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Do Cryptocurrencies Provide ANY() Real-Economic Value at All?

• wheresmycraisin 5y ago
  In controversial-but-legal industries (think adult entertainment, gambling, cannabis), it can be difficult to get traditional banking and payment processing services that are taken for granted by more normal businesses. I've seen crypto used in this context for B2B transactions (paying for IT services). Also, it's a decent option for international transfers. International wires are more expensive (even when compared to current BTC tx fees) and slow (2+ business days). And if either the sender or the recipients doesn't have a bank account are reduces to Western Union or similar, which is simple robbery. I don't know what SEPA Instant Transfer Credits are, but I suspect you need a bank account. The original use case related to international transfers was remittances... ie, immigrants sending money home. In reality I suspects it's used much more often for getting money out of certain countries like China that have set limits on outgoing transfers.
  • Maken 5y ago
    SEPA is a vommon framework for payments inside the EU (and associates) that means instant payments, retrievals and transfers in Euros. And yes, you need a bank account in one of the member countries, but by same logic you need a wallet to receive btc.
    • anonymoushn 5y ago
      The requirements for setting up a bitcoin wallet are met by a lot more people than the requirements for setting up an EU bank account.
• cpach 5y ago
  So far, I haven’t seen any.
• jonathan_oberg 5y ago
  Consider an NFT with smart contract which apportions a percent of each future purchase to the original seller. Now consider a stock issued by a company as the NFT. With traditional stocks, the issuing company only obtains funds one time. All future value gains are captured by traders. Finally, consider issuing stock that as NFT with the contract above. In this model, as a stock rises in value, both the company and traders gain.
  • lottin 5y ago
    The company can buy its own stock and benefit if it rises in value. There is nothing to gain from using a smart contract to achieve the same result except in a more convoluted, less transparent fashion.
  • acdha 5y ago
    Is anyone doing this for real? It doesn’t seem like it adds any value over a real contract since it’s still relying on the courts for enforcement, and it seems unproven that there’s much demand. Adding a blockchain also adds a number of complexities which would lower the value: you need to hedge against bugs in the smart contract (the Ethereum folks probably won’t rewrite history again for you), there’s a complex and expensive tech stack you need to support instead of a sheet of paper, and you have limited your potential buyers to those comfortable with that and on your particular system rather than another one.
    • notwedtm 5y ago
      It doesn't rely on the courts for enforcement, it relies on the underlying crypto-network. The contract is built in to the original sale.
      • acdha 5y ago
        Think about this beyond the sales pitch: I accept your offer, taking a lower price because you double pinkie swear that you’ll share part of any future sales of an object, profits from a company, etc. At every point, you (the person who controls the thing with actual value) can choose to simply ignore the blockchain in many ways: not sharing profits with shareholders, selling a real-world object outside of the same blockchain, making copies of a digital object or listing the same thing on many NFTs, using a smart contract with a bug or unreliable oracle which you can exploit, etc. My recourse is my ability to sue you for breach of contract.
• moksly 5y ago
  I don’t think blockchain has much real world value in a legal sense. We’ve been running various pocs on it, with major and minor suppliers, crypto-people? (not sure what to call those techie/artist/idealists or what they call themselves) and the universities for the better part of two decades now in the European public sector. We’ve never been capable of finding a reason to use it. I do get the argument about stuff like land ownership in more corrupt countries, but you it still sort of turns into an utopian dream, because no-one in those regimes really care if you’re right. All the proof in the world doesn’t stop people with guns from taking your positions. I think Maersk and it’s containershipping business, and it’s blockchain based proof of container authenticity is one of the few examples where the technology actually works better than anything else. And that’s mainly because Maersk itself is big enough, and has big enough legal support, to refuse containers that are tampered with. Sort of like the corrupt government situation, but inverse. For finance it has no real value for legal purposes, again because trust is sort of worthless when your authorities aren’t with it. You can’t deny it’s “get rich quick” schemes of course, and it’s extremely valuable for white-washing money, dealing with black-Market goods and various forms of fraud. Which isn’t really value to dismiss, considering how big a GDP international crime has.
  • dmitriid 5y ago
    > I think Maersk and it’s containershipping business, and it’s blockchain based proof of container authenticity Literally nothing in that project requires blockchain. And nothing that a blockchain has proves anything about a container's authenticity: it's a slow, inefficient database of the same data that has to be manually entered by multiple people in multiple places.
• breck 5y ago
  Time is more valuable than gold. Crypto saves time. Some experiments to test for yourself and measure the time elapsed: pay someone in a foreign country. Do it again except at 2am on a Sunday. Wire someone some money. Now do the same outside bankings hours. Now do the same but try and do a test transaction first. Try setting up a new company. Add a vesting clause. Now handle actual distribution of dividends. Measure the time and legal fees in the non crypto version.
  • lottin 5y ago
    So have you measured the time that you save in any of these situations by using a cryptocurrency? It seems that you make a series of questionable claims and we just have to believe that what you say is true.
    • breck 5y ago
      Reading "Some experiments to test for yourself" as "we just have to believe that what you say is true" is an interesting interpretation.
• hatch_q 5y ago
  BAT - basic attention token is paid to you if you enable ads in brave browser. The benefit here is that it's anonymous (at least to the point when you want to cash-out).
• ur-whale 5y ago
  If you live in Turkey right now and want to move capital out that cesspit, cryptos are a pretty good option (even if they've just been made illegal).
  • 1cvmask 5y ago
    Crypto is not illegal in Turkey, or for that matter other financial instruments including foreign exchange or gold. The central bank regulated crypto for payments as of April 30. Apparently the only place that offered crypto as a payment form was the Rolls Royce dealership. “This week Royal Motors, which distributes Rolls-Royce and Lotus cars in Turkey, became the first business in the country to accept payments in cryptocurrencies.” https://www.reuters.com/article/turkey-crypto-currency-idINKBN2C31D3 https://www.reuters.com/article/turkey-crypto-currency-idINK... What other countries do you consider a cesspit? What is your criteria for a cesspit?
• civildude 5y ago
  you cant handle the truth
• rhn_mk1 5y ago
  Q1: The benefit is that as long as you are connected to the internet, you can make the transfer. It doesn't matter if your bank or your police wants to stop you, you can do it. Q2: Because when central banks become unreliable, or hyperinflation kicks in (Venezuela, Greece), trade using the central bank currency may become hard. You wouldn't transfer USD→COIN→EUR, but USD→COIN, and then use the coin directly. Q3: Laws are not computer programs. They are ambiguous and execute in the brains of a few humans. Smart contracts are precise, and they require the entire population of coin users to disagree with the computed outcome. Your conclusion does not take into account the case of not trusting government institutions.
  • jonhendry18 5y ago
    "Smart contracts are precise, and they require the entire population of coin users to disagree with the computed outcome." Lol every month or so some smart contract bug gets exploited and coins get stolen.
• quantum_mcts 5y ago
  All your arguments has this implicit assumption of a central authority that you trust to do its job: - "SEPA is pan-European credit transfers". Emphasis in "European". Good luck _reliably_ sending money to China or across Atlantic _in_several_days_. Reliable 10s is a dream there. - "Every country already has its native currency." Emphasis on "country". With a central bank that manages the supply. - "All (democratic) countries have courts in place." Again, emphasis on "countries" and "democratic" (which you obviously felt the need to put in). The fundamental technical innovation of cryptocurrencies is permissionless decentralized consensus - you don't need a trusted central authority to execute transfers and contracts. That is (in my opinion) where the fundamental "usefulness" of crypto stems from.
  • maxerickson 5y ago
    Contracts can't enforce themselves.
    • quantum_mcts 5y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_contract https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_contract
      • realce 5y ago
        Where in this article does it describe how I get tenants out of my rental when they don't pay into the smart contract? That's what enforcement is, not just some rules in a spreadsheet.
        • WnZ39p0Dgydaz1 5y ago
          Actually, it's some rules in a spreadsheet. You get tenants out of your rental because someone is getting paid to do it - their salary is in some spreadsheet - and then their work is verified by someone else who is also getting paid to do that. These complex systems of incentives are currently managed by humans. You could setup a similar incentive system as smart contracts. If your tenant does not pay, you could get him evicted much fatser and automatically, because another smart contract can pay the enforcer. And the overall fees are subsidized and tradeable. Of course we're far away from doing that and both approaches have pros and cons, but it's arguable that the "human-managed" approach is clearly superior.
• realce 5y ago
  While it's understandable that some could write this off as trite, it's the best way to obtain high-quality illicit substances and to sell them through the internet. This is very important to some people and the current economic systems don't allow that to occur. It's "real" economic value even if you don't think it's right.
• FloresHernandez 5y ago
  Yes, it shields you against your own government by giving an alternative they can't stop or ban. In some parts of the world, government is hostile towards their own population, either by incompetence or malice. Debasement of the national fiat currency is theft perpetrated by the government and crypto provides an alternative for that. Can you just use US Dollars? Sure you can. But your government can search you for the bills. Or they can block the specific website you're using or the US banks can be hostile towards citizens of your country (Neteller, skrill and several others outright banned Venezuelan citizens, and some US banks are making difficult the process to open bank accounts) But how about volatility? Sure is a problem. But with fiat you know is only going down, at least with crypto it can go up. Is always interesting seeing the threads on HN on crypto and how it never considers an actual hostile government.
  • acdha 5y ago
    > Yes, it shields you against your own government by giving an alternative they can't stop or ban. How? If your government decides to take your stuff, they’re not going to say “some nerds in another country said no, guess we have to let them keep it” - they’re just going to fine, jail, or abuse you until you turn over the keys (better hope you can convince them you didn’t have anything more which you aren’t still concealing). Blockchains helpfully give them your full transaction history so it becomes exceptionally dangerous to engage in transactions with anyone you know in country since you don’t know whether they are or will ever be giving that data to the authorities. The underlying problem is the repressive government. This is not a technical problem and you’re not going to be able to solve it with a complex, easily tracked technology which preserves a full history of your non-compliance for prosecution.
    • FloresHernandez 5y ago
      Yes, of course. The problem here is the repressive government. But as everything, they have tools. Crypto takes one of the tools for them (Debasing the currency and strict control over local banks). Any tool we can take from them is good. Even a not-really-hostile-goverment-but-more-like-incompetent can do a lot of damage by debasing the currency. Now the citizens have tools to fight their incompetence. If only for this reason, is better to have crypto than not have it. I can came up for a lot of reasons why I think Tik-Tok is useless, but is useful for a lot of people, so no reason for me to to bash it.
• temp8964 5y ago
  Did PayPal provide any real economic value at all? Shouldn't credit cards already provided everything already? If you agree PayPal did provide real economic value, you admit the system before it was imperfect. So PayPal fixed the last hole in the system?
• Indomit 5y ago
  I think there are a very few projects out there with actual working products that provide real economic value. VeChain [0] for example, has been quietly establishing itself as a viable solution for supply chain transparency [1]. Walmart uses VeChain through its Food Traceability Platform [2]. [0] - https://www.vechain.org/ https://www.vechain.org/ [1] - https://seekingalpha.com/article/4415383-vechain-is-blockchain-investment-for-next-decade https://seekingalpha.com/article/4415383-vechain-is-blockcha... [2] - https://traceability.walmartmobile.cn/walmart/p/1000742104000000000200 https://traceability.walmartmobile.cn/walmart/p/100074210400...
• pinkybanana 5y ago
  I got rich with Bitcoin, the value in my life has been quite tangible. I live in big house, drive a nice car, I don't have to work unless I want to. This is how I would pretty much define value. Q1. by accepting and preferring BTC as a payment for my services, I was able to retain better value/purchasing power from my labour long-term. By changing my fiat currency to BTC I was able to also increase my purchasing power. Clear value to me. I don't know if this has some externalities and don't care really. My transactions are legal and counterparties have been as happy as people in typical business transactions are. Q2. It doesn't have to exist, it happens to exist and you can choose not to use it. Q3. "Smart contract" is a marketing term and "smart contracts" are not replacing traditional courts in any sensible way. The whole claim is just nonsense (there is much bullshit in crypto).
  • notwedtm 5y ago
    Luck/intelligence != value There are plenty of people who have been ruined by bitcoin as well. The fact that you were either lucky enough to ride the right waves, or smart enough to see the bad ones, does not equate to any value at all.
    • pinkybanana 5y ago
      My life has improved a lot thanks to Bitcoin, that equals very objective value for me. Maybe you are talking about "value for society" or something more abstract? Value is very simple concept and Bitcoin obviously provides it to many in rising fiat value. These "doesn't provide value" just seem to throw the commonly used definition out of the window and talk on another definition plane.
• anonymoushn 5y ago
  Q1. I don't live in Europe. Wire transfers from my US bank can only be sent domestically, cost me $20, and require me to fill out a form and then stay up until 2AM so that a person can call me on the phone during business hours in the US and I can confirm that I did in fact fill out that form. Wire transfers from my Japanese bank are more reasonable but cost 10000x as much money to send and (under ideal conditions - during business hours long before closing on a weekday) take longer to settle than modern cryptocurrencies. Q2. Why should Apple stock exist when we already have dollars? Why should Brazilian Real exist when we already have dollars? I wouldn't trade USD for BTC for EUR. I would probably trade USD for EUR directly. As a consumer, the best place I can do this is FTX, a cryptocurrency derivatives exchange, because they provide end-users with the extremely competitive forex rates of a Hong Kong bank's OTC desk. The second-best place is probably IBKR which provides extremely competitive rates because it's literally a forex broker but takes days to wire money in and out. The third-best place is probably Shinsei Bank, which is one of the two most popular banks for foreigners in Japan and provides suspiciously good forex rates compared to all other consumer banks in the world. Q3. "Smart contracts" are not really a replacement for the legal system. They are, at least for now, mostly a way to build non-custodial versions of traditional financial products. Again, this is sort of like saying "Why do we have oil futures and SPY puts when you can just buy oil or sell SPY?" Re: Conclusions: Ok, but did you try to use the internet to let your US customers pay you dollars which you would then give to your US creators who create pornography for your customers? How many providers accepted this proposal? What fees do they charge?
  • tigroferoce 5y ago
    You conclusion is a very limited case and IMO is better met by allowing sex works to be a first class work and not by inventing a huge environmentally unfriendly solution. Beside this, like the OP, I also fail to see clear cases where the cryptocurrencies provide significative advantage, let alone blockchains outside the cryptocurrencies.
    • anonymoushn 5y ago
      The consensus network I prefer to use is more environmentally friendly than banks. All other merchant accounts also charge more money in fees than the consensus network I prefer to use. It's just an extreme example to probably not even have a merchant account. "why not just fix every government policy everywhere" doesn't sound very practical to me. it has my support though!
• crispyambulance 5y ago
  The potential applications of cryptocurrencies are far-ranging. Sadly, however, the current actual applications seems to be mostly just get-rich-quick schemes and highly speculative investing that's stimulated by the extreme volatility. If the crazy stuff settles down, it might maybe someday become an actual currency that people can use to exchange legit goods and services safely. Currency should be boring. I wonder a lot if the crazy aspects of crypto currency are by design or if I utterly misunderstand even the fundamental nature of currency. For one thing, why have the computational simulacrum of mining? Why does crypto currency NEED to use outrageous amounts of power solving puzzles to "mine" bitcoins? Is this manufactured scarcity really needed to bootstrap it as a currency? The white papers I've seen don't seem to address that kind of stuff, but are perfectly happy to obfuscate the "why" aspects.
  • hooande 5y ago
    Crypto currency seems to have major technical issues. Transfer times and fees become ridiculous at times of peak popularity. I can't imagine how the current models and architectures could handle even a fraction of daily commercial transactions. It's fair to say "that will get worked out over time". but it's seeming increasingly likely that the idea of blockchain and mining will be have to be abandoned entirely
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• WnZ39p0Dgydaz1 5y ago
  There are some test applications and fringe uses cases, some of which are mentioned in this thread, but I've come to the conclusion that crypto is so early that's is more of a movement than anything else. It's a movement to 1. cut out the middlemen and make the same financial ecosystem globally accessible to everyone and 2. make the financial ecosystem programmable from the ground up without the need for clunky add-ons. We're far away from both because, like you said, countries, governments are regulations are not going away anytime soon. But I do think it's inevitable that things will change and "global programmable finance" becomes the standard. I think it will follow something like Planck's principle [0] - it's not going to happen because people are going to be convinced by crypto, but because the next generation will adopt crypto as more of a default. At least for me, that's the reason I'm involved in crypto. I can't think of a tangible benefit I get from transacting in crypto, but I would much rather live in a world where countries, governments, and banks are less powerful and more transparent than they are now. I think in 100-200 years we may look back and ask ourselves how we could ever live with inefficient and corrupt governments, financial, and legal systems that are based on geographical locality instead of them being internet-based. We probably won't be using the current incarnation of crypto, but I doubt the current institutions will survive, and crypto is a step towards that. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle
• bgitarts 5y ago
  Currently much of the value is not seen until it's too late. ie: If Bitcoin had existed in the 1930's many Jews could have fled Nazi Germany with their life savings. As for other platforms like Ethereum it's more about trusted middleman disintermediation. You put you money in a bank to receive 0.5% APR while they lend it out 3-10%. Why the spread? DeFi cuts out the fat and replaces it with protocols to pass more on to both sides of the transaction. The ultimate disintermediation is governance. With strong cryptography and smart contracts new forms of governance are possible such as liquid democracy. Similar to representative democracy of today except if you don't like how your representative is voting on an issue you can veto and cast your own vote. You can also choose which representative to delegate to rather than be being forced a rep by majority. This all sounds like platitude, but what these all share in common is enabling individual freedom and in a world that is continually eroding individual freedoms, crypto begins to look increasingly more valuable.
  • throw100010 5y ago
    > The ultimate disintermediation is governance. With strong cryptography and smart contracts new forms of governance are possible such as liquid democracy. How can the network know that two people with ordinary CPUs are two distinct people, while that person over there with an AntMiner isn't 1000 people, even though their relative PoW output suggests they are? Tying the mathematical world to the real world has always been a problem with these schemes. If it can't tell a group of people from one person with a mining rig, then the liquid democracy becomes one dollar one vote rather than one person one vote, and we all know how democratic that is.
• notwedtm 5y ago
  The real value is in the democratization of the control. Sure no crypto network is 100% in this realm yet, but all of the reasons you see on this page tie back to the fact that central regulatory bodies are both bad for innovation, and bad for personal privacy. I don't need a government, bank, or anyone besides the other side of my transaction to be involved in it.
• Rayzar 5y ago
  If you, like some of us, live in a country where the government of the day can seize your bank accounts because of your political views, storing your assets as crypto has real-economic value.
• secfirstmd 5y ago
  For me the only utility lies with the likes of Sia, Filecoin etc. To an extent doing to storage what AirBnB does to homes.
• shepardrtc 5y ago
  Cryptocurrency provides economic incentive to support a blockchain, and a blockchain provides support to a decentralized, distributed service. For example: 1) Money transfer - with no central point of failure or central point of control, a blockchain database provides trustless support to verify and maintain a history of transactions. But to do the work, economic incentives to workers must be applied. Example: Bitcoin 2) Storage - once again, no central point of failure or control, with a blockchain providing the history and data regarding what is stored, and with cryptocurrency providing economic incentive for someone to provide storage to the network. Example: Siacoin 3) Contracts - trustless contracts or escrow, maintained in a blockchain database with code for execution maintained on the blockchain as well. Verification and execution of code is done by workers who are incentivized by cryptocurrency. Example: Ethereum Why use cryptocurrency instead of USD? Because USD isn't electronic and is heavily regulated. As much as we like to think our money system is electronic, its really only hacky applications on top of our existing banking system. I used to work at a very large bank in the payments processing division, and you have no idea how many times they screwed up payments across the entire world. Sunday morning deployments often involved double-charges, missed charges, and overall screwing up virtually every merchant in North America. The only reason our monetary system hasn't collapsed is because people work very, very hard to fix all of these hidden failures. Cryptocurrencies remove the human element and provide a more efficient, error-free system.
• _w1kke_ 5y ago
  Globale employment of digital workers is a breeze to do with a fast blockchain based solution. The workers can be onboarded using their wallet, their contributions can be logged on the blockchain, and their rewards can be directly paid out to their wallets. Their work can be analysed without the need to know which gender they have or where they come from. This opens the door for unbiased reputation and reward schemes. A true equaliser. This is an application of blockchain technology that becomes much more expensive without it. The hassle of hiring people around the world, paying them, and rating their work objectively is expensive and very difficult.
• keymone 5y ago
  Yes. Everything you described relies on central authority. For those who would like to not rely on central authority - cryptocurrencies provide real economic value. It’s trivial to the point where it’s impossible to distinguish you from a troll.
  • pgesmm 5y ago
    Why a troll? I asked a question and provided reasonable arguments for my belief. - "Not wanting to rely on a central authority" is a political theme. - In my opinion saying "I use crypto because I do not agree with my governing central authority" is not really a good application (as I asked for in my question). You don't even have to commit illicit activities in a universal/ethically right way. It suffices to do "illicit" activities in the view of the government to get you into real trouble (jail time or worse). So to say "I use crypto as an expression of protest" seems like a questionable application to me
    • keymone 5y ago
      > I use crypto as an expression of protest that is your opinion. for me it's real value. you do realize that all value is subjective?
• cryptohasvalue 5y ago
  > Q2. ... Suppose you want to transfer USD-->EUR. Why transfer USD-->BTC-->EUR instead? USD->BTC->CNY or CNY->BTC->USD is much easier than USD->CNY or CNY->USD in a lot of cases. This is a clear case of economic value.
• comodore_ 5y ago
  > "Smart contracts". All (democratic) countries have courts in place to settle legistlative disputes between two parties. The case for smart contracts is, you can't have disputes. No need for attorneys, that will bleed you dry. It does not add an additional layer, instead it removes them all and becomes the sole layer.
  • acdha 5y ago
    Who writes those contracts? Who debugs them? Who settles disputes if one the parties feels that the other isn’t honoring them? This replaces attorneys by creating attorney-programmers who charge more and have less recourse when someone makes a mistake.
    • mindcandy 5y ago
      The assumption that smart contracts are going to cost more than attorneys is presumptive. For the common cases, open source contracts will be inevitable. This will give the world’s poorest options that were never available before.
      • acdha 5y ago
        Kind of like the way standard contracts have been available for many common needs for many decades? Remember, there’s no reason why you can’t have open source contracts now - the challenge is that knowledge of the law is not trivial and liability is a very real concern (want to risk being charged with practicing law without a license?). Adding a separate source of problems might distract from that but it doesn’t make the hard problem go away.
  • pgesmm 5y ago
    Suppose we two make a "smart contract": I say I pay 100k, you say you sell me a functional car. Let's say you then deliver a broken car. Now what? How can't we have disputes, we did a "smart contract"?
    • mindcandy 5y ago
• analog31 5y ago
  Reading a variety of comments over the years, the value seems to be in a negative sense, i.e., it lacks features of regular money that some people don't like, or that are too inconvenient or expensive. Regular government money has a clear purpose because it is manipulated to make certain purposes obvious (in the way that a bicycle or scissors have a purpose), in turn making their value relative to how well they serve those purposes, such as: * Temporary store of value * Medium of exchange * Tool of government monetary policy Crypto is just too small potatoes to necessarily have any two people using it for the same thing, so in that sense, it is still at the stage of its value being whatever you want it to be. It could be a way of extracting value from subsidized electricity. The value could be in the experiment. We're learning how crypto and blockchain technologies work and don't work. As a scientist, I get paid to do failed experiments. ;-)
• mindcandy 5y ago
  All of your arguments assume that all parties are in good standing of well-functioning governments with well-functioning financial systems that all get along. But, then politics, corruption, bad monetary policy, bureaucracy, etc get involved and sometimes things aren’t as simple for people who aren’t middle class Americans. Bitcoin is basically a giant IOU distributed throughout the world without the involvement of any country or company. The tiniest bits of that trillion dollar IOU can be transferred and traded between the lowliest individuals around the world without restriction, without involvement from any bank, without interference from any government. A homeless man in LA can perform international trade with a programmer in Russia and an artist in Cuba completely by themselves without requiring the blessings or assistance of Citibank, Western Union, Biden, Putin and Díaz-Canel. And, with smart contracts, this extends out from payments to loans, collateral, corporations and all kinds of financial instruments. All without borders or lawyers. Basically any rules you can imagine based on money, time and signalling consent. It’s turning out that Bitcoin and Ethereum aren’t great on their own for buying lattes. But, they are turning out great as a foundational layer for a whole new financial system. Rather than basing a macro-scale credit system on the federal reserve or stock/real estate derivatives, we can now use tiny or huge chunks of BTC and ETH as collateral, as a loan basis, as a settlement layer, etc and build up from there.
• bitcoinmonger 5y ago
  Bitcoin has no value over the long term. There are no controls on who is allowed to send and receive money, and funds cannot be confiscated by government if necessary. A system that permits individuals complete custody over money is not something that should be allowed to exist in a modern society. There is too much room for criminal activity. The current financial system works better and should not be circumvented.
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• Irongirl1 5y ago
  Can a non-techie and member of a hunted class share a scenario? What if a Foundation formed in, Belgium, let's say because of their emphasis on human rights, hands out "charge coins" to those who might be subject to pulling over for, oh, I don't know....air fresheners. Normally, such a person would have no bail money and would lose their jobs, housing and potentially their children to a asylum filled with people who prey specifically on us. But this Foundation pays the bail, in any currency the court system prefers, and additionally...this "charge coin" gives the bearer access to lawyers. Lawyers from countries were the possibility of innocence is actually investigated, where they actually give a damn about preserving life. A country where 10K citizens dead in ridiculous crimes that even a blind man could tell were genocide were hired and paid to take an interest... no more kids in a "system" to be corrupted and used, no more nurses losing jobs because they spent days in jail because they couldn't afford bail, no more lost housing because Section 8 recipients are targeted to get them kicked out so that others could take their places. I think the real issue for all you who spend your days poking holes in new ways of doing things that don't directly benefit you...is that you've had money, privilege and access for so damn long you can't see the forest for the trees. You've been in charge and in power forever...and you have literally no idea what Mr. Nakimoto or whomever he is has really done. The genie isn't going back into the bottle. The ability for under-represented groups to set their course free of your suppression and interference is here. NOW.