marc. Your knowledge of finance, banking, and economics is showing through with great clarity!!!!!!

Gee, I thought that we were all supposed to understand financial bubbles, the Great Depression, etc. by, what, somewhere in middle school? Marc, did you skip middle school? Maybe you'd want to go back, sit in the front row, and pay attention? And put away your mobile devices.

Unregulated banking? I'd rather give chunks of plutonium to naughty 8 year old boys just to see what they could do with it.

Marc, unregulated banking is the fast way to the end of at least human life on earth. Wouldn't be very good for your deal flow or venture returns either!

Sorry to be so negative: 50 million, maybe 100 million, dead, the suffering of my ancestors and my wife's ancestors who went through the Great Depression and WWII and the Cold War tend to make me a little, just a little, shall we say sensitive on this subject. But, I'd rather be sensitive and negative than silent and dead. Right, it's just my opinion, and YMMV. </rant>

The primary banking related response to the depression was the Glass–Steagall Act:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1933_Banking_Act

It established the FDIC and curtailed speculative investment at commercial banks. There were some provisions giving the Fed some more powers and encouraging banks to become members, but those were at least as much about establishing lending facilities as they were about regulation.

1913? A story went we didn't want to have to depend on J. P. Morgan again!

To concentrate on the crucial bigger picture, I omitted mention of Glass-Steagall or its revisions that helped bring on 2008.

So, banks are regulated on their reserve ratios, etc.

My post boils down to a dirt simple but still basically correct: For banking regulated good, unregulated bad, very bad. For something this important, something dirt simple but still correct has some advantages.

I don't think your analysis is correct much at all. Perhaps you are genuinely not aware that these crises were the result of government intervention. I suggest you to read Rothbard's What Has Government Done to Our Money here: http://mises.org/money.asp

Of course, there are many examples from history that support those points.

Right, on the banks, we can have (1) no regulation, (2) bad regulation, or (3) good regulation. I have to conclude that (1) no regulation is not a good solution because, with the history of banking crises, e.g., the crises that led to the 1913 regulations, when there was no regulation, since banking has such a crucial role in the economy and also has motivations for profit, we can too easily get serious systemic problems.

E.g., banks need to be told to have sufficient reserves.

For (2) bad regulation: Sure we don't want that.

For (3) good regulation, maybe we can't really get that. And maybe attempts at (3) historically have caused lots of problems, e.g., dumb, nasty governments printing money by the trillions of trillions.

Still, we don't want (1) or (2). So, we do the best we can trying to get (3). Here in the US, at least since 1933, I believe that the regulation worked fairly well (as intended, not so well more broadly, e.g., didn't get us out of the Great Depression; we didn't get people back to work until people started shooting at us and we started war production, in which case supposedly within 90 days everyone had at least one job offer and many people had 1+ jobs) until the crash of 2008. Well? No, only fairly well. My guess is that that regulation did work better than we would have had with (1) no regulation.

My first cut take on your concerns is that you are more concerned about the Fed and it's role in the money supply than just banking regulation. So, right, for a recent mess up, Greenspan actually feared, in simple terms, that all the computers would stop on January 1, 2000 and, from this fear, opened up the money supply to keep the economy going nevertheless and, net, printed too much money.

So, we get a suspicion: To drive the best in a straight line or fly an airplane at a constant altitude in a straight line, just tie the controls down with strong rope and keep human hands far away. Well, if only due to lots of random exogenous influences, that simplistic constant control doesn't work very well for cars, airplanes, or a money supply or an economy. Instead, we need a pilot, right, a good pilot, and maybe Greenspan was not so good near year 2000.

Or, maybe instead of a Fed, just go on a gold standard. Maybe.

But, I was talking about banking regulation and not so much what nasty governments can do to mess up the money supply with printed money.

We regulate lots of things, medicines (safety and efficacy), food safety, auto safety, building safety (e.g., building codes, e.g., to protect against another shirtwaist factory or whatever it was fire), caps on aspirin bottles, age for drinking beer, and much more.

Do I like some mandate of anti-lock brakes on cars? Nope: I don't want the extra cost at purchase or maintenance.

Regulation on car tailpipe emissions? Out in the country, say, 90% of the US land area, I see little need for the regulations, but I concede that in the cities the regulations are from helpful and justified up to just crucial. Yes, those regulations recently cost me $300 for a catalytic converter, with, maybe, platinum, when out in the country where I live a simple piece of pipe, for maybe $2, would have been fine. But, no joke, the regulations did a lot to clean up the air in the cities, with no doubt good health effects.

Even I'm not enough of a libertarian to conclude that we should have no regulations.