Traditional banking system vs cryptocurrency

Banks have been in existence for a very long time now right from the days when it was majorly used to store gold to recent times when the majority of transactions that goes on there are based on money. Banks have gotten more sophisticated over the years and a lot of new features are been added daily. Once upon a time, you have to go to the bank to do every little transaction but now, you can do everything from the comfort of your phone.

Some of the banks we even have today are referred to as "digital banks", in the sense that you don't need to visit their physical office to do anything. You can chat with their customer care online when you have issues and they reply to you even faster than banks that require you to visit their physical offices. Banks like Kuda don't even have branch offices in most cities in Nigeria but I have been using them for over 3 years and I always get my issues resolved online whenever something goes wrong.

But these traditional banks although more sophisticated now also come with a lot of challenges such as slow transaction speed, unnecessary charges, fraudulent deductions with no description of why you're being debited, failed transactions but still debited, and a lot of others. These are the ones I have experienced and that's why I pointed them out.

During the period when the government of Nigeria introduced a new policy that limited the amount of cash individuals can withdraw from the bank and also replaced some of the currency with a new design, everyone started depending heavily on ussd and Internet banking for bank transfers and it added a lot of stress on the banking sector who weren't prepared for such heavy traffic.

There were a lot of slow and failed transactions during this period. I remember a day I bought something from a store and I decided to transfer but the store attendant said she didn't receive the money. I had to wait for over an hour before the money finally arrived. I couldn't even pay with cash because I wasn't having any, so I had to be patient and wait for the attendant to receive the money and luckily for me, it happened after an hour. Some people have had to wait for several hours before the money is received.

There was also a day I tried withdrawing from a POS operator and the transaction failed but I was still debited. I didn't think much about it because I knew the bank will reverse it within 24 hours but when I knew something was wrong was when I didn't get any reversal after 24 hours, then I had to make a complaint on the second day. I didn't get any reply till after 3 more days, then I was told that the money will be refunded which they did after another 2 days.

Crypto on the other hand has very fast transaction speed on some of the networks but it can be slow on others. For example, I used to do a lot of transactions with bitcoincash (BCH) and sometimes, it can be very fast when I'm sending some coins and takes an average of a minute, but sometimes it can take up to an hour, especially when I'm sending to an exchange like binance. I guess it depends on the traffic at that particular time of the transaction.

But generally, I have never had any issues with cryptocurrency transactions. The only problem I will say that exists in the cryptoverse is price fluctuations; crypto is very volatile. How many of you remember the crypto depression of 2021/2022? It started in late 2021 (around November) and that was when we saw the fall of Bitcoin from $69k to around $25k within the span of 8 months, and typical of BTC, it dragged other coins along with it.

A lot of people lost a lot of money during that period, including me. I was actually saving for a new laptop around that period and my savings were in BCH (I was a writer on readcash and got rewarded with BCH). I lost over half of my savings between February and April 2022 due to the price going down. I still had hopes that things will improve later on and the bulls will return but month after month, my savings kept going down.

I finally gave up and converted everything to USDT and that period saw the downfall of readcash because it could no longer sustain itself because of the crypto depression. Things were really crazy during that period because as I was complaining about the loss of my savings, people lost their entire investment within a short period and I'm talking about millions of dollars invested in cryptocurrency.

Which do I prefer?

Having shown that both options have advantages and disadvantages, I still prefer cryptocurrency because of the peace of mind that comes with knowing that you're in charge of your coins but we can't say the same for the traditional banks who can do whatever they like with your money. Most of the time when you lose money in crypto, it's usually due to your own personal errors and miscalculations.

But if I'm to save with crypto, I usually prefer doing so in a stable coin like USDT or our very own hive dollars (HBD), then when I really need money for something important, I sell. I barely leave money in my bank account these days and the only bank I even leave some money which I use for everyday upkeep is kuda bank and that is because they don't charge me for transfers, no atm maintenance fees, or weekly sms charges, unlike other regular banks.

For me to consider putting the traditional banking system as my priority, then they need to stop all those unnecessary deductions on customers' accounts, remove sms alert levies, have no atm maintenance fee, have super fast transaction speed, and no failed transactions. They still have a long way to go before they can implement all these, especially in a country like Nigeria, so for now I just have to stick with cryptocurrency

Thanks for reading

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