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99.9% of people where? If you look at the world outside of your little bubble, there are over 3 billion people with little or no access to banking services tha

99.9% of people where? If you look at the world outside of your little bubble, there are over 3 billion people with little or no access to banking services that the west takes for granted. And do you think people in Venezuela, India, Greece, Zimbabwe, etc trust that their governments will do the right thing?

Nursie 9y ago
The unbanked are not going to be using cryptocurrency, which requires secure access to secure computers, a whole mass of precautions, technical knowledge etc etc. They're not going to be putting what little they have into a wildly fluctuating asset class with poorly enumerated tax liabilities. It's a pipedream of western cryptocurrency enthusiasts, not actually something that's going to be useful on the ground.
- sparkie 9y ago
  I mentioned Venezuela because people there are using Bitcoin, despite it being illegal, despite it being volatile. Because it's objectively better than what their government is offering. You're really thinking short term if you think that Bitcoin can't spread to the masses of people worldwide. A couple of decades ago, people in rural India for example, didn't even have permanent access to a telephone in their home. Technical advancement has now meant that masses of them have phones, and many of them smartphones. They have completely skipped over the home telephone thing. They certainly are going to use cryptocurrencies if it's the simplest way to transfer money to people, without going through the bank (which they have limited access to). In particular, you have large numbers of people working abroad who send money back home to their families. In the old financial system they usually end up paying big taxes on these transfers (fees which seem small to westerners, but which could feed entire families for a day). Just as these people haven't rushed to get a landline to get a telephone in their home, they're also not going to rush to get a bank account where they're restricted on how and when they can use their money, when a better technology is now available to them. Volatility is and obvious side-effect when demand is changing at such staggering volumes. Some days Bitcoin might get a million new users if it's put out in mainstream media. These fluctuations will probably increase in the near term, as more people become aware and being to adopt cryptocurrencies, but long term, they will die down as adoption rate slows too. It's not going to happen overnight, which is probably where most of the dismissive attitude comes from. People's expectations are too high in what they want to be able to do tomorrow with crypto, but in reality it's going to take several decades to work its way into society.

Nursie 9y ago

The unbanked are not going to be using cryptocurrency, which requires secure access to secure computers, a whole mass of precautions, technical knowledge etc etc. They're not going to be putting what little they have into a wildly fluctuating asset class with poorly enumerated tax liabilities. It's a pipedream of western cryptocurrency enthusiasts, not actually something that's going to be useful on the ground.

sparkie 9y ago
I mentioned Venezuela because people there are using Bitcoin, despite it being illegal, despite it being volatile. Because it's objectively better than what their government is offering. You're really thinking short term if you think that Bitcoin can't spread to the masses of people worldwide. A couple of decades ago, people in rural India for example, didn't even have permanent access to a telephone in their home. Technical advancement has now meant that masses of them have phones, and many of them smartphones. They have completely skipped over the home telephone thing. They certainly are going to use cryptocurrencies if it's the simplest way to transfer money to people, without going through the bank (which they have limited access to). In particular, you have large numbers of people working abroad who send money back home to their families. In the old financial system they usually end up paying big taxes on these transfers (fees which seem small to westerners, but which could feed entire families for a day). Just as these people haven't rushed to get a landline to get a telephone in their home, they're also not going to rush to get a bank account where they're restricted on how and when they can use their money, when a better technology is now available to them. Volatility is and obvious side-effect when demand is changing at such staggering volumes. Some days Bitcoin might get a million new users if it's put out in mainstream media. These fluctuations will probably increase in the near term, as more people become aware and being to adopt cryptocurrencies, but long term, they will die down as adoption rate slows too. It's not going to happen overnight, which is probably where most of the dismissive attitude comes from. People's expectations are too high in what they want to be able to do tomorrow with crypto, but in reality it's going to take several decades to work its way into society.