> Bitcoin doesn't help anyone since people don't have enough money to eat, let alone buy computers or mobile phones.
It's not at US levels, but many already have mobile phones:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_smartph...
Really though, many Venezuelans have turned to crypto. There are more sales in Venezuela than in China according to localbitcoins data, and a lot of them are buying mining equipment because energy is still heavily subsidized:
https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2018/04/03/...
The question was originally buried but one of its premises is really good: to the extent bitcoin has some utility eventually, it's about putting a floor on gross macroeconomic malpractice like in Zimbabwe or Venezuela. It can give people a currency to flee to in emergencies. One that is easier to get and store and harder to seize than dollars.
The real question is why aren't even more Venezuelans using it. Whatever is preventing mass adoption in a crisis should be what cryptocurrency experiments should probably focus on, and most probably involve tradeoffs with crypto idealism. Things like:
1. Value stability. Maybe you can get that with more competing tethers.
2. Predictable and low transaction costs. Maybe let ideal clearing rates, target tx per min, affect round length.
3. More usable, but trustworthy implementations. Ie, dead simple, never see any keys. Bitcoin needs whatever Dropbox did to rsync.
4. Better options to do off chain transactions without deposits for counterparties where you have some trust, or know you can go back to that shop or person if they double spend.
5. Some system of revocation for the most extreme and undisputed fraud or thefts.
6. Wallet penetration. How cheap can a specialized wallet device or phone with an app get?
Some of those would irritate bitcoin purists, but they are the things that make people trust your system.
Some cryptocurrency will probably offer those things at some point and fall on its face just to prove me wrong, we'll see.