I'm into cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, actually) because it solves a very specific problem that might apply only to my country. So, anecdote: I live in Argentina,

I'm into cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, actually) because it solves a very specific problem that might apply only to my country. So, anecdote: I live in Argentina, work for an UK based company. been doing that for the last 10 years. Before I could trade bitcoin in an almost frictionless way (I.e., before I discovered Localbitcoin.com) my routine was to go to the ATM after the payment got into my european bank account, do a few extracts per day, rinse and repeat until I got all the money I needed. Rate per extraction was around a few euros if I didn't hit minimum, to a certain % (That at times could be 5%, but can't quite recall as last time was 6 or so years ago). Minimum depended on the current economic situation of my country at the time (I suppose I don't need to explain that). So, why not wire the money to your local bank account, you might ask? Well, last time I checked (I moved a year ago to Buenos Aires and haven't checked how it goes here because I don't need to) the process for wiring money to my local bank account was as follows: (Argentina is not inserted into the international SWIFT system !!!) I had to wire the money to a specific bank account in the US, that belonges normally to the bank I was checking, but couldn't really say. I had to wire the money there from my european bank account with certain conditions, so it could be recognizable that the money belonged to me. Then, after some time (Could be as short as 2 weeks, but no bank would assure it would work like that every time, and wait times of 1 month or more were totally possible, considering how the Argetinian banks operate, i.e., mob-like) I would get my money _in the local currency_ with the corresponding loss due to exchange rates. AND (that's kind a really big AND, I need bigger caps) the "charge" for the operation was around 100 bucks. PER OPERATION. "Thats too much" I said. "Yeah, people tend to group operations in half years so transfer is justified" was the answer I got. I tested this at 3 different banks, got the same reply in all 3. Seriously. So, now I trade bitcoin. I buy them in the UK, transfer them to my wallet, and use a broker to get the money in my account. The broker takes 2% on all operations, plus their rate is around 2% below of the current BTC price, but I don't mind. At least I'm getting ripped by somebody I want to get ripped by. And then we have the speed issue: Since Segwit, it can take as little as half an hour to do the whole operation. 2 months ago I woke up with the money in my EU bank account (I'm not an early raiser, may I say), and by noon I had completed all operations and was just waiting for the broker to deposit the money in my local bank account. BTW, the reason for me using a broker, is that minimum operation volume in LocalBTC is 0.2 BTC, and with the price hike at the middle of 2017 that became a problem; that, plus mostly everybody in Argentina that deals in BTC are fucking histerical trying to do a quick buck, so they start getting nervous if they don't close the operation in under 30 minutes. And just in case you want to know how the banks operate here, another anecdote: The dollar fucking doubled it's rate between May and September last year. The measure the gobernment used to stop the rate rise was to take the credit rate to above 70% (Yes, that's a seven followed by a zero). Then, a lot of people here manage their finances both with credit and debit cards, because it's a lot easier (Unless you want to be carrying a lot of bills in your pockets). So, what do banks do? They fuck merchants over, by delaying as much as they can transferring the money, because they put that in the financial market (We're speaking in the weeks here, above 3 of them). Even with the fines and shit, they are making shitloads of money. So, that mean that merchants get fucked over twice: they don't get the money in time, and when they get it prices might have changed a lot, so in a lot of cases they end up losing money. Regarding the questions re:cryptocurrency I'm here for a long time, not a fun time. I mean, I have no problem if I have some fun with it, but it's not the end goal. And it's going to be fun if crypto takes off, as countries / governments are going to have to deal with the implied loss of power.