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Several years ago, the discussion around cryptocurrency often centered on the valuable uses it could have. Now that it's been around for quite some time, how ar

Several years ago, the discussion around cryptocurrency often centered on the valuable uses it could have. Now that it's been around for quite some time, how are people using it, in terms of useful functionality? I know very little about the subject, but my initial thoughts lead to things like ransonware payments, money laundering, etc. Certainly there are other useful ways that people regularly use cryptocurrency. What are they?

randomhodler84 5y ago
International remittance without needing to pay the traditional gatekeepers a cut.
- bhouston 5y ago
  AKA Money laundering and tax avoidance.
  - randomhodler84 5y ago
    There are millions paying family in their home countries, it is a significant slice of local GDP in some ways places. You want to throw a straw man to make this look sketchy. I’m sorry but you are many many years too late for such antics.
    - fieldcny 5y ago
      I’m not sure I understand your issue with the previous comment, just because they are sending it to family at home doesn’t mean they are doing it in a lawful way or even that this is desirable or “good” economic behavior.
      - kyleee 5y ago
        Is it for you to decide if it's good or desireable for me to remit money to relatives in a different country?
    - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
      OK, remittance is a big deal. I accept that. But so what? How much of remittance is moving via Bitcoin? Is that an actual use of Bitcoin, or just a theoretical, it-might-happen-that-way-if-people-decided-to use of Bitcoin?
- EugeneG 5y ago
  why pay a traditional gatekeeper when you can pay a nontraditional gatekeeper and make it generally more convoluted
CheezeIt 5y ago
It’s served me well to be able to hold money when stocks seem really high, without being coerced by inflationary policy to throw more money into a bloated stock market by our political masters.
mettamage 5y ago
Alternative form of money transfer (large sums). El Salvador is experimenting. Alternative form of payment on some sites (haven’t needed it yet)
- tmcw 5y ago
  I assume you've been filing form 8300 with the IRS for those transfers over 10k in value, right? Right?
- ufo 5y ago
  I'm not convinced that the population of El Salvador is into it to the same degree that Nayib Bukele is. The whole thing sounds very fishy.
  - mettamage 5y ago
    Well, I said “experimenting” Also, I didn’t comment on whether the experiment is ethical. Crypto and morality is a whole can of worms that I find hard to understand in a satisfactory manner due to the high stakes of different groups abd they all seem to have a point.
- fieldcny 5y ago
  Why would you pay for something with any crypto, no one wants to be the next guy to pay a billion dollars for a couple pizzas.
paul_f 5y ago
Cryptocurrency has three successful use cases. One is speculation, hoping to profit from coin value increasing over time. Two is enabling nefarious activity such as ransomware payoffs and buying illicit drugs, weapons, illegal pornography, etc. Three is money laundering.
- EugeneG 5y ago
  I think "Digital Gold" is a legit use case, similar to "regular gold" Though it's not a very satisfying use case because it's like "hold bitcoin because we all agree we should hold bitcoin"
- pennaMan 5y ago
  In your view, what are the use cases of regular money?
xkfm 5y ago
It's kind of frustrating because I don't know a single person (besides myself) who uses crypto for anything but investing. Maybe one person because they bought an NFT (also for investment). I felt like games/fantasy sports/betting would have come online by now. But, actually using crypto to buy anything is usually a convoluted process. For betting and fantasy sports, you have better options. Most the games are still fumbling around/obvious vaporware. Your best bet is probably Axie Infinity, and it's not very fun, and also hard to play for free. Also, 80% of the people playing these games are using them for income streams, so they get min-maxed to hell, and there is even more botting than usual. All of these altcoins, even bitcoin to a degree, are all barely usable unless you're letting them sit on an exchange somewhere. I've had a good experience purchasing a good or service with exactly one altcoin. Even all the DeFi stuff you hear about in articles/podcasts is too complicated, or you're going to have to pay $500 in gas fees to do anything. It's pretty obvious most of the people who are "into" crypto, aren't really doing anything with it besides honing their investment skills once you actually talk to them about what they do with it.
- EugeneG 5y ago
  What do you use it for other than investing?
  - xkfm 5y ago
    Currently, mostly buying currency in Mir4. Apparently, you're going to be able to buy and sell characters soon. Mir4 you can mine currency in game and convert it to crypto or vice versa. So, I did the latter. That took two exchanges, multiple wallets, and multiple days for a less than $50 purchase. The other games I've tried (Gods Unchained, Axie Infinity, MyCryptoHeroes, Splinterlands, Sorare) are either too expensive or not fun. Augur (prediction market) is pretty interesting, but it's off limits in my region. It's also Ethereum based, so high transaction fees. I've also bought a few pizzas, gift cards, domains, supplements, VPN access, that sort of thing as well. I still check for a crypto option at most places I shop (including SaaS services), but I don't see it most of the time.
- berberous 5y ago
jonahbenton 5y ago
Yes, the criminal uses are dominating the non-criminal, but the non-criminal continue to mature. The way to think about it is that crypto is reinventing all of the historical aspects and nuances both of money and also of public systems of record- both of which are millenia old- on a much faster timeline. There are orders of magnitude more people alive and participating in this money/ledger maturation process than all the previous times put together, of course. Much of the learning is just being implemented, rather than discovered. (Many of the mistakes, however, are being rediscovered.) So it is going very fast, but there is still a LOT to cover. I would posit the system of record use cases are much more profound than the money use cases. Those are still years away- we don't really know how far- but it appears to me the infrastructure is still on track to have a role there. In response to a question- in X years will there be jurisdictions using public blockchains for, eg Real Property ledger, rather than the mix of paper and digital non-blockchain systems variously in use now- I would say yes, and put greater than 50% odds that X is less than 10. Real Property ledger is much more important than money. You can use any old thing for money, but in any civilization there is only one Real Property ledger.
- hakfoo 5y ago
  I think I'd be more willing to bite on the "record keeping" concepts, if you can come up with ones where decentralization is a meaningful feature. The big selling point of blockchain is trustless decentralization. How does decentralization improve a property registry? There's a finite amount of land, most of which has a fairly clear paper trail. The existing paper trail has well established legal credentials that any replacement system would have to re-create. I guess the vision is that if you had immutable records of changes, it would self-resolve ownership disputes. I suspect the vast majority of such disputes aren't about "did he file deed A or B, and when" and more informal "the property line was only vaguely defined" or "we're trying to understand a will written in 1855 without context" situations that may not resolve to a document, and probably require a judge, not an algorithm, to decide. In a general sense-- supply chain tracking, ownership tracking-- there's usually a single or small cluster of of "end consumers" of the data being stored. For supply chain integrity, it's the end consumer/manufacturer who needs to be able to produce a report saying his cocoa is Fair Trade Certifiable. For land ownership, it's the local taxation and legal system who needs to know who to send the bills to. They become the obvious steward of a centralized record system. A centralized system also allows for sensible gatekeeping to prevent misuse of the system. I can imagine a blockchain land registry letting people develop a software package to play Monopoly with real land, while a traditional centralized county recorder would probably start penalizing you for filing frivolous documents before you got to the green properties.
thoughtstheseus 5y ago
They’ve wasted a decade of innovation in us financial services. Crypto does little
pennaMan 5y ago
Someone who is not me regularly buys LSD with monero for what it's worth and the shopping experience is almost Amazon level, next day shipping included.

randomhodler84 5y ago

International remittance without needing to pay the traditional gatekeepers a cut.

bhouston 5y ago
AKA Money laundering and tax avoidance.
- randomhodler84 5y ago
  There are millions paying family in their home countries, it is a significant slice of local GDP in some ways places. You want to throw a straw man to make this look sketchy. I’m sorry but you are many many years too late for such antics.
  - fieldcny 5y ago
    I’m not sure I understand your issue with the previous comment, just because they are sending it to family at home doesn’t mean they are doing it in a lawful way or even that this is desirable or “good” economic behavior.
    - kyleee 5y ago
      Is it for you to decide if it's good or desireable for me to remit money to relatives in a different country?
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    OK, remittance is a big deal. I accept that. But so what? How much of remittance is moving via Bitcoin? Is that an actual use of Bitcoin, or just a theoretical, it-might-happen-that-way-if-people-decided-to use of Bitcoin?
EugeneG 5y ago
why pay a traditional gatekeeper when you can pay a nontraditional gatekeeper and make it generally more convoluted

CheezeIt 5y ago

It’s served me well to be able to hold money when stocks seem really high, without being coerced by inflationary policy to throw more money into a bloated stock market by our political masters.

mettamage 5y ago

Alternative form of money transfer (large sums). El Salvador is experimenting. Alternative form of payment on some sites (haven’t needed it yet)

tmcw 5y ago
I assume you've been filing form 8300 with the IRS for those transfers over 10k in value, right? Right?
ufo 5y ago
I'm not convinced that the population of El Salvador is into it to the same degree that Nayib Bukele is. The whole thing sounds very fishy.
- mettamage 5y ago
  Well, I said “experimenting” Also, I didn’t comment on whether the experiment is ethical. Crypto and morality is a whole can of worms that I find hard to understand in a satisfactory manner due to the high stakes of different groups abd they all seem to have a point.
fieldcny 5y ago
Why would you pay for something with any crypto, no one wants to be the next guy to pay a billion dollars for a couple pizzas.

paul_f 5y ago

Cryptocurrency has three successful use cases. One is speculation, hoping to profit from coin value increasing over time. Two is enabling nefarious activity such as ransomware payoffs and buying illicit drugs, weapons, illegal pornography, etc. Three is money laundering.

EugeneG 5y ago
I think "Digital Gold" is a legit use case, similar to "regular gold" Though it's not a very satisfying use case because it's like "hold bitcoin because we all agree we should hold bitcoin"
pennaMan 5y ago
In your view, what are the use cases of regular money?

xkfm 5y ago

It's kind of frustrating because I don't know a single person (besides myself) who uses crypto for anything but investing. Maybe one person because they bought an NFT (also for investment). I felt like games/fantasy sports/betting would have come online by now. But, actually using crypto to buy anything is usually a convoluted process. For betting and fantasy sports, you have better options. Most the games are still fumbling around/obvious vaporware. Your best bet is probably Axie Infinity, and it's not very fun, and also hard to play for free. Also, 80% of the people playing these games are using them for income streams, so they get min-maxed to hell, and there is even more botting than usual. All of these altcoins, even bitcoin to a degree, are all barely usable unless you're letting them sit on an exchange somewhere. I've had a good experience purchasing a good or service with exactly one altcoin. Even all the DeFi stuff you hear about in articles/podcasts is too complicated, or you're going to have to pay $500 in gas fees to do anything. It's pretty obvious most of the people who are "into" crypto, aren't really doing anything with it besides honing their investment skills once you actually talk to them about what they do with it.

EugeneG 5y ago
What do you use it for other than investing?
- xkfm 5y ago
  Currently, mostly buying currency in Mir4. Apparently, you're going to be able to buy and sell characters soon. Mir4 you can mine currency in game and convert it to crypto or vice versa. So, I did the latter. That took two exchanges, multiple wallets, and multiple days for a less than $50 purchase. The other games I've tried (Gods Unchained, Axie Infinity, MyCryptoHeroes, Splinterlands, Sorare) are either too expensive or not fun. Augur (prediction market) is pretty interesting, but it's off limits in my region. It's also Ethereum based, so high transaction fees. I've also bought a few pizzas, gift cards, domains, supplements, VPN access, that sort of thing as well. I still check for a crypto option at most places I shop (including SaaS services), but I don't see it most of the time.
berberous 5y ago

jonahbenton 5y ago

Yes, the criminal uses are dominating the non-criminal, but the non-criminal continue to mature. The way to think about it is that crypto is reinventing all of the historical aspects and nuances both of money and also of public systems of record- both of which are millenia old- on a much faster timeline. There are orders of magnitude more people alive and participating in this money/ledger maturation process than all the previous times put together, of course. Much of the learning is just being implemented, rather than discovered. (Many of the mistakes, however, are being rediscovered.) So it is going very fast, but there is still a LOT to cover. I would posit the system of record use cases are much more profound than the money use cases. Those are still years away- we don't really know how far- but it appears to me the infrastructure is still on track to have a role there. In response to a question- in X years will there be jurisdictions using public blockchains for, eg Real Property ledger, rather than the mix of paper and digital non-blockchain systems variously in use now- I would say yes, and put greater than 50% odds that X is less than 10. Real Property ledger is much more important than money. You can use any old thing for money, but in any civilization there is only one Real Property ledger.

hakfoo 5y ago
I think I'd be more willing to bite on the "record keeping" concepts, if you can come up with ones where decentralization is a meaningful feature. The big selling point of blockchain is trustless decentralization. How does decentralization improve a property registry? There's a finite amount of land, most of which has a fairly clear paper trail. The existing paper trail has well established legal credentials that any replacement system would have to re-create. I guess the vision is that if you had immutable records of changes, it would self-resolve ownership disputes. I suspect the vast majority of such disputes aren't about "did he file deed A or B, and when" and more informal "the property line was only vaguely defined" or "we're trying to understand a will written in 1855 without context" situations that may not resolve to a document, and probably require a judge, not an algorithm, to decide. In a general sense-- supply chain tracking, ownership tracking-- there's usually a single or small cluster of of "end consumers" of the data being stored. For supply chain integrity, it's the end consumer/manufacturer who needs to be able to produce a report saying his cocoa is Fair Trade Certifiable. For land ownership, it's the local taxation and legal system who needs to know who to send the bills to. They become the obvious steward of a centralized record system. A centralized system also allows for sensible gatekeeping to prevent misuse of the system. I can imagine a blockchain land registry letting people develop a software package to play Monopoly with real land, while a traditional centralized county recorder would probably start penalizing you for filing frivolous documents before you got to the green properties.

thoughtstheseus 5y ago

They’ve wasted a decade of innovation in us financial services. Crypto does little

pennaMan 5y ago

Someone who is not me regularly buys LSD with monero for what it's worth and the shopping experience is almost Amazon level, next day shipping included.