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The endless search for a crypto use case

• wpdev_63 4y ago
  Kinda surprised nobody is even hinting at the big elephant in the room. So I'll give the hint; filecoin.
• jaypinho 4y ago
  Are we there yet?
• snapcaster 4y ago
  I mean it has good use cases they're not just the ones that scheme promoters want to be true. I know TFA pokes some holes in the censorship resistance attribute of bitcoin but i think everyone can agree it does provide value transfer solution that is much harder to block than Visa/Stripe/etc. 1). Silk Road or dark net markets in general. Can't be done with Visa or other existing solutions at any kind of scale 2). Funding of political dissidents. Wikileaks, canadian truckers, etc. These people got blocked by traditional payment providers but still received crypto. (there are still other obstacles for dissidents but at least this solves 1) 3). Money laundering. Find someone who sells bitcoin miners, buy them with dirty money and use them to mine bitcoin sent to fresh address not tied to your other activity. 4). Uniswap and maybe flash loans in defi seems like new things I haven't seen in tradfi or elsewhere. Maybe some cool promise here I'm sure they're others. But I think the key common thread is that all of them require censorship resistance. If what you're doing isn't likely to be censored by authorities then you're being incredibly wasteful by using blockchain
  • jmyeet 4y ago
    So illegal stuff. Ok. While there might be cases you consider moral or ethical even though they’re illegal I’m not sure I’d consider this a net positive or any reason to think crypto will enjoy mass adoption.
    • timcavel 4y ago
    • ForrestN 4y ago
      Yes. It's not a compelling argument that something can be used well for crimes. If cryptocurrency is just John Wick tokens, it not only isn't useful to most people, but further it's anti-useful to society in general and will likely be suppressed. It's also hard for me to understand these "payment outside of X authority system" ideas when the value shifts so wildly and so unpredictably. No one wants to get paid, not even criminals, in a currency that might be worth 20% less tomorrow, depending on what's going on with Matt Damon's Super Bowl ad for the criminal currency or whatever.
    • snapcaster 4y ago
      Right, doing illegal stuff is the killer app is my point. I don't know if it's a net positive either, but it's a positive for some users. I hope it's clear I wasn't advocating for any of these things just pointing to successful applications of the technology
  • librish 4y ago
    The problem with 1-3 is that they only work because regulators haven't tried very hard to stop them. If you require crypto exchanges to verify that funds in accounts are not coming from these types of sources before allowing you to take fiat out you've now vastly reduced their usefulness to the degree that only sophisticated criminal participants have any chance of actually getting usable money out of their schemes.
  • onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
    Proof of Stake seems like it could have a lot of interesting use cases. I'm imagining you want to run a server in which you want to prove a given open-source version of the code is processing the inputs, and the outputs are available for anyone to observe, verify, & store. I imagine there's some ways to do this already, though. Proof of Stake just seems like a protocol that isn't too wasteful and inefficient and could make for a decent standard.
  • staticassertion 4y ago
    Agreed, there are use cases, even obvious use cases. Blockchain provides guarantees that other databases do not. They're just guarantees that assume that some portion of people connecting to it are bad actors. Most people don't really care about solving that problem because they just don't give those people access, but that implies a single authority for access ie: centralization. So blockchain only makes sense when: a) You have bad actors b) You need decentralization The use cases for that are, for the most part, "subvert government authority". There are some cool other things you can do, like web of trust stuff, but the vast majority of the market is in the "subvert government authority" in one way or another, or is an outright scam.
    • 8note 4y ago
      a) isn't quite specific enough You use blockchain if you have one very specific type of bad actor, and know for sure that they won't try bad things
    • jjoonathan 4y ago
      I don't think this is so crazy of an idea. Many of our institutions (example: democracy, checks and balances) are designed to "subvert government authority" in exactly the same spirit. The idea is to ensure that some rules are followed regardless of who is in charge.
    • whywhywhywhy 4y ago
      Try to fly with over $10,000 (Not even a lot of money these days) in cash and see what happens. Might change your opinion of it.
      • staticassertion 4y ago
        What opinion? You just demonstrated an example of subverting government authority, which is exactly what I said it can be useful for. I didn't make any judgment about doing so.
        • whywhywhywhy 4y ago
  • colesantiago 4y ago
    Crypto doesn't even pass the grocery test.
  • amanj41 4y ago
    it's a little disingenuous not to put remittance on this list as it's one of the few legitimate and not morally dubious ones. I have gotten screwed on exchange fees and wire fees remitting and using crypto is much easier.
    • wmf 4y ago
      You're in a very small minority. https://www.saveonsend.com/bitcoin-blockchain-money-transfer/ https://www.saveonsend.com/bitcoin-blockchain-money-transfer...
      • amanj41 4y ago
        don't have time to read the article so I'll take your word for it, but I will note that upon skimming it seems to really look at bitcoin a lot. Bitcoin might be one of the worst cryptocurrencies to remit. I will concede international transfers is not a very large use case, and definitely doesn't justify the market capitalization of the blockchain base currencies FWIW
    • rahimnathwani 4y ago
      Most people receiving remittances need fiat money. For amounts under ~$500, cryptocurrency off-ramps are often less convenient and more expensive than an international cash-to-cash remittance with Western Union or Moneygram.
      • amanj41 4y ago
        I have no problem with properly regulated stablecoins (and hoping they come about soon). Blockchains are only necessary for one thing and that is cryptocurrency. Doesn't matter if that currency happens to be a digital representation of EUR or USD or whatever. If you think they're more expensive to use than centralized providers, you're probably using ethereum or bitcoin. I can send USDC on Algorand in any quantity for less than a cent
        • rahimnathwani 4y ago
  • game-of-throws 4y ago
    My theory is that the likelihood someone understands the use cases is inversely correlated to their trust in government. For example: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-60912789 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-60912789 These articles all follow a common pattern. 1. The trigger – Inflation/distrust in government/bank withdrawal restrictions/paypal freezes your funds/country is at war/etc 2. The response – People gravitate towards a system that is resilient to whatever failure mode they experienced Those who haven't personally experienced #1 (such as world superpowers, the wealthy/"elite") seem not to be able to grasp the benefits. Meanwhile in places that are smaller/less stable/not economically self-sufficient/on the fringe, people are increasingly turning to it as the best alternative.
    • xadhominemx 4y ago
      You still have no answer for the crypto on/off ramp issue.
      • ragnot 4y ago
        I think the idea would be that in a scenario where crypto becomes a currency, there wouldn't need to be an off-ramp (at least immediately, think war/revolution). You would trade the crypto like "real" money.
        • toomuchtodo 4y ago
          This requires price stability, which is at odds with the use of crypto as a speculative investment vehicle. People use fiat to transact because it is stable. It’s stable because a central bank is using tools available to bring about stability.
          • T0Bi 4y ago
            There are decentralized stable coins such as Dai that survived massive crashes/volatility in the past and still remained on peg. Crypto ≠ Bitcoin.
  • frgtpsswrdlame 4y ago
    I think there's a conflict here though: >If what you're doing isn't likely to be censored by authorities then you're being incredibly wasteful by using blockchain If the wasteful people doing non-crime activities on the blockchain weren't there it'd be incredibly easy for the authorities to crack down. In other words, if the only legitimate use cases of crypto is facilitating crime, it can only even achieve that goal as long as many people are using crypto for the other stuff you think is wasteful.
    • NhanH 4y ago
      There is a gradient of “being censored”, and not all of it involved being illegal. In Vietnam, the government does capital control by limiting what bank can do with my money (I can’t request them to send 20k to the US unless I have an approved list of reasons). However, it is not illegal for me to send the money abroad, providing I can do it legally myself. So bitcoin is useful to me
    • snapcaster 4y ago
      This is true. "Virtuous liquidity" is the term I've heard used. The same thing is true of Tor right? if the _only_ people using it are bad the usage itself is what gets criminalized. The speculators on crypto likely provide a lot of this
  • rndgermandude 4y ago
    Re:3) If I remember correctly a lot of the "support scammers" also use crypto for laundering. Since getting straight into bank accounts and actually doing transfers often fails - even with the "help" of the victim - another way for them to get their money is having the victim buy gift cards, and then they'll sell on the scammed gift cards (at a loss, of course) for crypto and then cash that out. You also forget 5) Outright scams, like rugpulls or boiler room-style scams.
  • jayd16 4y ago
    Three of these are just money laundering and then the 4th is "and maybe some cool ideas." I really don't see how the money laundering is a long term niche. They'll get regulated eventually. I do think the whole event has dredged up some interesting ideas and desires that were being ignored, but of lot of those "cool promise here" ideas could probably work without a blockchain.
    • toolz 4y ago
      Let's take a modern example of the canadian truckers. How would you get money to them when Canada was able to get US companies to block their funding with fiat? Use a different company and hope another few million doesn't get locked up? That seems like the only alternative and I'm not sure many people would think that's a viable alternative.
      • jayd16 4y ago
        Again, I'm not sure "temporarily skirt the law" is all that viable long term.
        • toolz 4y ago
          Personally I hope it is and I don't see how it couldn't be. Bitcoin is uncensorable as far as I can tell. Countries have not proven themselves capable of stopping internet traffic and thus countries have shown they do not have the power to censor bitcoin transactions. I am sure countries will want to censor it, but I don't believe they will be able to, as such the only risk to bitcoins long term viability is the markets demand. There are numerous examples of illicit goods that governments have proven incapable of reducing the demand for, e.g. drugs. So I don't think bitcoin is going anywhere. I think bitcoin will take a different censorable form and we'll start seeing companies on top of the blockchain that can do things like refund unauthorized transactions and things of that nature, but the base layer will remain uncensorable and thus bitcoin could become both convenient enough (although not better, in my opinion) for rich countries to use as currency while holding the characteristic of providing tremendous benefits to citizens in oppressed poor countries.
  • TheBlight 4y ago
    Calling it a scheme seems a bit rough. It's a market mostly unencumbered by regulation (not true of on/offramps), online 24x7 and not directly controlled by governments -- an entirely new asset class with unique properties. It allows for new business/cause funding models. Anyone can participate regardless of "credit rating" or ideology and no one needs a custodian.
    • cuteboy19 4y ago
      The reason you don't need a credit rating is because you need collateral. Want a $5000 loan from crypto? Better have at least $20000 in crypto assets. How anyone is expected to get credit funding from this strange system is unclear. Also the no custodian part is especially strange considering that most people who have crypto keep it on some exchangebank
      • Ekaros 4y ago
        The whole crypto lending to me seems like having a cake and eating it too. Which surprisingly kinda works for a while. Have crypto and let it appreciate, but at the same time use it to gamble for even more appreciation...
      • notahacker 4y ago
        > Want a $5000 loan from crypto? Better have at least $20000 in crypto assets. Yup. That's potentially useful for speculators to earn expected gains from one cryptocurrency whilst also trading with another one. But it's utterly useless for the common cases to borrow money (i.e. you don't have enough of it to buy what you need to buy)
  • bhouston 4y ago
    5) Running various investment scams such as Ponzis, and pump-and-dumps (AKA rug pulls) in an anonymous fashion. There is a lot of money to made doing this right now...
  • silentsea90 4y ago
    The biggest use case for Bitcoin is of it being an escape from arbitrary printing of money by central banks. The richer your home country, the further you are from intuitively grasping how catastrophic printing is in the long run.
    • dybber 4y ago
      Why is it catastrophic then? Isn’t it exactly this property that allows us to have a more or less stable currency?
      • silentsea90 4y ago
        Stable against what? TVs? Food? Healthcare? Education? Real estate? https://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2017/5/29/saupload_inflation10-16.jpg https://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2017/5/29/saupload_i...
    • aNoob7000 4y ago
      The problem with Bitcoin is that it is a pain to transact any business with it.
      • silentsea90 4y ago
        I agree but please expand on the pain so I can respond.
    • WalterSear 4y ago
      Bitcoin's price is primarily driven by market manipulation fueled by arbitrary Tether-tron printing. Tether-tron is used entirely internally by a criminal syndicate in order to create fraudulent chinese 'cookie cutter' exchanges, in a manner similar to casino chips - ie - "Here's $100 million for your new exchange, that you can only use to buy crypto within 'the family', incidentally pumping up their prices along the way'". This is in addition to the arbitrary Tether-eth printing that you ought to be well aware of.
    • Aunche 4y ago
  • discordianfish 4y ago
    It's useful for illegal stuff so far. But if it's the only real use case, governments can and will just outlaw exchange into fiat. Beside that, you still need to trust the developers. Sure, you can not partake in a fork but so you can decide to not do business with certain corporations or governments.
  • treeman79 4y ago
    Apparently Lego sets are used for money laundering. Since they hold value well. https://nosafebets.com/2020/06/05/legos-the-new-gold-standard-for-drugs/amp/ https://nosafebets.com/2020/06/05/legos-the-new-gold-standar...
  • NikolaNovak 4y ago
    >>These people got blocked by traditional payment providers but still received crypto. I thought their crypto payments were tracked (open ledger) and basically nixxed? I.e. this was the grand counter-example of crypto use case :-< We can discuss our personal opinion on the Canadian protests of Winter of 2022, but I strongly believe that for average citizen, Crypto payments leave a HUGE exposure / attack surface. YES, there's going to be a Hacker News person who can figure out how to safely transfer crypto, and maybe even do something practical with it, in duress situations; but I feel that would end up complex enough to be achievable effectively with other crypto-less, equal-complexity methods. Meanwhile, average citizen's ability to safely and anonymously and SAFELY use crypto under duress is extremely limited. https://www.vice.com/en/article/jgmnpd/the-freedom-convoy-bitcoin-donations-have-been-frozen-and-seized https://www.vice.com/en/article/jgmnpd/the-freedom-convoy-bi...
    • zen_1 4y ago
      That's not a trait of crypto in general, just bitcoin (and ETH, and most other non privacy-focused coins). Take a look at Monero or ZCash to see how untraceable the trucker convoy (or similar) donations would have been if they had just used a different cryptocurrency.
    • SwanRonson 4y ago
      Personal opinions aside it is a valid use case. They can track the wallet and they will, but they cannot close/lock the wallet as they did bank accounts. As you’ve implied there are methods to achieve anonymity but they require technical knowledge. If this becomes a commonly understood use case it will likely become easier for the average person.
      • NikolaNovak 4y ago
        I believe in this case they did close/lock the wallet, as it was held by the exchange. How far they go to recoup money that did make it to individuals is up to the attorney general and courts and politicians to decide - but critically, means are extremely there. It is empathically and trivially known who the recipients are. This is the part that feels like we are intentionally ignoring - eventually crypto intersects with the real world. There were technically superior and more anonymous ways to do that kind of particular transaction of course. But we may differ as to what "average person" is and what their technical competence will be in the near to medium future. I believe average person still has tremendous phishing and scam risk with a regular, regulated, fairly static, designed for ease of use, documented, go-to-branch-and-we'll-guide-you-through-it electronic banking. I am skeptical of our ability to create a safe path for the average person through the dynamic, unregulated, ever-changing, technically complex, myriad-clients-and-zillion-methods-and-gazillion-exchanges all chock-full of scammers world of crypto.
  • snarf21 4y ago
    I used to think there were use cases but not anymore. Currency is the only possible one but since it is digital, it leads to the same but different centralization. The days of mining bitcoin in the background and "winning" a full bitcoin are gone. There is no need for crypto for money laundering when it can be done at scale at Deutsche Bank. The anonymous use cases are a chicken/egg problem because you still need on/off ramps. but the other issues make global crypto currency a no go.
  • seydor 4y ago
    i'd start with "porn and nudity". The financial system is extremely hostile to them
  • ParksNet 4y ago
    5) Stalking horse for CBDCs.
  • tablespoon 4y ago
    > I'm sure they're others. But I think the key common thread is that all of them require censorship resistance. If what you're doing isn't likely to be censored by authorities then you're being incredibly wasteful by using blockchain I don't think "censorship resistance" is the correct term. I think what you're really describing is "law enforcement resistance" (e.g. your activities are illegal). And even in those cases, unless cryptocurrency is circulating as actual currency in the economy (which it isn't), most of the law-enforcement resistance is fatally compromised by the need for onramps and offramps.
  • galdosdi 4y ago
    The problem is the only situations where crypto is more effective than the alternative (a well operated SQL database owned by a bank headquartered in a geopolitically secure jurisdiction with stable courts) is a really shitty one: when you live in a Mad Max world with no stable rule of law. In other words, it just so happens that the exact situations where crypto is useful, are the same situations where it is very hard for capitalists to earn a good return on their capital. Unstable places or illegal markets. It's not that the existence of crypto doesn't make sense. It's that investing in it makes no sense, because it will only be successful in scenarios where "investing in things" at all is a lost cause.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • lern_too_spel 4y ago
    The article directly addresses this. These use cases vanish as soon as the government regulates the onramps and offramps.
  • zem 4y ago
    the #1 use case by far is as a pyramidal pump-and-dump scheme. it may not be what anyone considers a legitimate/palatable use case, but it is objectively what cryptocurrencies are being enthusiastically used for, and they work well for the purpose. the people who got in early have typically gotten rich off it, and the people who have not either play the (necessary) role of the sucker, or catch on and try to start their own coin where they are in at the start.
• scythingshepard 4y ago
  The only use, which is enough, is to subvert those who claim authority over others. A specific example is committing crimes: buying or selling drugs, money laundering, tax evasion, etc.. but maybe its building a nest egg to help escape an abusive relationship or God knows what. Hiding money from some sort of extortion. Most "crypto" isn't hidden, it isn't crypto. It's gimmicky marketing. Not currency either. Fully fungible (all units equal) crypto (hidden) currency (means of exchange, store of value) is incredibly useful. Everyone understands why untraceable money that you can send cheaply, globally and securely in an instant is useful. Monero, maybe not the best or final ideal tech, but it has real utility.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • civilized 4y ago
    Crypto is not a subversion of central banks and governments. It's just an amusing gimmick that exists at their pleasure, like the state lottery. > end users always want a way to get money out of crypto and back into fiat currency. And this desire hands governments all the tools they need to starve the crypto ecosystem at will, by cutting off access to inflows and outflows if participants don’t follow the rules. When a reasonably competent and powerful government cares enough about stopping something from happening, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to continue doing business as usual. And this reality continues to take the hand-wavily libertarian crowd of crypto enthusiasts by surprise. > The persistent requirement for fiat on- and off-ramps is why virtually every anti-censorship technique that crypto comes up with instantly suffers from the same Achilles heel.
    • scythingshepard 4y ago
      Sure. And this is true of all anonymity software like Tor, I2P, etc
  • lern_too_spel 4y ago
    The article addresses this. Cryptocurrency cannot subvert that authority, as the law applies to it as well.
• latchkey 4y ago
  > In crypto, on the other hand, you can speculate on shitcoins and make bets in DeFi, and that’s about it. Giant long article and only one small mention of DeFi (which I'd argue is a great use case, despite all the hacks going on) and it isn't even accurate. DeFi isn't about betting.
  • monetus 4y ago
    Not being in the space myself - can you generalize the whole thing by saying it is about any one thing? Speculative asset appreciation seemed to mostly be what drove people to it. Curious about the good emergent behaviors, as the bad ones are literally advertising themselves.
    • latchkey 4y ago
      I'm getting downvoted on my comment, but your provides good value by asking for more information, so maybe I can earn back a bit of karma with a kind reply. A good example of the value of DeFi is a project like AAVE [1]. It isn't about asset appreciation, it is about creating a frictionless lending/borrowing market based on collateral that anyone can participate in. If I have some crypto and I want to take a loan out against it for something else, I can do so without having to go to a bank, ask for permission, KYC, or anything. The protocol itself is fully decentralized and no single entity can shut it down (or even modify it). It literally happens in a single transaction. It is global. It is 24/7. It is transparent and on-chain. Oh and the rates are actually pretty decent (no middleman). People might ask 'why' one would want to do that and it really is just an answer of something that happens every day in TradFi markets as it is. It may not be helpful for you, but it certainly has value. Sure, people can use this for speculation, drugs or whatever. But I personally see this as extremely empowering for a variety of my own reasons. After spending the last year+ very deep into DeFi, I've seen my fair share of scams and hacks. But my eyes have also been opened to the potential of what is out there. DeFi is the first real use case of crypto that I've seen that has value. [1] https://aave.com/ https://aave.com/
• trixie_ 4y ago
  The practical use case is pretty simple - being able to hold large sums of money yourself securely while being able to move it to who/where ever you want in less than an hour, 24/7, no questions asked. Before Bitcoin it was practically impossible to do this without a bank as an intermediary and even then would require large fees, talking with people, lots of hang ups, just to manage your own money.
  • xadhominemx 4y ago
    What is the use case of that use case?
    • ddjsn111 4y ago
    • trixie_ 4y ago
      Say you want to move $ from service A to C, before Bitcoin it was not possible without a bank intermediary (B). There is processing time, high fees, business hours, etc.. So you’re handholding the process A to B then B to C. With crypto I can move money directly A to C at 4am on a weekend, any amount, without talking to anyone for a tiny fee. Or if I want to move it into my wallet and hold it personally I can do that do. Before Bitcoin that was literally impossible without physically walking into a bank.
      • boffinism 4y ago
        In my experience (UK traditional banking system) I can move money directly A to C at 4am on a weekend, any amount, without talking to anyone for a NO fee. That's just how online banking works, and I'd have to increase the sums of money involved by an order of magnitude or two before having to walk into a bank. What sorts of values of A, C and $ do you have in mind where a bank isn't cheaper, faster and more convenient than crypto?
        • trixie_ 4y ago
• jmyeet 4y ago
  I agree with basically everything here. There two fundamental problems here: 1. Crypto is being designed by smart engineers who fully understand the financial system. Specifically they don’t understand why it is the way it is. It didn’t just magically appear this way full of obvious flaws. It grew over thousands of years; and 2. Most of the people pushing crypto are honestly just trying to get rich quick. Most missed out on the Bitcoin wealth transfer so they are eager to jump on or create the next Bitcoin. And pretty much all of them have a vested interest in convincing you.
  • olalonde 4y ago
    > Specifically they don’t understand why it is the way it is. It didn’t just magically appear this way full of obvious flaws. It grew over thousands of years That's just an argument in defense of status quo. It's actually pretty common for industry outsiders to disrupt old industries. Think Uber/Airbnb/Facebook/Tesla, etc. Thousand year old industries get disrupted all the time.
    • fortuna86 4y ago
      > Thousand year old industries get disrupted all the time. They really don't. The fundamentals of banking as an industry haven't changed in hundreds if not thousands of years. Real estate, etc.
      • olalonde 4y ago
        Up until few years ago, banking required trust. That's a pretty big fundamental.
        • fortuna86 4y ago
          Still does. Disintermediation is a myth, you always need a middle man.
• sudden_dystopia 4y ago
  There is only one use case and that is the originally intended use, as a currency completely decoupled from any one country’s monetary meddling and thus liberating the populace from poor central planners and/or authoritarians. That’s it. That’s all there is to it.
  • lake_vincent 4y ago
    Well said. I don't understand why there's always so much hand-wringing and pearl-clutching over crypto.
    • danw1979 4y ago
      The energy requirements of bitcoin might go some way to explaining why people get a bit worried about if it’s got a real purpose or not ?
    • jeltz 4y ago
      The environmental impact of PoS coins plus all the scams?
  • xadhominemx 4y ago
    It’s not decoupled, as anything you want to do with it will interact with the traditional finance system.
  • washbrain 4y ago
    Except, it's not that? Or at the very least it's a poor version of that. Want to get and move Bitcoin easily? You are going through an exchange, which will absolutely be regulated at some point. Not going through an exchange? Well, I suppose you can try and find a local person who already has some Bitcoin to sell you and work out some sort of shady transfer and hope neither of you get scammed. Now you have some "currency", and it's relatively easy (but not free) to move it to someone else's wallet. The value may have doubled or halved since you acquired it. So you want to move it quick. Except it's not quick. But you get the transfer done. Now the person who receives it has to convert it into usable currency - no one is buying food or energy with Bitcoin. To be free from meddling, they too need to find and meet with someone who will give them cash for their coins. But wait, that's not all! Most folks interacting with the coin are using exchanges. And they come from well regulated places. So the laws and financial planners of those countries will indirectly impact the price of the coin. If coins suddenly get taxed heavily, out a local fiat gets strong, or whatever, that will impact the value of existing coins as people either flee to or from the coins as a store of value. So even if countries don't directly regulate coins, they'll still be impacting them.
• rvz 4y ago
  ENS (Ethereum Name Service) [0], Handshake (An experimental peer-to-peer root naming system.) are so far the only valid use-cases and a need for a blockchain. Unless you want a repeat of this [2] or this [3] with .io or someone on the other end changing the domain or address from one to another whenever they want to. [0] https://ens.domains https://ens.domains [1] https://handshake.org https://handshake.org [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21611677 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21611677 [3] https://thehackerblog.com/the-io-error-taking-control-of-all-io-domains-with-a-targeted-registration/ https://thehackerblog.com/the-io-error-taking-control-of-all...
• bnchrch 4y ago
  I mean I see two clear use cases. 1. Transferring funds I can transfer crypto faster and a lot cheaper than any money transfer. Hell I can receive and withdraw same day. 2. Earning interest By parking my money in a stable coin and dropping it into an AMM like uniswap I can earn 10x-50x more interest than just parking it in my bank account. No volatility. Only risk is hacker risk.
  • librish 4y ago
    When you say cheaper and faster, what are you comparing to? If I want to convert and send USD from the US to EUR in Germany the crypto solution will be expensive (trading fees on both legs) and pretty slow (time it takes for the exchange to send EUR to your German bank account).
    • rpmw 4y ago
      Yeah this strikes me as odd too. My bank will instantly deposit transfers while the (free) ACH process takes time to clear. I can transfer up to something like $99,999 a day which is fine for my needs. At worst case a $15 fee to wire funds which I could probably get waived if I asked customer support nicely. There is also plenty of recourse in the unlikely event something goes wrong.
      • m348e912 4y ago
        With crypto you don't have to ask nicely, you just send. Being your own bank has it's advantages (and risks).
        • rpmw 4y ago
          Sure, but I'd say for just about every person the risks far outweigh the rewards. And IMO adding intermediaries to account for that risk seems an unnecessary abstraction given the current system.
        • librish 4y ago
          You have to ask the exchange to give you your fiat.
• LatteLazy 4y ago
  The most interesting thing about Crypto is how much zeal it brings out BOTH for those in favour and those against it. If you think it has no use case, don't use it. If you think it does have a use case and you need that, use it.
  • TremendousJudge 4y ago
    I would be happy to ignore them, if it wasn't that: - They are always pushing their ideology into the spaces I frequent, forcing me to engage in some way, and - They vent their mining CO2 to the same planet where I happen to live.
    • LatteLazy 4y ago
      You could say the exact same thing about basically any activity though. I have zero interest in watching sports, yet "they" insist on putting it on TV and pumping out CO2 for stadiums etc. Personally, I think that's the right mindset to take here: I don't see the point, but people are allowed to do things I don't see the point of so <shrugs>
• olalonde 4y ago
  To me, the fact that Bitcoin is a money out of the hands of governments, or anyone really, is the use case. It's also cool that you can use your brain to effectively store your money. Of course, if you believe that governments are good stewards of money, you will probably not find a use case.
  • mypastself 4y ago
    The brain wallet part is very cool unless you’re like me, and don’t have a particularly good memory. “What was the sixth word of my mnemonic? Strand? Strait? Spleen? Oh God, what if I never recover my 35 Shibs…”
  • TremendousJudge 4y ago
    Is it really? If you can't change it for goods and services before turning it back into regular, government controlled currency, is it out of the hands of governments? If China can get all the miners to move to Kazakhstan, were they ever out of government control?
    • tresqotheq 4y ago
      > If you can't change it for goods and services .. There is nothing preventing someone from accepting it and providing the services you need.
    • silentsea90 4y ago
      You may have answered your own question. You don't need to turn it back into fiat for it to be used in the long run. Lightning network makes txns quick and cheap, and BTC volatility has been going down enough that it isn't hard to imagine it being stabler short term against fiat (though long term it will gain value as fiat collapses)
      • bagacrap 4y ago
        btc volatility has been going down? is this a joke? it's worth a third of what it was less than a year ago. plus every time I sell or transfer, it's a taxable event, which makes use as a currency incredibly onerous
• all2well 4y ago
  This article doesn't mention the one article of faith every crypto utopian I've run into really believes: the US dollar and every other currency will collapse soon and be replaced by crypto.
  • colesantiago 4y ago
    Not to mention that prices will be denominated in satoshis / sats. Incredibly delusional.
  • rvz 4y ago
    And on the other side of the ring, we have the anti-crypto absolutists who will do anything to: 'ban all crypto, 100%', 'destroy all of it', 'let it all die in a fire', which I'm afraid is as equally delusional as the crypto utopians who believing that Bitcoin will be the world reserve currency. The truth of the matter is, both of these extreme camps are going to be very disappointed in the future.
    • silentsea90 4y ago
      What makes you think BTC utopians are going to be disappointed?
      • rvz 4y ago
        Unless you agree with the BTC utopians who think that: 'The US dollar and every other currency will collapse soon and be replaced by crypto.'
      • imtringued 4y ago
        If the USD collapses the US will just issue a new currency and it's domestic economy will remain even if the might of the dollar in the global economy is gone.
        • silentsea90 4y ago
          If other nations with collapsing currencies are any indication, that's not how it works. People always move to a better, harder currency. What authority would the government be left with if the money fails? How would the government distribute money?
• paxys 4y ago
  The only use case for crypto is to get others into the ecosystem to buy the flavor-of-the-month coin so the value of yours goes up and you can cash out.
• colesantiago 4y ago
  Crypto advocates will keep waiting even when billions have been lost to scams which is the primary and only use for crypto. I agree with many of the crypto critics that the answer after this tedious search is that there exists no legitimate usecase in this industry and there never will be.
• yaseer 4y ago
  I'm reminded of the pictures of New York in 1900 and 1913. Within those 13 years, the car had changed the world. https://www.businessinsider.com/5th-ave-1900-vs-1913-2011-3?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/5th-ave-1900-vs-1913-2011-3?... The iPhone and smartphone revolution clearly did the same, last decade. We're now 14 years into Bitcoin. Is it ever likely to change the world the same way?
  • tremarley 4y ago
    It has changed the world already. Many countries buy and stockpile bitcoin, similar to what they do with gold. This currency was made by a bloke on computer 14 years ago, and has revolutionised the way we view ownership, freedoms and money.
    • bootlooped 4y ago
      For the majority of people on earth, it has not changed their lives in any meaningful way. Their lives may in fact be indistinguishable from an alternate reality where crypto was never invented.
  • karlkeefer 4y ago
    That's a pretty high bar Benz made the first car in 1886, which in your analogy means today is 1900. I will be curious to see how crypto holds up in recession or under monetary crisis. One of the reasons it was created hasn't really been tested, since the economy in the west hasn't faced a major crisis since its invention. It seems plausible (if unlikely) that external events could push crypto adoption into more "normal" use cases. E.g. Israel's recent ban on cash transactions points to one way more things may become untenable in traditional finance. I don't actually have strong opinions on what will happen - I do find your analogy fun to think about though!
    • yaseer 4y ago
      For the record, I don't think crypto is useless, I just don't think it's hitting that bar for a transformative technology. It's proponents certainly do describe it as potentially transformative or revolutionary. Yes, I'm aware the dates of invention don't quite align, and the time window is cherry-picked for dramatic effect. But it's food for thought. Nobody was debating the utility of cars and phones 14 years later. With crypto, it's like we're still looking for something as fundamental as an essential use case.
• brainzap 4y ago
  its usecase was to scam people
• sinecure 4y ago
  The cleanest and easiest use case I see for crypto is just optimizing the whole securities issuance and fund management legacy system. For my business in alternative investments if I want to raise money for a project with a Regulation D offering I need to spend a lot of time and money jumping through hoops and dealing with numerous financial institutions. The typical flow of information, effort and money goes like this: the sponsor (me) creates the investment opportunity under Regulation D of the SEC ruleset with the help of some securities attorneys, a managing broker dealer (SEC compliance) signs off on it and circulates it to broker-dealers via selling agreements, then, wealth advisors who are registered with those broker-dealers can sell our offering to their clients, those clients then fill out a subscription agreement and send their money to a third party called a transfer agent, the transfer agent takes in the agreements and cash, logs all the details about the investor and manages the payment of distributions with a mixture of direct deposit and paper checks, and generates tax documents via mail, these distributions and tax documents then go to the financial custodian of the asset for each investor. This process involves 8 to 10 different parties, multiple financial institutions and reams of paperwork. The cost of capital is approximately 11% using this method. I dream of the day that I can offer a tokenized security on the blockchain, that is held by the investors themselves in their wallet, with distributions paid with USDC directly to their wallets. The reduction in cost would be incredible--all we need is the legal framework to allow it.
  • robin_reala 4y ago
    But why bother with blockchain in that case? What you’re describing is a legal solution centralised by the government, and any hash tree with work in a non-distributed situation.
  • notafraudster 4y ago
    But on a fundamental level you're not describing a technical hurdle, you're describing a social-policy hurdle. Like, wouldn't you agree that if there was policymaker will to make this process more efficient, it could be more efficient without a blockchain? Suppose that blockchain did not exist but that securities law did not require you to consult securities attorneys to "create the investment opportunity". You would have an efficiency gain by cutting out the attorneys. In particular I think about your "dream": you dream that in lieu of paying people with a mixture of direct deposit and paper checks, you could pay them with an electronic currency; but presumably at least some of the people being paid with paper checks want to be paid with paper checks (if not, you'd presumably pay them all with direct deposit) and while securities law probably doesn't let you disburse via Paypal or Venmo or any other electronic account transfer, if it did, doing so would be approximately the same as USDC, right? It seems to me to make a sustainable case for blockchain, you need to basically say assuming the exact same regulatory posture and the exact same degree of technical laziness in terms of automating steps not currently automated, would blockchain make it better?
• paulpauper 4y ago
  Nomad was hacked. Unless the hackers are generous and return the $--or--somehow used a weak private key to store the eth, there is no way to get the $ back even in the age of the universe. That's the 'use case' I suppose: One-way, irrevocable money transfers and storage.
• ddjsn111 4y ago
• whitepaint 4y ago
  Ens domains, PoolTogether, Aave and more: https://ethereum.org/en/dapps/ https://ethereum.org/en/dapps/ Have these people writing these kind of articles ever downloaded a browser wallet and played around with Defi? The amount of ignorance here is staggering. How is it on HN? HN is supposed to be a place for people who are tech savvy and are able to think about the future and imagine it different from yesterday.
  • tremarley 4y ago
    The same thing confuses me. This is meant to be a feed for tech savvy people. It seems as though, the majority of HN users haven't invested any time into understanding it. So they just label it bad.
    • cuteboy19 4y ago
      Please do not assume this. The people who criticize crypto generally know more than the people relentlessly shilling it. Do not mindlessly repeat the "few understand" trope
    • gaspard234 4y ago
      I hate when crypto bros assume 'we don't get it'. I wasted a year of my life working for a crypto company, I've actually committed code to Ethereum through the Geth project. I learned it's all a casino of completely useless money moving schemes. What makes even ENS cool tech? The sole purpose of those .eth domains is to receive crypto, ohh and make the founders extremely wealthy. Why did they need to launch an ENS coin, other than to dump on the public when it was 5x the current price.
  • gaspard234 4y ago
    Trololol PoolTogether is literally a lottery scheme. How is that in anyway innovative and new? Looks like another polished scam to take advantage of ignorant users, or 'degens' in crypto vernacular.
  • majewsky 4y ago
    Consider the sheer amount of new tech, or more general, of new ideas being shared here and on other places every single day. How is a single person supposed to evaluate all that? You don't even need to go that broad. I'm working in the cloud infrastructure field (think Kubernetes and such). Just following all developments in that narrow space is such a mind-boggingly huge task that it's physically impossible for a single person to follow all of it (except at extreme surface level). And that's before we consider other areas of tech. Or other areas of interest (politics, science, culture). To make the task of navigating the world even somewhat tractable, we all have to rely on outside authorities whom we trust for a lot of our information diet. Hence why I am very grateful for known figures like Moxie Marlinspike to examine this topic and provide me with a succinct summary of their impression through writing. That's not to say that I take everything Moxie says as gospel, but I know enough about him to judge which of his statements can be trusted and which need to be taken with a grain of salt.
• anonymoushn 4y ago
  Currently we've hired more than 0 people through a global outsourcing company. The outsourcing company sends us invoices, we wire them dollars, they charge us 3% on top of extremely bad forex rates plus 10% for their services, then a local company who's hired "our staff" processes payroll, pays local taxes and insurance, etc. The whole process of getting the money to the recipient takes days to a month. Currently we have more than 0 staff who have been displaced by a war and do not have good access to local banking, so we pay them in dollar stablecoins. This does not cost ~15% and does not have a latency of days to a month.
  • aerovistae 4y ago
    The specifier "more than 0" strikes me as odd. Both sentences would have been the same without it. > we've hired people through a global outsourcing company > we have staff who have been displaced by a war
    • 676234e117 4y ago
      Maybe it is just 1 recipient. Which I think is still a fine display of the value of a decentralized payment option.
      • lern_too_spel 4y ago
        That they can pay people remotely ignoring employment laws in a way that can be tracked and prosecuted?
        • anonymoushn 4y ago
          I'm not sure why there's some assumption that anything illegal is going on.
          • lern_too_spel 4y ago
            You stated that you are directly paying these employees without the facilitator who was previously paying the payroll taxes on your behalf.
• EGreg 4y ago
  Endless search? FileCoin is used to pay for IPFS. BTT is used to pay for faster downloads speeds. There are lots of others. My own company has spent 3 years building way more applications that you can see here https://intercoin.org/applications https://intercoin.org/applications They're open source, and fully documented, try to use them! We're currently building interfaces to power them:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySi-wOB28y0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySi-wOB28y0 We also have an Intercoin Show every week where I interview some well-known people in the space. Some examples: Ian Clarke, founder of Freenet, about decentralized systems: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWrRqUkJpMQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWrRqUkJpMQ Sara Hanks, author of Regulation S, about regulations: https://community.intercoin.org/t/interview-with-sara-hanks-ceo-and-co-founder-of-crowdcheck https://community.intercoin.org/t/interview-with-sara-hanks-... Thomas Greco, community currency economics: https://community.intercoin.org/t/interview-with-thomas-h-greco-community-currency-economist/ https://community.intercoin.org/t/interview-with-thomas-h-gr... This is what we are working to accomplish: https://intercoin.org/proposal.pdf https://intercoin.org/proposal.pdf
  • naet 4y ago
    When you actually drill into what filecoin is and how it works you realize it's literally worse than any other form of data backup that I've heard of. No sane engineer would ever use it for any reason other than it being related to the crypto industry. It offers far worse utility than using AWS S3 buckets, at a far higher price, and with tons more risks for no upsides. And that is a perfect metaphor for 99% of crypto "usecases"
    • MacsHeadroom 4y ago
      Filecoin storage is analogous to glacier, not s3. It's about 2000x cheaper. IPFS can be used like s3 with a third party shim for between free and 400x cheaper.
• asah 4y ago
  Truly 24x7x365 instant banking is a pretty great use case. TradFi isn't close.
  • majewsky 4y ago
    SEPA Instant Credit Transfer [1] has a soft limit of 10 seconds and hard limit of 20 seconds for money transfers between accounts of different banks. What's the use case for "faster than 10 seconds"? [1] https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/what-we-do/sepa-instant-credit-transfer https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/what-we-do/sepa-insta...
    • junofan 4y ago
      You can pay people in Bolivia that way?
      • majewsky 4y ago
        Moving the goalposts. GP's statement was that TradFi isn't close, so I showed an example where TradFi is close. Also, the number of people who accept Euro is definitely larger than those who accept any cryptocurrency combined.
        • asah 4y ago
          sorry, you're correct of course and I was being a bit sloppy. apologies. still, the fact that I haven't heard of the counterexample, suggests that indeed TradFi isn't close in the US sorry to move goalposts again ;-)
    • asah 4y ago
      Nice. But the other cool thing about crypto is that it's programmable, so you can arrange 100s of transactions between parties. Micro finance loans, royalties and distribution, etc etc
• kardianos 4y ago
  GNU Taler https://taler.net/ https://taler.net/ is the closest thing that I personally want of crypto, which is electronic cash (NOT a centralized bank currency). Yes, I like paying by card. No, I don't like it making everything I do traceable. I do want to live in a sovereign nation. Probate court and criminal court orders are important. But make it generally really hard for governments to interfere legally, and prevent technically the casual inspection of data.
• k__ 4y ago
  The SSI/DID initiatives of w3c seem to do pretty well. Filecoin looks good too. Industries like porn should also profit from a system that doesn't allow for chargebacks. Porn was a huge driver in the past.
• nmilo 4y ago
  The author somehow misses the number one use case of crypto: as a currency. You can buy things with Bitcoin right now. Therefore each bitcoin has a value. You can move bitcoins around to move value around. Simple as that. The only problem is that, yes, it is indeed early. I don't know why the author brings up the App Store, as if both Bitcoin and the iPhone App Store are even remotely comparable just because they came out in the same year. You can't expect to upend the global financial system in less than 15 years, give it some time. People are hitting the limits of international banking and quickly moving to crypto as an alternative. And as the hyperconnected cryptobro kids today become wealthy millionaires in a few decades, I expect a lot of value to be stored internationally in crypto.
  • Synaesthesia 4y ago
    Sure but with the various transaction fees, exchange fees and waiting time for confirmation, and price instability, isn't it easier to just use existing financial services to buy things?
    • junofan 4y ago
      For international services, often no.
      • Synaesthesia 4y ago
        What are bitcoin fees like these days?
    • olalonde 4y ago
      Maybe if you are not one of the billions of unbanked people.
• iRomain 4y ago
  I stopped reading after « with nary a mainstream use case to show for it other than drugs and ransomware » Wether you like them or not, DEFI, ICOs and NFTs are all very valid use cases which attracted people with backgrounds different enough that we can call it mainstream. Yes you can do pretty much all of them without blockchain but so can you with drugs and ransomware. I don’t know what is it with crypto that it generates so much extremism in both sides.
  • simonebrunozzi 4y ago
    > DEFI, ICOs and NFTs are all very valid use cases Those are not exactly "use cases".
  • uoaei 4y ago
    You're going to have to specify your definition of the word "valid" in this context.
• simonebrunozzi 4y ago
  FYI, Fabrica uses NFTs to digitize real estate properties (land) in the US, to allow for a very fast transaction. We thought that it would be a great use case for crypto. Disclaimer: former co-founder/CEO. Left in late 2018. I still have equity in the company. [0]: https://fabrica.land/ https://fabrica.land/
• otikik 4y ago
  It has the same use case as snake oil. With some extra turns: * A pyramidal scheme (with extra steps) "buy this, the price is always going up" * You are doing this on a parallel market where authorities have little/no vision (yet). * Plus you are marketing it to people who are distrustful of authorities The last two points seem especially tailored to make scams and deception go unpunished.
  • bagacrap 4y ago
    pretty sure authorities have plenty of visibility into Bitcoin. It's pretty hard to turn it into fiat after you steal it, and turn it into fiat you must if you wish to spend it
• sputknick 4y ago
  Disclaimer: I was an early investor, and still "hodl" crypto, so I'm not without my bias. Dating a viable use case versus other tech depends on when you set the creation date. The internet wasn't commercially viable for its first 25 years. Also we are getting closer and closer to a viable use case for the most basic use case for crypto, payments. Solana Pay and a few others have working products, the problem is network effects keeping them from being useful. If we can reach a future where I can buy groceries without paying 2% to Visa, but instead can pay a fraction of a penny to a validator, potentially putting hundreds of dollars back in average peoples pocket per year, I think it's worth trying.
  • majewsky 4y ago
    What's the business incentive for a validator to charge that much lower costs? If they know they have the cheapest offering on the market already, it doesn't make business sense to undercut Visa by that much (or, at most, to only undercut them until they've achieved monopoly).
    • arbol 4y ago
      The price comes from the number of Validators offering their service. If there are many then the price goes down and vice versa. This is just basic economics. The current offering of VISA, Mastercard, etc. is somewhat limited and there is a barrier to entry. Therefore, artificially high costs can be maintained.
  • cuteboy19 4y ago
    >If we can reach a future where I can buy groceries without paying 2% to Visa We already are living in this future in India. If I want to pay for a 10₹ ($0.13) chai I simply scan the QR in my favourite payments app and enter my UPI pin. The money is transferred to their bank instantly and it is completely free! UPI is so ubiquitous that even most shops in villages have it by now. Ironically UPI is far more decentralised because while Solana completely goes down every few months, the UPI network has never entirely gone down.
  • bagacrap 4y ago
• dogman144 4y ago
  “Where is the use case, it’s been 10 years or more! It didn’t take Uber that long” is the silliest argument and shaped by missing that the tech is building out infra, and meaningful apps are still to come. Ethernet was invented in 1973. Wifi didn’t come along until 1997. Crypto is wonky bc it’s a virtual infra layer that’s nonetheless a p2p application at the end of the day. However, the tech is clearly focused on building infra out. This view comes direct from core dev teams and general depth of knowledge about the space. Bridges, new chains, new wallets, new crypto approaches like MPC, scaling L1/L2 - this is all infra. There are niche early use cases like DeFi and NFTs, but that’s not the end state. A common rebuttal from early internet people is “early internet was cool and useful from the beginning!” This is true, but it’s also true Gen pop had no idea what the hell computer people at MIT were doing with mainframes and why it mattered until wifi, dot com, all this showed up. Early adopters were keyed in more and more such as the govt, DoD, infra companies like Cisco. Scientists got involved early. This mirrors what crypto is going through right now. Infra is getting built out. The tech and apps are cool and useful to a relatively small crowd of computer nerds. Scientists from MIT, UC berk do research for it. Govt and high net worth people are getting interested. Some early apps that get niche users interested are working. The sense of impatience is silly.
• 16amxn16 4y ago
  Search no longer. I've used crypto (Bitcoin, specifically) to move money for almost 10 years. When you live in a corrupt third world country with an authoritarian govt, you have a perfect use case. Note: I don't save in BTC, just use it to get paid from overseas then convert it to local currency.
• civilized 4y ago
  Upshot > end users always want a way to get money out of crypto and back into fiat currency. And this desire hands governments all the tools they need to starve the crypto ecosystem at will, by cutting off access to inflows and outflows if participants don’t follow the rules.
• whatisweb3 4y ago
  The simplest use case and reason that crypto should continue to be developed is that it allows you to hold an asset with financial value in a decentralized global network. If you live in the US and notice that bank transfers are significantly cheaper and faster in the UK or EU, you cannot just set up a UK bank account in your town. You are forced into the American “bank protocol.” In crypto, you can withdraw your funds from one entity auch as MetaMask and deposit it into another such as Argent, Gnosis or zkSync, because all of the tokens and applications are composable with each other and build on the same protocol.
• Rackedup 4y ago
  Crypto is great for transferring money internationally....
• naveen99 4y ago
  Use case would be a decentralized control of the federal reserve by the united states and or members of nato.
  • dud8ehrvtxydh 4y ago
    Why would the US ever give NATO control of the federal reserve? It's hard to imagine a situation where adding a third party with even less familiarity accessing FR functions would help somehow.
• xcavier 4y ago
  Personally I am curious why no one is exploring the M2M applications of crypto. If we look forward to the time all (most?) vehicles are autonomous, I can see a need for a ‘market mechanism’ which allows vehicles to request/cede priority. Driver A wants to get to Point B in a hurry, so has an incentive to request Drivers C and D to allow their vehicle to pass. If Drivers C and D have no rush, they accept the incentive. Crypto (or a similar token), handled by the vehicles, enable this.
• evelynsalt 4y ago
  Crypto uses less energy than huge data-centers. Hear me out: Proof-of-Stake is more energy efficient than a data-center and runs on small devices like Raspberry Pi. Modern blockchains like MINA only store the ZK proof for the whole chain, so, even the storage requirements are very minimal. Already a 6 kW rack will soon cost 7500 Euro in Germany. After that that will be the case around the world. That is when Web 3.0 will make a comeback.
• hansvm 4y ago
  Crypto is useful today as a currency if you're worried about censorship from Visa/PayPal/Stripe/... and not from governments. The article's primary point about how decentralization doesn't matter when the government is powerful enough to demand blocklists and whatnot may or may not have merit, but if you wanted to legally transact in any of the following online, which payment provider would you use without fear of being spontaneously shut down (not arguing that the items are beneficial per se, just that many governments are fine with most of them and most payment providers are not)? (1) Marijuana paraphernalia (2) Cigarettes (3) Politically charged symbols like confederate flags and swastikas (4) Knives (5) MLM pamphlets (6) Digital goods (MMORPG gold/items) (7) "Adult" photos/videos/toys/... ... Crypto provides an satisfactory solution _today_ for all of those things. It's a little inconvenient to have a currency exchange and fees tacked on just to avoid having bank accounts or whatever frozen, but it works, and governments don't bother to step in and block those transactions even where it might be feasible for them to interfere. Moreover, the alternatives I'm aware of are all measurably worse in one or more factors including fraud potential, cost, and risk of frozen assets. IMO it'd be better just to legislate that banks and payment providers are dumb infrastructure like an ISP should be so that it isn't a concern in the first place, but in a world where I don't see that happening crypto is a good enough workaround.