It does matter, because it is in fact how the system works, and that system constrains banks. You can be mad at the system and prefer a different system; that's fine. But once you recognize it as the system we do in fact have, you've conceded Patrick's point.
As the article points out, when you scale this problem up to business bank accounts, losses from bad credit decisions to customers can erase all the gains from the entire commercial account line of business at a bank; in other words: to factor risk and credit out of business bank accounts, you're essentially demanding that banks be insolvent.
Yes, I can easily imagine the tears of frustration and loss that bank CEOs and Boards would have to wipe with 100 dollar bills at having to deliver a simple enough product that it doesn't "require" them to debank people arbitrarily.
Why you defend this is beyond me, but it's obvious enough as to barely be worth noting that banks can structure, package and name their checking accounts, and their customer service, in such a way that you as a user can be sure of their reliability, especially after you already fucking deposited the exact funds that you're later hoping to use into said accounts.
Call them credit products if you like, they're not the same as a loan that's given on evidence of solvency but nothing held by the bank directly.
I don't know why you think I'm "defending" anything. I'm discussing the world as it is; like Patrick, I'm making positive claims, not normative ones. That those claims happen to falsify things crypto magnates are saying is a happy accident.
>I don't know why you think I'm "defending" anything.
I don't think so. Your statements about the nature of checking accounts as created by banks (at least in the U.S) paint the entire construct as if it were an inescapable part of how these banks operate, when it could be differentiated in certain ways, and could in either case involve not arbitrarily blocking people from access to their accounts or even funds. In no explanation of checking accounts is that defensible.
As the article points out, when you scale this problem up to business bank accounts, losses from bad credit decisions to customers can erase all the gains from the entire commercial account line of business at a bank; in other words: to factor risk and credit out of business bank accounts, you're essentially demanding that banks be insolvent.
Checking accounts are credit products.