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A very obvious problem bitcoin solves is Wikileaks getting kicked off the Visa/MasterCard rails, because it published articles the government didn't want publis

A very obvious problem bitcoin solves is Wikileaks getting kicked off the Visa/MasterCard rails, because it published articles the government didn't want published. The current financial system is perfect for most people in the first world. Once you start going down the path of least resistance though, that system turns out to be a gatekept, permissioned system with very clearly defined borders. Try using a bank as a rural Honduran and see if you are even allowed on. Attempt a transaction between yourself and a person in Chad and see how many hurdles are presented.

automatic6131 4y ago
>Try using a bank as a rural Honduran and see if you are even allowed on. Attempt a transaction between yourself and a person in Chad and see how many hurdles are presented. Ahh, yes, bank the unbanked. We've been hearing about this for a decade and it's yet to actually solve it. Might have something to do with the fact that the minimum hardware requirement to engage with a "trustless, peer-to-peer, global digital cash" system runs in the annual earning of the average unbanked labourer in the Third world. Any attempt to solve the _political_ problem of the distribution of wealth and access to the monetary systems (banks) that starts with a technical system (crypto) is bound to fail because of that mismatch. Even trying to solve a political problem with a technical solution requires one to first solve the problem of being allow to use the technical solution - which is a political problem!
- FabHK 4y ago
  Indeed. And there are payment systems that successfully tackle the issue of banking the unbanked (M-Pesa, Wave, ...), but they don't touch crypto with a ten-foot-pole. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa https://www.wave.com/en/blog/world/ https://www.wave.com/en/blog/world/

automatic6131 4y ago

>Try using a bank as a rural Honduran and see if you are even allowed on. Attempt a transaction between yourself and a person in Chad and see how many hurdles are presented. Ahh, yes, bank the unbanked. We've been hearing about this for a decade and it's yet to actually solve it. Might have something to do with the fact that the minimum hardware requirement to engage with a "trustless, peer-to-peer, global digital cash" system runs in the annual earning of the average unbanked labourer in the Third world. Any attempt to solve the _political_ problem of the distribution of wealth and access to the monetary systems (banks) that starts with a technical system (crypto) is bound to fail because of that mismatch. Even trying to solve a political problem with a technical solution requires one to first solve the problem of being allow to use the technical solution - which is a political problem!

FabHK 4y ago
Indeed. And there are payment systems that successfully tackle the issue of banking the unbanked (M-Pesa, Wave, ...), but they don't touch crypto with a ten-foot-pole. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa https://www.wave.com/en/blog/world/ https://www.wave.com/en/blog/world/