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Comment by louwrentius | Hacker News Reader

> - Someone lives somewhere that the U.S refuses to bank with

Cryptocurrencies won't solve this problem. If that happens, there are much bigger issues.

> - Someone who lives somewhere that simply has no financial infrastructure readily accessible and relies on prepaid cards for things like water and electricity (Rural Africa?)

Let's be honest. The whole blockhain / cryptocurrency was never about that ever.

> - Some industries are forbidden to use the majority of credit card processing facilities without excess fee's (Adult content for example)

I think there are more than plenty online sites where people can pay for that kind of content without any problems.

I just don't understand any of this.

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That's fine, you don't have to use it. A lot of people do prefer to use it for payments and receive payments in it though. They don't want a middle-man bank and would rather their transactions were trustlessly sent and received.

At it's core cryptocurrency is a way to bypass banks if one was so inclined. Specifically currencies like Monero allow a person to send and receive payments completely anonymously, hence its increased usage on darknet markets.

That's a nice argument against cryptocurrencies.

They enable darkweb sites like Silk Road and it's successors.

Yeah, but so does cash in the physical world. We shouldn't abolish cash tho.

Just because something can be used for "bad" doesn't mean it shouldn't exist. The internet also could be considered an enabler for sites like Silk Road, but its not gona get shut down for that reason.

So... the follow up question is, "Are there any good use cases?"

Yes, the biggest that comes to mind is it allows people who may be doing nothing wrong a payment system that cant be stoped. For example, someone of X religion could still make purchases in a society where religious freedom isn't allowed by its governing body.

May not be a concern for you today, but having the option for it is 100% I will support.

> Yeah, but so does cash in the physical world. We shouldn't abolish cash tho.

Cash I understand, it has benefits. Crypto doesn't, it only seems to have drawbacks and facilitate crime.

So does physical cash. Perhaps we should outlaw it.

> Let's be honest. The whole blockhain / cryptocurrency was never about that ever.

I'm not sure why you think this. "Banking the unbanked" was a huge Bitcoin mantra back in the day. If anything, it's disappeared more recently as speculation has taken over and the narrative has moved from "p2p cash" to "store of value".

> - Someone lives somewhere that the U.S refuses to bank with

We are already starting to see this with Venezuela. The easiest way to get USD equivalents to certain people there is via USDC, which is being worked on with the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve.

"According to the company’s blog post, the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve deposit funds seized by the U.S. into a bank account in the U.S. tied to the Guaidó government, which converts the funds into USDC that Circle then sends to Airtm." - https://www.coindesk.com/circle-usdc-venezuela-airtm

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