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I'm not a huge fan of the the current cryptocurrency scene, but I think it will remain very useful as a medium of exchange and store of value in unstable parts

I'm not a huge fan of the the current cryptocurrency scene, but I think it will remain very useful as a medium of exchange and store of value in unstable parts of the globe for years to come.

criddell 5y ago
It will remain a very useful medium of exchange? Are you saying that today it is a very useful medium of exchange? Are you using it that way?
- abacadaba 5y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29496915 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29496915
- exdsq 5y ago
  It's better than trading pre-paid phone credit plans!
  - netcan 5y ago
    Have you ever paid for a sandwich with pre-paid phone credit? In places where it's used, it's surprisingly usable.
    - exdsq 5y ago
      Yes! But, you do get some bonuses with cryptocurrencies. Access to credit, ability to build an account history, etc. At the very least cryptocurrencies are a superset to M-Pesa etc. Plus some other geo-political perks like not being centralised around Chinese technologies (M-Pesa might not be, but its competitors are & underlying mobile tech is predominately Chinese).
- agleason 5y ago
  If I need to move money between countries, it certainly is by far the easiest. Traveling in India trying to get my friend money has been an awful headache. With cryptocurrency, it's quite simple
  - ripe 5y ago
    Have you looked into Hawala systems? Unofficial, trust-based money transfer agents can transfer money with a phone call. Have been doing it for decades in India, for sure, since before computers were common. Still works, and no need to risk volatile crypto coins or trust exchanges. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/hawala.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/hawala.asp
  - criddell 5y ago
    I actually might try this soon. I need to send my sister $20 in Canada. How can I make it super easy for my sister to receive the money?
- redmattred 5y ago
  It seems pretty clear that is what they are saying based on their choice of words.
- yao420 5y ago
  Yes, I buy drugs with monero all the time. Quick, anonymous, and low transaction fees.
- anonymoushn 5y ago
  it's really great at that compared to competing products
- mbesto 5y ago
  Yes: (1) Drugs and (2) certain countries where fiat is unstable.
  - tata71 5y ago
    Like El Salvador! .....who uses the USD.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  I've gotten paid anonymously in Monero for writing some quick code.
- outside1234 5y ago
  I use it to money launder - I lose 10-20% in the value swings - but that means I get 80% of the money for free out the other end of the NFT Ape I sold.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- dqpb 5y ago
  I am. As a medium of exchange (buying things, sending people money), I only use USDC which is pinned to the US Dollar. For sending money to friends in other countries, it is so much cheaper, faster, and more reliable than the traditional money-transfer options I had before. For buying things around town, I have a debit card that draws from my USDC wallet. Currently, it's less convenient than my credit card, because I have to keep that account full enough to be used, and if I need to fill it up in the moment, it takes about five minutes to jump through all the hoops necessary to not incur any fees. But, as an early adopter I don't mind. Fixing that UX isn't the kind of thing that requires a major technological breakthrough. USDC operates on multiple layer-1 blockchains, for example Algorand. When transferring USDC between Algorand wallets, the transaction takes a few seconds and costs a small fraction of a cent. Compare that to the shit show that is Western Union, or Small World Money Transfer, or wiring money between non-cooperative banks. I also own ALGO coins. I could use these as a medium of exchange as well, but I don't, and it would make less sense to do so. Instead I think of these as stocks. Their value fluctuates with the market, and they allow me to vote in Algorand governance voting sessions. If I wanted to liquidate these assets, I would wait until the price went up and then convert them to USD or USDC. I wouldn't spend them with a debit card any more than I would spend stocks with a debit card. Of course there is an additional use of ALGO's as a medium of exchange - transaction fees for executing smart contract transactions. I haven't found any compelling dApps yet, but in theory this will become another primary use case.
daniel-thompson 5y ago
> it will remain very useful as a medium of exchange The only current usecase I'm aware of for crypto as a medium of exchange is for criminals, i.e. ransomware / extortion / etc.
- sharemywin 5y ago
  When your country's currency is shit. you would probably view it differently.
  - zikduruqe 5y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7lm7IHnKDw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7lm7IHnKDw
- hackingforfun 5y ago
  I see this point rehashed on HN over and over. I'd love if there was a more productive discussion of cryptocurrencies. I don't think they are going away anytime soon. Too many technologists and others are thinking about them now. I personally think store of value is a strong use case, at least for those of us who consider them to have value. Just wondering, what would it take for you (and others who share similar views) to change your mind about crypto? How long does the technology need to be around to be validated? Would you feel better about the space if it was regulated (which would bring scams, manipulation, and illicit activity down), or would you still think it's all nonsense?
  - pjc50 5y ago
    > store of value is a strong use case The "change my mind" criterion for this would be actual price stability. That is, a significant market for goods and services which can be bought at a fixed crypto price over a period of a year or more with zero price variation. People getting paid salary in fixed crypto denominations. People taking out 10-year mortgages in fixed crypto denominations at interest rates comparable to fiat mortgages. It is feasible that cryptocurrency might be more stable than, say, the Bolivar. It is not feasible that it will be more stable than the dollar. If you want a really concrete use case, suppose you want to buy a new Macbook next year and you want to save on a weekly basis. If you'd done that over various periods over the last year you'd end up with between 150% and 70% of the price of the Macbook. Now, so long as "number go up" you're winning ...
skeeter2020 5y ago
Except every time there's any instability in the actual crypto we see an immediate attempt by everyone try to flee to sovereign currencies, typically USD. And if you're relying on it for a medium of exchange you'll be dead from scurvy in a month or two.
- tata71 5y ago
  You're out of date. We run to our stablecoins now — the horses are hungry! Also: Bitrefill.com, and that's without even running a search. You may be impressed with both the offerings, and the currencies accepted. I know I was.
gonehome 5y ago
Yep agreed, and other underlying applications (NFTs as evidence of group membership or ownership that can be easily owned and transferred, an auditable historical record) have a lot of value. The ability to hold decentralized state is a resilient way is pretty cool and a lot of the finance applications are better than legacy stuff - try sending large amounts of money around in the legacy system, expect to wait several days for every action. HN people can continue to cynically dismiss it, but the nice thing about economic bets is it doesn't really matter. Those that see the value will become rich anyway. There are always people dismissing any new thing - the value of that signal is near zero. I'm excited about what kind incentive alignment we might be able to achieve with programmable money. The city coins stuff I think is pretty cool, maybe a way out of NIMBY type incentive problems. There's a ton of stuff that's being figured out on the frontier - it's exciting. Like I imagine the web was like in 1999 (with the good, and as potentially the case in the OP's article, the bad).
- Aeolun 5y ago
  > try sending large amounts of money around in the legacy system, expect to wait several days for every action The legacy system (e.g. banks) aren’t sitting still either. In many parts of the world (Europe) a transaction is pretty much instant.
  - facorreia 5y ago
    Same in Brazil.
  - gonehome 5y ago
    Maybe it’s better outside of America. I still see the crypto tech being more capable long term, but the ux is still in its infancy.
- arcticbull 5y ago
  > try sending large amounts of money around in the legacy system Well, cryptos aren't really money so actually sending money via crypto requires transferring crypto from a bank to an exchange, making a purchase, withdrawing it to a destination wallet at an exchange, selling it, and transferring the proceeds to another account. That takes days, requires multiple transactions and costs boatloads of fees. By constraining it to transfer of an intermediate representation you're not making a good faith representation of the process. Second, the only thing you can do better with crypto than a centralized exchange is crime, grift and regulatory arbitrage. What you're describing is the third. Sending money in any classic fintech system takes milliseconds. What takes longer sometimes is AML/KYC and security. Crypto pretends those don't exist. Like any other regulatory arbitrage you can certainly make things faster or cheaper, for instance by dumping chemical waste into lakes. Once again comparing a car to a little buggy with a 2-stroke engine and no catalytic converter on the basis of fuel efficiency is disingenuous too. Anyways, sending "large amounts of money" isn't a problem most people have by definition. And if you actually do have large amounts of money, sending it around isn't an issue. I've had six-figure domestic wire transfers clear instantly with no questions asked from my brokerage account, free of charge, same day. The first time they called to check. I didn't mind. Most of the world has free or nearly free instant transfers. Europe has SEPA, the UK has FPS, Canada has Interac e-transfers, Australia has NPP. The US is getting RTP and FedNow in 2023. [edit] In fact, the cheapest way to move USDC from FTX to Coinbase is actually to request a free wire transfer from FTX to your bank account, and then either a free wire or ACH from your bank account to Coinbase. Saves $25.
arcticbull 5y ago
Stablecoins will turn into CBDCs and CBDCs will serve that purpose. Bitcoin is down from 68K to 48K in the last what 3 weeks? Stores of value don't flail wildly and incoherently at the whims of a few whales, and given it supports 2-3 tx/sec using the energy of an entire country, it's a crap medium of exchange too. The future of crypto for anyone other than an anacap libertarian is CBDCs.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- pjc50 5y ago
  CBDCs aren't really cryptocurrency though, for good and ill, they're just a database with extra steps.
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    Blockchains are just databases with extra steps. Very slow, inefficient steps most people don't care about.
- hansvm 5y ago
  Even with its downsides, crypto serves as a useful medium of exchange for fringe goods. Digital (gaming) goods, guns and accessories, adult materials, and all kinds of things are flat-out banned at many payment middlemen (PayPal, Stripe, ...), and it causes problems from time to time even for large players. CBDC's _might_ fill that void, but governments would need to treat it as infrastructure and not exercise some of the power that companies like Visa enjoy (blocking otherwise legal transactions). To be fair, crypto hasn't really stepped up as being fantastic even for those fringe goods (insufficient adoption, painful user experience), but some utility still exists.
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    > Even with its downsides, crypto serves as a useful medium of exchange for fringe goods. Yep, I agree. > CBDC's _might_ fill that void, but governments would need to treat it as infrastructure and not exercise some of the power that companies like Visa enjoy (blocking otherwise legal transactions). I'll be the first to say that the current legacy financial system is no panacea. Visa and Mastercard should be infrastructure just as you say. In my opinion, they should be required by law not to discriminate against any legal transactions and have safe harbor. That said ACH carries all legal transactions without discrimination. I don't know why CBDCs wouldn't do the same. What we need isn't crypto, it's payment network neutrality. The legacy financial system needs a refactor, but crypto ain't it. It's strictly worse in every way.

I'm not a huge fan of the the current cryptocurrency scene, but I think it will remain very useful as a medium of exchange and store of value in unstable parts of the globe for years to come.

criddell 5y ago

It will remain a very useful medium of exchange? Are you saying that today it is a very useful medium of exchange? Are you using it that way?

abacadaba 5y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29496915 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29496915
exdsq 5y ago
It's better than trading pre-paid phone credit plans!
- netcan 5y ago
  Have you ever paid for a sandwich with pre-paid phone credit? In places where it's used, it's surprisingly usable.
  - exdsq 5y ago
    Yes! But, you do get some bonuses with cryptocurrencies. Access to credit, ability to build an account history, etc. At the very least cryptocurrencies are a superset to M-Pesa etc. Plus some other geo-political perks like not being centralised around Chinese technologies (M-Pesa might not be, but its competitors are & underlying mobile tech is predominately Chinese).
agleason 5y ago
If I need to move money between countries, it certainly is by far the easiest. Traveling in India trying to get my friend money has been an awful headache. With cryptocurrency, it's quite simple
- ripe 5y ago
  Have you looked into Hawala systems? Unofficial, trust-based money transfer agents can transfer money with a phone call. Have been doing it for decades in India, for sure, since before computers were common. Still works, and no need to risk volatile crypto coins or trust exchanges. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/hawala.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/hawala.asp
- criddell 5y ago
  I actually might try this soon. I need to send my sister $20 in Canada. How can I make it super easy for my sister to receive the money?
redmattred 5y ago
It seems pretty clear that is what they are saying based on their choice of words.
yao420 5y ago
Yes, I buy drugs with monero all the time. Quick, anonymous, and low transaction fees.
anonymoushn 5y ago
it's really great at that compared to competing products
mbesto 5y ago
Yes: (1) Drugs and (2) certain countries where fiat is unstable.
- tata71 5y ago
  Like El Salvador! .....who uses the USD.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
I've gotten paid anonymously in Monero for writing some quick code.
outside1234 5y ago
I use it to money launder - I lose 10-20% in the value swings - but that means I get 80% of the money for free out the other end of the NFT Ape I sold.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
dqpb 5y ago
I am. As a medium of exchange (buying things, sending people money), I only use USDC which is pinned to the US Dollar. For sending money to friends in other countries, it is so much cheaper, faster, and more reliable than the traditional money-transfer options I had before. For buying things around town, I have a debit card that draws from my USDC wallet. Currently, it's less convenient than my credit card, because I have to keep that account full enough to be used, and if I need to fill it up in the moment, it takes about five minutes to jump through all the hoops necessary to not incur any fees. But, as an early adopter I don't mind. Fixing that UX isn't the kind of thing that requires a major technological breakthrough. USDC operates on multiple layer-1 blockchains, for example Algorand. When transferring USDC between Algorand wallets, the transaction takes a few seconds and costs a small fraction of a cent. Compare that to the shit show that is Western Union, or Small World Money Transfer, or wiring money between non-cooperative banks. I also own ALGO coins. I could use these as a medium of exchange as well, but I don't, and it would make less sense to do so. Instead I think of these as stocks. Their value fluctuates with the market, and they allow me to vote in Algorand governance voting sessions. If I wanted to liquidate these assets, I would wait until the price went up and then convert them to USD or USDC. I wouldn't spend them with a debit card any more than I would spend stocks with a debit card. Of course there is an additional use of ALGO's as a medium of exchange - transaction fees for executing smart contract transactions. I haven't found any compelling dApps yet, but in theory this will become another primary use case.

daniel-thompson 5y ago

> it will remain very useful as a medium of exchange The only current usecase I'm aware of for crypto as a medium of exchange is for criminals, i.e. ransomware / extortion / etc.

sharemywin 5y ago
When your country's currency is shit. you would probably view it differently.
- zikduruqe 5y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7lm7IHnKDw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7lm7IHnKDw
hackingforfun 5y ago
I see this point rehashed on HN over and over. I'd love if there was a more productive discussion of cryptocurrencies. I don't think they are going away anytime soon. Too many technologists and others are thinking about them now. I personally think store of value is a strong use case, at least for those of us who consider them to have value. Just wondering, what would it take for you (and others who share similar views) to change your mind about crypto? How long does the technology need to be around to be validated? Would you feel better about the space if it was regulated (which would bring scams, manipulation, and illicit activity down), or would you still think it's all nonsense?
- pjc50 5y ago
  > store of value is a strong use case The "change my mind" criterion for this would be actual price stability. That is, a significant market for goods and services which can be bought at a fixed crypto price over a period of a year or more with zero price variation. People getting paid salary in fixed crypto denominations. People taking out 10-year mortgages in fixed crypto denominations at interest rates comparable to fiat mortgages. It is feasible that cryptocurrency might be more stable than, say, the Bolivar. It is not feasible that it will be more stable than the dollar. If you want a really concrete use case, suppose you want to buy a new Macbook next year and you want to save on a weekly basis. If you'd done that over various periods over the last year you'd end up with between 150% and 70% of the price of the Macbook. Now, so long as "number go up" you're winning ...

skeeter2020 5y ago

Except every time there's any instability in the actual crypto we see an immediate attempt by everyone try to flee to sovereign currencies, typically USD. And if you're relying on it for a medium of exchange you'll be dead from scurvy in a month or two.

tata71 5y ago
You're out of date. We run to our stablecoins now — the horses are hungry! Also: Bitrefill.com, and that's without even running a search. You may be impressed with both the offerings, and the currencies accepted. I know I was.

gonehome 5y ago

Yep agreed, and other underlying applications (NFTs as evidence of group membership or ownership that can be easily owned and transferred, an auditable historical record) have a lot of value. The ability to hold decentralized state is a resilient way is pretty cool and a lot of the finance applications are better than legacy stuff - try sending large amounts of money around in the legacy system, expect to wait several days for every action. HN people can continue to cynically dismiss it, but the nice thing about economic bets is it doesn't really matter. Those that see the value will become rich anyway. There are always people dismissing any new thing - the value of that signal is near zero. I'm excited about what kind incentive alignment we might be able to achieve with programmable money. The city coins stuff I think is pretty cool, maybe a way out of NIMBY type incentive problems. There's a ton of stuff that's being figured out on the frontier - it's exciting. Like I imagine the web was like in 1999 (with the good, and as potentially the case in the OP's article, the bad).

Aeolun 5y ago
> try sending large amounts of money around in the legacy system, expect to wait several days for every action The legacy system (e.g. banks) aren’t sitting still either. In many parts of the world (Europe) a transaction is pretty much instant.
- facorreia 5y ago
  Same in Brazil.
- gonehome 5y ago
  Maybe it’s better outside of America. I still see the crypto tech being more capable long term, but the ux is still in its infancy.
arcticbull 5y ago
> try sending large amounts of money around in the legacy system Well, cryptos aren't really money so actually sending money via crypto requires transferring crypto from a bank to an exchange, making a purchase, withdrawing it to a destination wallet at an exchange, selling it, and transferring the proceeds to another account. That takes days, requires multiple transactions and costs boatloads of fees. By constraining it to transfer of an intermediate representation you're not making a good faith representation of the process. Second, the only thing you can do better with crypto than a centralized exchange is crime, grift and regulatory arbitrage. What you're describing is the third. Sending money in any classic fintech system takes milliseconds. What takes longer sometimes is AML/KYC and security. Crypto pretends those don't exist. Like any other regulatory arbitrage you can certainly make things faster or cheaper, for instance by dumping chemical waste into lakes. Once again comparing a car to a little buggy with a 2-stroke engine and no catalytic converter on the basis of fuel efficiency is disingenuous too. Anyways, sending "large amounts of money" isn't a problem most people have by definition. And if you actually do have large amounts of money, sending it around isn't an issue. I've had six-figure domestic wire transfers clear instantly with no questions asked from my brokerage account, free of charge, same day. The first time they called to check. I didn't mind. Most of the world has free or nearly free instant transfers. Europe has SEPA, the UK has FPS, Canada has Interac e-transfers, Australia has NPP. The US is getting RTP and FedNow in 2023. [edit] In fact, the cheapest way to move USDC from FTX to Coinbase is actually to request a free wire transfer from FTX to your bank account, and then either a free wire or ACH from your bank account to Coinbase. Saves $25.

arcticbull 5y ago

Stablecoins will turn into CBDCs and CBDCs will serve that purpose. Bitcoin is down from 68K to 48K in the last what 3 weeks? Stores of value don't flail wildly and incoherently at the whims of a few whales, and given it supports 2-3 tx/sec using the energy of an entire country, it's a crap medium of exchange too. The future of crypto for anyone other than an anacap libertarian is CBDCs.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
pjc50 5y ago
CBDCs aren't really cryptocurrency though, for good and ill, they're just a database with extra steps.
- arcticbull 5y ago
  Blockchains are just databases with extra steps. Very slow, inefficient steps most people don't care about.
hansvm 5y ago
Even with its downsides, crypto serves as a useful medium of exchange for fringe goods. Digital (gaming) goods, guns and accessories, adult materials, and all kinds of things are flat-out banned at many payment middlemen (PayPal, Stripe, ...), and it causes problems from time to time even for large players. CBDC's _might_ fill that void, but governments would need to treat it as infrastructure and not exercise some of the power that companies like Visa enjoy (blocking otherwise legal transactions). To be fair, crypto hasn't really stepped up as being fantastic even for those fringe goods (insufficient adoption, painful user experience), but some utility still exists.
- arcticbull 5y ago
  > Even with its downsides, crypto serves as a useful medium of exchange for fringe goods. Yep, I agree. > CBDC's _might_ fill that void, but governments would need to treat it as infrastructure and not exercise some of the power that companies like Visa enjoy (blocking otherwise legal transactions). I'll be the first to say that the current legacy financial system is no panacea. Visa and Mastercard should be infrastructure just as you say. In my opinion, they should be required by law not to discriminate against any legal transactions and have safe harbor. That said ACH carries all legal transactions without discrimination. I don't know why CBDCs wouldn't do the same. What we need isn't crypto, it's payment network neutrality. The legacy financial system needs a refactor, but crypto ain't it. It's strictly worse in every way.