The FDIC is an agency of the Federal Government. In reality, it can never go broke. All FDIC insured accounts will get their money back in case of a bank failure. That's the whole point
"If you promise people their money, but don't actually have enough money to pay them (if only 10% of customers close their accounts and cash-out, the bank is done-for) then you're running a ponzi-scheme."
No, that is not by any means a ponzi-scheme. Not being able to pay out deposits due to the normal course of business does not constitute a ponzi-scheme. It would only be a ponzi scheme if the bank was originally setup to take deposits, with no intention of ever returning them, or ever paying interest on them as advertised.
It can however, run out of "cash-on-hand".
Why do you think they went insane printing money in QE1, QE2, QE3, QE4?
Did you know we're currently in an "unofficial" QE5?
I've been lucky enough to find at least a handful of people who seem reasonable and willing to engage in civil conversation.
If I undelegate at some point, don't take it personally, I probably just have other priorities demanding my attention.
I believe delegating is vastly superior to casting my below-minimum-payout vote around.
But that's exactly what a BANK does.
You accrue interest on paper, but the bank never has enough capital to cover that paper.
A few people can get out ahead (just like a casino, even Bernie Madoff had a few customers that withdrew huge profits), and by doing so "prove" that "the system works", but just like a casino, they eat you up with fees, and they'll even hold your funds if you try to withdraw any amount greater than a couple thousand bucks (the "Bank Secrecy Act" makes this even worse).
That's actually one of the most attractive aspects of steem (and crypto generally), namely that I can send tokens of value to whomever I wish, whenever I wish.
Notes on the Bank Secrecy Act,
It has been amended several times, including provisions in Title III of the USA PATRIOT Act, which amended the BSA to require financial institutions to establish anti-money-laundering programs by establishing internal policies, procedures, and controls, designating compliance officers, providing ongoing employee training, and testing their programs through independent audits.[4] WIKI
Good example.
I believe there have been some proposals to keep clubs from charging a customer if they don't show up for 31 days.
If your business model relies on charging people for ZERO services, you are running a scam.
Permanent web hosting.
Even if your post is heavily downvoted and your rep is (-77), your posts can still be viewed.
Nobody can erase them, they're coded into the blockchain.
No capital investment is required.
No other significant public forum offers free permanent web hosting and 100%transparency (blockchain FTW!!).
Sure you can get downvoted, but you know who did it.
If you get flagged (insta-banned) on yo.tube or fa.cebuk or pa.ypal, you have ZERO recourse.
ZERO. You don't know who did it, you have no way of asking them, and you have nobody to request help from.
You can easily identify users with high-rep and post thoughtful comments to get their attention.
I've actually been very impressed with high-rep users responsiveness.
I've received several non-boilerplate replies from ura-soul, crypto.piotr, themarkymark, and even gooddream.
Socky and me-tarzan even gave me MASSIVE upvotes!
That's the beauty of the blockchain. Nobody can be banned. Nobody can stop you from sending or receiving direct transfers or delegations of steem.
Your bank can flag you and freeze your account (real cash-money-dollars) at any time and for any reason, they don't have to explain it to you and they don't even have to charge you with a crime.
Pa.ypal can also kick you off their platform (permanently, they have your ID) and freeze your funds for 6 months and nobody can even ask why.
What would be your wish-list of key design features if you had the resources to design your own social-network with exchangeable value-tokens?
What enforcement mechanism would you propose?
Articles cannot be downvoted by others, regardless of reputation (sounds good but we need some enforcement mechanism to remove scams and illicit material).
All votes carry equal weight (this should be a no-brainer, but we would need some sort of automated "proof-of-brain" and protection against people controlling hoards of sock-puppets).
Curator payouts are equally divided among all curators (lowering the minimum payout to 0.001 steem and removing the "timing" bonus would fix this).
Good ideas!
This is only "true" technically. If they actually handed out that much cash, inflation (liquidity) would be through the roof and your cash-money-dollars would be next-to-worthless.