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I came into this article expecting to disagree with it... but the author actually makes a lot of good points. It's nice to see an acknowledgment that crypto is

I came into this article expecting to disagree with it... but the author actually makes a lot of good points. It's nice to see an acknowledgment that crypto is simultaneously useful (and actually pretty cool) but also not a magic solution to all the world's problems. (It does get a bit annoying hearing "we're going to reinvent the wheel BUT WITH CRYPTO!" for the 10th time.) This was pretty well encapsulated in two paragraphs: > In the same way, everything about the crypto economy is worse than the regular economy. The only excuse is that it’s decentralized. This means you can use it for all of those cool things - sending remittances, circumventing corrupt banking systems, resisting authoritarian governments - that are hard to do with regular money. Of course subjecting yourself to a difficult constraint is going to be harder than not doing that! > If nothing’s wrong with your country’s financial or political system, then you don’t need crypto. If you use crypto anyway, it will be worse than your regular financial system, because it’s trading off many things you need (efficiency, speed, safety, the good kinds of regulation) for something you don’t need (avoiding the bad kinds of regulation). I still think NFTs are silly though.

cwillu 4y ago
I suspect the author agrees: “if people wanted, this could be an NFT, since that technology excels in producing meaningless certificates.”
abenga 4y ago
Speaking as a Kenyan, I see it pretty high in the list of users of cryptocurrency, but it has one of the most accessible and inclusive financial systems in the world (mobile (fiat) money). Everyone I know/interact with has a mobile money wallet and uses it from day to day for real financial transactions. Everyone I do know that is active in the crypto world is speculating in search of out-sized investment return. One country (Trinidad and Tobago) where I speak to a friend who is often complaining about dollar shortages and government-imposed forex controls is not on the list. I don't think cryptocurrencies are currently being used to solve the problems the article is assuming it does as much as the article's thesis suggests.
- FabHK 4y ago
  Very good point. And frankly, when some Argentinean uses crypto to circumvent capital controls and get a better rate for his incoming payments than his fellow law-abiding citizens, that doesn't strike me as a use case "solving a problem" either. A lot of the "oh you're only anti-crypto because you're so financially privileged" inclusion is pretty disingenuous, if not predatory.
  - 8324679543574 4y ago
    I don't understand why you don't think that's solving a problem. The Argentine government stealing people's money and forcing them to use a currency it deliberately destroyed is a huge problem. Allowing more people to escape the government's exploitation is good. You are either privileged enough to not live in Argentina or privileged enough to belong to the political elite who are exploiting the rest of the population if you don't think that's a problem. Even if you have no money to circumvent capital controls with, you are still harmed by their existence and benefit from the system being undermined.

cwillu 4y ago

I suspect the author agrees: “if people wanted, this could be an NFT, since that technology excels in producing meaningless certificates.”

abenga 4y ago

Speaking as a Kenyan, I see it pretty high in the list of users of cryptocurrency, but it has one of the most accessible and inclusive financial systems in the world (mobile (fiat) money). Everyone I know/interact with has a mobile money wallet and uses it from day to day for real financial transactions. Everyone I do know that is active in the crypto world is speculating in search of out-sized investment return. One country (Trinidad and Tobago) where I speak to a friend who is often complaining about dollar shortages and government-imposed forex controls is not on the list. I don't think cryptocurrencies are currently being used to solve the problems the article is assuming it does as much as the article's thesis suggests.

FabHK 4y ago
Very good point. And frankly, when some Argentinean uses crypto to circumvent capital controls and get a better rate for his incoming payments than his fellow law-abiding citizens, that doesn't strike me as a use case "solving a problem" either. A lot of the "oh you're only anti-crypto because you're so financially privileged" inclusion is pretty disingenuous, if not predatory.
- 8324679543574 4y ago
  I don't understand why you don't think that's solving a problem. The Argentine government stealing people's money and forcing them to use a currency it deliberately destroyed is a huge problem. Allowing more people to escape the government's exploitation is good. You are either privileged enough to not live in Argentina or privileged enough to belong to the political elite who are exploiting the rest of the population if you don't think that's a problem. Even if you have no money to circumvent capital controls with, you are still harmed by their existence and benefit from the system being undermined.