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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 liberat

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.
- 16amxn16 4y ago
  Sadly, this is true. As great as it is, bitcoin has many issues, in order: 1) The fact that Bitcoin mining traffic is detectable by ISPs (similar to torrents), so if a country prohibits it, the ISPs could simply detect that traffic trivially and get you arrested. Or simply block downloads of the client, etc 2) The centralization (or lack of democratization) of mining. A few huge pools, mining rig operations instead of individuals running software on their computers. SHA-256 ASICs and lack of blockchain pruning caused this. 3) The overreliance on exchanges - not your keys, not your coins etc 4) Every transaction is trackable, no real anonymity 5) The -even daily- value fluctuations 6) Hard to understand for layman people That said even with all of these drawbacks people do use it in real life for its original intended purpose (remove the middleman), specifically in third world countries. But I think it would be great to go back to 2009 with all of the current knowledge and redesign these bits I think that inevitably, it will be banned at some point in the future due to 1) and 2).
tootie 4y ago
I suppose the citizens of Turkey should be grateful, but that's about the only national currency that's performed worse than crypto.
- TremendousJudge 4y ago
  Argentina is currently experiencing a booming inflation and local distrust for its currency is at an all time high (and that's saying a lot). Many Argentinians (of a certain technical inclination) are very much into crypto, as a "second best" alternative after US dollars. I know that many Argentinians lost their savings in the LUNA crash.
jostiniane 4y ago
Definitely. Somehow the author went and brought valid arguments against ETH and web3 but failed completely at point #2. Just to answer the author concerns about point #2. There are coins with entire Blockchain that can fit in my OnePlus 7. I am from Algeria (a country without a financial system), LTC and XMR are the coins that brought me out of poverty, not because of gambling but they allowed me to do software development consulting online without begging services like Wise to not ban my account for random suspicions. The author somehow talks about Crypto currency but somehow keeps pointing to flaws in exchangers with KYC.. Again, a lot of progress has been made here, exchangers without KYC emerged (check out Bisq net)... I just wish people would point out more honest reviews of the such technologies so we can improve together as a society.. Cryptocurrency might not add a lot to your life, but there are many people having access to instant, cheap and secure transactions is a game changer.. I don't care about the legality of it as those broken laws are probably not protecting the average citizen.
- kaladin_1 4y ago
  Having read through the thread, I don't think many in highly developed countries can ever grasp why crypto is huge in Africa. I'm from Nigeria. The Central Bank makes all sorts of policies around inflows and outflows. E.g. DigitalOcean just has warned me that they will block my account. I checked and realised that the MasterCard issued by my bank has stopped honouring any payment denominated in dollars. You could pay for this few months ago. But now nothing. I don't even know how to go about it. My friend had run around just to pay for Figma. Sometimes you have to even call friends in diaspora to make payments for you on International sites and just pay them back via crypto. Inflow here is such a hustle. I've used wise.com a lot and do like their services but they no longer support Nigeria.
Retric 4y ago
Swapping to any other currency provides the same benefits. USD or Euros have frequently been used in place of several nations currency for decades. As such it’s not a crypto specific benefit.
toiletfuneral 4y ago
the_gastropod 4y ago
The paradox of this "don't-tread-on-me"-ism is that it leads to authoritarianism. Economic policies that don't explicitly strive for egalitarianism contribute to widening wealth distributions (a la the game of monopoly). Increasing levels of wealth inequality causes people to abandon democratic principles, and embrace populist autocrats. [1] The frustrating truth is, the solution to corruption is: justice and accountability. Not just blindly throwing out democratic principles and bypassing the law. [1] https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/high-wealth-inequality-linked-with-greater-support-for-populist-leaders.html https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/high-weal...
UncleMeat 4y ago
And, if BTC wins, we replace it with a monetary structure set by one software engineer. The monetary policy encoded in the BTC blockchain is indeed immutable (assuming no future hard fork) but that doesn't make it good. The payout structure that grants a huge portion of all BTC ever to early adopters would, in my opinion, be the largest transfer of wealth from the many to the few in human history if BTC did indeed take over. I find that to be considerably worse than monetary policy where at least I have some tiny amount of control through the levers of democracy.

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.

16amxn16 4y ago
Sadly, this is true. As great as it is, bitcoin has many issues, in order: 1) The fact that Bitcoin mining traffic is detectable by ISPs (similar to torrents), so if a country prohibits it, the ISPs could simply detect that traffic trivially and get you arrested. Or simply block downloads of the client, etc 2) The centralization (or lack of democratization) of mining. A few huge pools, mining rig operations instead of individuals running software on their computers. SHA-256 ASICs and lack of blockchain pruning caused this. 3) The overreliance on exchanges - not your keys, not your coins etc 4) Every transaction is trackable, no real anonymity 5) The -even daily- value fluctuations 6) Hard to understand for layman people That said even with all of these drawbacks people do use it in real life for its original intended purpose (remove the middleman), specifically in third world countries. But I think it would be great to go back to 2009 with all of the current knowledge and redesign these bits I think that inevitably, it will be banned at some point in the future due to 1) and 2).

tootie 4y ago

I suppose the citizens of Turkey should be grateful, but that's about the only national currency that's performed worse than crypto.

TremendousJudge 4y ago
Argentina is currently experiencing a booming inflation and local distrust for its currency is at an all time high (and that's saying a lot). Many Argentinians (of a certain technical inclination) are very much into crypto, as a "second best" alternative after US dollars. I know that many Argentinians lost their savings in the LUNA crash.

jostiniane 4y ago

Definitely. Somehow the author went and brought valid arguments against ETH and web3 but failed completely at point #2. Just to answer the author concerns about point #2. There are coins with entire Blockchain that can fit in my OnePlus 7. I am from Algeria (a country without a financial system), LTC and XMR are the coins that brought me out of poverty, not because of gambling but they allowed me to do software development consulting online without begging services like Wise to not ban my account for random suspicions. The author somehow talks about Crypto currency but somehow keeps pointing to flaws in exchangers with KYC.. Again, a lot of progress has been made here, exchangers without KYC emerged (check out Bisq net)... I just wish people would point out more honest reviews of the such technologies so we can improve together as a society.. Cryptocurrency might not add a lot to your life, but there are many people having access to instant, cheap and secure transactions is a game changer.. I don't care about the legality of it as those broken laws are probably not protecting the average citizen.

kaladin_1 4y ago
Having read through the thread, I don't think many in highly developed countries can ever grasp why crypto is huge in Africa. I'm from Nigeria. The Central Bank makes all sorts of policies around inflows and outflows. E.g. DigitalOcean just has warned me that they will block my account. I checked and realised that the MasterCard issued by my bank has stopped honouring any payment denominated in dollars. You could pay for this few months ago. But now nothing. I don't even know how to go about it. My friend had run around just to pay for Figma. Sometimes you have to even call friends in diaspora to make payments for you on International sites and just pay them back via crypto. Inflow here is such a hustle. I've used wise.com a lot and do like their services but they no longer support Nigeria.

Retric 4y ago

Swapping to any other currency provides the same benefits. USD or Euros have frequently been used in place of several nations currency for decades. As such it’s not a crypto specific benefit.

toiletfuneral 4y ago

the_gastropod 4y ago

The paradox of this "don't-tread-on-me"-ism is that it leads to authoritarianism. Economic policies that don't explicitly strive for egalitarianism contribute to widening wealth distributions (a la the game of monopoly). Increasing levels of wealth inequality causes people to abandon democratic principles, and embrace populist autocrats. [1] The frustrating truth is, the solution to corruption is: justice and accountability. Not just blindly throwing out democratic principles and bypassing the law. [1] https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/high-wealth-inequality-linked-with-greater-support-for-populist-leaders.html https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/high-weal...

UncleMeat 4y ago

And, if BTC wins, we replace it with a monetary structure set by one software engineer. The monetary policy encoded in the BTC blockchain is indeed immutable (assuming no future hard fork) but that doesn't make it good. The payout structure that grants a huge portion of all BTC ever to early adopters would, in my opinion, be the largest transfer of wealth from the many to the few in human history if BTC did indeed take over. I find that to be considerably worse than monetary policy where at least I have some tiny amount of control through the levers of democracy.