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Where I live none of those services are available but cryptocurrency tech is. Connecting to services like patreon or getting small amounts for games on itch.io

by Vetch 5y ago

Where I live none of those services are available but cryptocurrency tech is. Connecting to services like patreon or getting small amounts for games on itch.io are headache inducing high friction activities involving several extra third party services that are barely worth the effort. The attached risk is hard to state as better given all the fly by night operations in the local finance industry. Even if very few people use crypto, it's orders of magnitude less stress to put up a link to a wallet for donations on say a page with a visual demo on how linear acceleration and light bending motivate gravity. It's instrumental in financing sci-hub, which is also vital here. You probably live in a country where central institutions are trusted. Probably without overwhelming levels of corruption actively antagonistic to citizens, or double digit inflation, or very high unemployment rates and a general lack of opportunity. I don't think cryptocurrencies are some magical cure and can't say they will be part of a solution concept. Neither do I care for gambling and scummy activity on it. For some of us it isn't about inflation hedging (although it has a useful role if you can anticipate impending economic collapse) or anti-fiat or overthrowing governments. It's about imagining a network of transactions where anyone can participate regardless of their country of birth, without a central synchronizing consensus mechanism and a strongly tamper resistant storage useful in coordinating economic activity. Blockchain free decentralized tech are preferable where possible but there are some things only blockchain structures (or even worse scaling massive communication overhead systems) can do.

wpietri 5y ago
Your poetic invocation of the theoretical glorious potential of crypto aside, what country do you live in?
- askonomm 5y ago
  Not sure about OP, but I live in Argentina, and there is no Apple Pay, Stripe, or Cash App here either. Not in most of the Latin American countries, actually. I had to make a U.S Wyoming company in order to be able to use Stripe. And Latin America is a pretty big chunk of land, with a ton of people. And with the ever-increasing inflation of 40% YoY and government restrictions on the ability to convert foreign currency to local currency, crypto P2P is a saving grace here. I do think most crypto stuff is probably still a scam, but the ability to buy stable coins and sell them to someone local here for peso's by getting 2x more than I would with the official central bank rate is a godsend.
  - wpietri 5y ago
    Is there actual data on cryptocurrency use in Argentina? Last I lived in an unstable Latin America country with inflation issues, the common solution was just to buy dollars. So much so that the country, Ecuador, eventually just switched over to using dollars entirely. So I can believe it's possible that people are trying to do similar things digitally when they don't trust the local currency. But given the user-hostile nature of a lot of the cryptocurrency systems, I suspect they aren't doing all that much of it. As an example, look at El Salvador's clown-shoes attempt to switch over to using Bitcoin. So as much as I grant the theoretical potential of an imagined version of cryptocurrencies to be useful, I'm still pretty skeptical of the actual use of actual cryptocurrencies, even under those conditions.
    - askonomm 5y ago
      I don't have any data points, but my own social circle, of which the majority uses Binance to buy crypto and uses Binance P2P to sell it to ARS (Peso). And since the transfer will be reflected on your bank balance as some regular person sending you money locally, it's not taxed either. The whole process of buying stablecoins USDC or Tether to it being sold to ARS and actually landing on my local bank account takes about 5 min maybe, which is really nice as well - Western Union and Xoom take up to 3 days or so on average. Most people have used Western Union / Xoom here to get local money, but those have quick limits here, and the government is making it harder and harder to do that, by often prompting to explain your income, then pay taxes on that income, often resulting in double taxation for people. Most of the things in Argentina are still in Pesos (pubs, restaurants, grocery stores, etc), except for the real estate market of which about half the rental listings ask payment in USD, and if you want to buy a car then half the listings of those are also in USD. Lots of local jobs also pay in USD, so I can definitely see how ARS might at some point be devalued and everything going over to USD, but for now for most day-to-day things you still need ARS. I'm by no means saying that crypto is the future or even a great solution, but for the current situation here it is quite convenient and better than any alternative. Edit: To add, if there is one indication of crypto use there, it's that the local Apple Pay equivalent "Mercado Pago", which is available in most shops and restaurants here, has announced that they will add the ability to pay with crypto balance to their app, so I guess there are enough people to warrant that, at the very least.
supernovae 5y ago
For some reason, i just can’t fathom that it would be wise for a stable economic system to connect to such an unstable system - the only reason to champion such would be to create instability at larger scale.
- Vetch 5y ago
  Unsure about what you mean but the current instability of this type of economy is already very high. What with double digit inflation being hard to tackle due to the feedback loop of corruption fueling too few employment opportunities, being import dependent amid rising costs everywhere and then noting the large divergence between black market and official rates, it cannot be said with certainty which is more stable and less risky in the long run. Things are bad enough that putting some money in crypto as a makeshift uncorrelated hedging instrument makes sense.
  - supernovae 5y ago
    Crypto isn't an exception to any of your concerns. Easily manipulated by foriegn governments, no assurance in import/exports, no assurance on value for employment opportunities, ripe for fraud and as for inflation - until Crypto actually behaves like a currency all your doing is betting against the dollar and if the dollar collapses then all you're doing is ensuring instability and perptetuating exactly what you say you solve

by Vetch 5y ago

wpietri 5y ago

Your poetic invocation of the theoretical glorious potential of crypto aside, what country do you live in?

askonomm 5y ago
Not sure about OP, but I live in Argentina, and there is no Apple Pay, Stripe, or Cash App here either. Not in most of the Latin American countries, actually. I had to make a U.S Wyoming company in order to be able to use Stripe. And Latin America is a pretty big chunk of land, with a ton of people. And with the ever-increasing inflation of 40% YoY and government restrictions on the ability to convert foreign currency to local currency, crypto P2P is a saving grace here. I do think most crypto stuff is probably still a scam, but the ability to buy stable coins and sell them to someone local here for peso's by getting 2x more than I would with the official central bank rate is a godsend.
- wpietri 5y ago
  Is there actual data on cryptocurrency use in Argentina? Last I lived in an unstable Latin America country with inflation issues, the common solution was just to buy dollars. So much so that the country, Ecuador, eventually just switched over to using dollars entirely. So I can believe it's possible that people are trying to do similar things digitally when they don't trust the local currency. But given the user-hostile nature of a lot of the cryptocurrency systems, I suspect they aren't doing all that much of it. As an example, look at El Salvador's clown-shoes attempt to switch over to using Bitcoin. So as much as I grant the theoretical potential of an imagined version of cryptocurrencies to be useful, I'm still pretty skeptical of the actual use of actual cryptocurrencies, even under those conditions.
  - askonomm 5y ago
    I don't have any data points, but my own social circle, of which the majority uses Binance to buy crypto and uses Binance P2P to sell it to ARS (Peso). And since the transfer will be reflected on your bank balance as some regular person sending you money locally, it's not taxed either. The whole process of buying stablecoins USDC or Tether to it being sold to ARS and actually landing on my local bank account takes about 5 min maybe, which is really nice as well - Western Union and Xoom take up to 3 days or so on average. Most people have used Western Union / Xoom here to get local money, but those have quick limits here, and the government is making it harder and harder to do that, by often prompting to explain your income, then pay taxes on that income, often resulting in double taxation for people. Most of the things in Argentina are still in Pesos (pubs, restaurants, grocery stores, etc), except for the real estate market of which about half the rental listings ask payment in USD, and if you want to buy a car then half the listings of those are also in USD. Lots of local jobs also pay in USD, so I can definitely see how ARS might at some point be devalued and everything going over to USD, but for now for most day-to-day things you still need ARS. I'm by no means saying that crypto is the future or even a great solution, but for the current situation here it is quite convenient and better than any alternative. Edit: To add, if there is one indication of crypto use there, it's that the local Apple Pay equivalent "Mercado Pago", which is available in most shops and restaurants here, has announced that they will add the ability to pay with crypto balance to their app, so I guess there are enough people to warrant that, at the very least.

supernovae 5y ago

For some reason, i just can’t fathom that it would be wise for a stable economic system to connect to such an unstable system - the only reason to champion such would be to create instability at larger scale.

Vetch 5y ago
Unsure about what you mean but the current instability of this type of economy is already very high. What with double digit inflation being hard to tackle due to the feedback loop of corruption fueling too few employment opportunities, being import dependent amid rising costs everywhere and then noting the large divergence between black market and official rates, it cannot be said with certainty which is more stable and less risky in the long run. Things are bad enough that putting some money in crypto as a makeshift uncorrelated hedging instrument makes sense.
- supernovae 5y ago
  Crypto isn't an exception to any of your concerns. Easily manipulated by foriegn governments, no assurance in import/exports, no assurance on value for employment opportunities, ripe for fraud and as for inflation - until Crypto actually behaves like a currency all your doing is betting against the dollar and if the dollar collapses then all you're doing is ensuring instability and perptetuating exactly what you say you solve