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Comment by JohnJamesRambo | Hacker News Reader

You probably aren't the intended audience. Ask someone in Zimbabwe or Venezuela how they feel about crypto. Ask a woman in Afghanistan where all her money is considered property of men. Ask a millennial that has no other way out of the class system they were born into. Ask someone tired of governments printing money to finance wars. You'll get more positive answers.

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Give me a break. Those are political and socioeconomic problems. None of them are solved by tech. You can't sprinkle Satoshi's fairy dust on Afghanistan women and expect them to have equal footing with their male counterparts. You can't just inject Satoshi's Revolutionary Blockchain into zimbabwe or venezuela and solve their political problems. Life just doesn't work that way.

> Ask a millennial that has no other way out of the class system they were born into.

I don't know that betting on cryptocurrencies is a desirable & admirable method to increase social mobility. Bitcoin lost > 60% of its value from mid-December to mid-February.

I don’t understand how it’s useful to poor farmer in Zimbabwe when crypto transaction takes hour and cost is equivalent to $20 which is their monthly income.

That's basically just bitcoin at this point. Lots of alternatives.

Sorry this line doesn't work for me. Previously I worked on Mifos, an open-source microfinance accounting system, and worked for Kiva.org, a microfinance broker. I have at least a passing familiarity with the financial needs in the third world.

I don't see Bitcoin as doing much there. The peer-to-peer aspect requires computing and connectivity requirements most people don't have. What has had mild uptake is new online financial institutions that use Bitcoin. But I don't see any real advantage there. Compare instead with M-Pesa, which has over approximately the same period gained millions and millions of users.

> Ask a woman in Afghanistan where all her money is considered property of men.

Yes, clearly the solution to this problem is BTC, NOT some kind of other reform or liberalization. </s>

I'm not usually one to defend the parent in this kind of argument, but I think there's room for both. Social reform can take years or even decades. If Bitcoin acts as a band-aid while those reforms take their time to progress, it could be a net positive there. But I do remain skeptical that it's actually making much of a difference.

I agree in principle, it's just that I'm pretty sure BTC is pretty useless for the things someone needs to buy on a day to day basis in Afghanistan.

The financialization of commodities is exactly why everyone you listed is in the situation they are in.

How does Bitcoin's financialization actually help anyone you listed?

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