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The killer use cases of crypto are not visible to HN readers living in relatively stable North American or European countries. Take a look at the the "Global Cr
by cypherpunks01 2y ago
The killer use cases of crypto are not visible to HN readers living in relatively stable North American or European countries. Take a look at the the "Global Crypto Adoption Index Top 20" [1] for the past years and ask yourself, "do Vietnamese people love trading monkey gifs? Are Ukrainians especially susceptible to Ponzi schemes? Is Venezuela laden with techbros?" [2]
No. It's that people in many of the countries in the top 20 live under unstable governments and monetary systems, with extreme debasement, inflation, inability to store value without seizure, transfer value without controls, accept remittances, etc. Crypto absolutely has use cases in these situations, and these extremes inform the means.
"If you’re in a developed country, and you’re happy with your banking system, and you’re not a sex worker, and you have zero concerns about your country being taken over by fascists, you probably don’t need cryptocurrency and shouldn’t worry about it. If other people say they do need it, don’t call them liars and say you know with certainty that nobody has ever used crypto for anything besides Ponzi schemes and monkey pictures. Just let them use it!" [2]
[1] https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/2024-global-crypto-adoption-index/ https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/2024-global-crypto-adoption...
[2] https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/why-im-less-than-infinitely-hostile https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/why-im-less-than-infinitely...
- pjc50 2y agoI'm anti-crypto and this kind of crypto advocacy I actually agree with. It's not as sound as the US dollar, but there are much less stable currencies. > concerns about your country being taken over by fascists, .. do not record all your transactions on a permanent public leger!
- r33b33 2y agoThe actual use case of crypto is censorship resistance, money laundering and sanction evasion. In a multipolar world, none of those are going away anytime soon, so crypto is here to stay.
- patall 2y agoWhy is this the case? I mean buying crypto via a ?local? exchange is possible, but it is not possible to buy a more stable currency. How is the crypto bought, does someone sell it in that local currency? Because if not, you still need zo transfer your currency to (in >90% of cases) USD and then buy crypto. So why not just use those (the same way everybody else does).
- dnamlin 2y agoIf you mean to hold USD-denominated deposits in a local bank, the local government can easily confiscate or convert them. Numerous such examples. If you mean to hold USD paper notes, that does happen a lot all over the world as you say; and not necessarily legally. Many advantages to digitization (and some disadvantages).