Exactly. Cryptocurrencies are a pipe dream unless they can be effectively and fairly distributed first.
Money isn't effectively and fairly distributed and it's obviously not a pipe dream.
Credit Suisse found that 97% of bitcoin is held by 4% of addresses (though some may belong to exchanges): http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-97-are-held-by-4-of-a...
Still doesn't seem like a pipe dream.
Money is heavily regulated.
Crypto are not.
it didn't pop-up from nothing
crypto currencies need to be acquired using either real currencies or through some form of mining, that requires real currencies to acquire the resources needed to bootstrap it
the crypto space is already a place where rich got richer, less rich got sometimes more rich, most of the times nothing changed for them, really poor individuals from really poor countries couldn't even get started
The point of cryptocurrencies wasn't to make people rich. Anyone can buy in at market value and start using coins for their stored value. That is the point. Your anger in the fact that crypto didn't magically create money where there was none before is misplaced.
Really poor individuals from poor, economically wrecked countries had quite a lot to gain from the accessibility of cryptocurrency. Look at Venezela's attitude towards Bitcoin.
On owning them.
> Anyone can buy in at market value and start using coins for their stored value
Not everybody can, that's the point.
Almost nobody can, expanding the first point.
It's not really a democratic and open process.
It involves a lot of prerequisites that are usually not met by the general population.
> Look at Venezela's attitude towards Bitcoin.
You mean Maduro's?
AFAIK Maduro made bitcoin mining illegal in Venezuela and arrested more than a few miners.
Or do you mean the Petro Coin (a total scam currency) that Maduro tried to force down Venezuelan's throats?
Now expand on this point. What about crypto is preventing people from owning some that isn't also preventing them from owning regular money?
> You mean Maduro's?
It's pedantic to differentiate between a State and its actors when discussing policy like this. I mean Venezuela.
I'm talking the Petro Coin, the raids, everything. The whole policy was a response to fears of increased economic freedom for Venezuela's poorest citizens at a time when the government was trying to offload the pain of its bad economic decisions onto them.
No, it was a scam.