This is going to make me sound like a giant douche, probably, and I apologize in advance.

But, within certain boundaries, including of course those of the law, I want to do everything I want to do. When I want to do it.

I’m not exactly sure why I shouldn’t feel like that.

I don’t like being told what to do.

Let’s get practical with a real-world example.

People expect, accept, sometimes even happily welcome, fees. But why?

I’m not sure I understand that. I’ve never understood it, in fact.

See, I’m writing this while drinking a beer that I’ll pay for using a crypto debit card.

Once a week, I wire funds from my bank to one of the crypto exchanges I use, there are no fees.

I’m then going to settle the bill using the crypto debit card that feeds off the funds in my crypto account.

There will be no fees.

Why should it be any different? My bank, and the crypto exchange in question, did not help make me the money I’ll use for this beer. So why should they get a cut?

This, in my view, is by far the strongest selling point when it comes to crypto.

Since the dawn of time, since the first day of the banking world as we know it, our money hasn’t really been our money.

If you put your money in a bank, which we all do, it isn’t your money.

It’s the State’s money, first, and the bank’s money, second, and it is your money only if and when they agree to let you spend it.

Does that sound fair?

Mind you, it’s the other way around with crypto. If you and I transact using crypto, and I mean directly, without using a crypto exchange as a middleman, short of a permanent internet blackout, nothing can stop that transaction.

So our money is really ours.

So with that in mind, a transactionless and feeless payment system is one hell of a headline for Tectu's SoftNote project.

I read on the website that SoftNote “can reduce transfer costs to zero and provide instant finality”.

It’s a good start. I want instant finality, and I want zero fees. Why shouldn’t I want it? It’s my money, isn’t it? And why shouldn’t you want it? It’s your money.

You should be in charge.

It is my understanding that SoftNote aims to replace transactions with handovers.

I’m not entirely sure what that means in real world terms, I’m gonna be honest, but it sounds like a bit like this to me: a transaction is when I take money out of my own pocket and put it in yours.

A SoftNote handover sounds like there are pockets full of money at the ready, and they’re then delivered to whoever is owed money.

Maybe that’s a bad example. Maybe that’s not useful in terms of explaining how it works.

But to be quite honest with you, I stopped reading at ‘transactionless, zero fees”.

And I stopped reading because I was already on board.

Count me in.

I understand that perhaps this explanation isn't really delivering in terms of technical details, but what do you expect? I'm a content creator. The key word is 'creator'.

Creative people don't do technical, we're busy drinking beer while everyone else is crunching numbers.