In some parts of the developing world, cryptocurrency is changing lives | Hacker News Reader

In some parts of the developing world, cryptocurrency is changing lives

wired.com

15 pointsAndrewDucker14 comments

Should crypto-positive and crypto-negative op-eds be required to disclose whether the author has a financial stake in crypto’s future? This author is a “fintech entrepreneur”. To what extent does his future income depend on crypto’s success?

You're correct

- How Boaz became a part of the early Cuban Bitcoin community

https://t.co/WNBF8gdGRD

> the way cryptocurrency is changing lives in the developing world.

I wonder, if people in the developing world could decide between using this enormous amount of electricity for "crypto", or using it to power desalination plants (facilities that turn seawater into drinking water) which one would they chose?

Just FYI: 25% of the worlds population, that's almost 2 BILLION people, do not have access to safe drinking water.

Is there some magical way of transporting electricity from where the crypto miners are located to where the developing nations could use it in the ways you suggested?

Rays of light, but it's not magic.

Actually, we don't even need to send the rays from where the crypto miners are located. The sun already provides more than they can. We just need to install the receivers (solar panels).

It's a bit tragic that people get hard ons for the number of mining rigs they've purchased instead of water wells or similar, and number of dollars obtained rather than hungry people they've provided with food.

But who am I to preach, I'm part of "people" in the above sentence...

In my opinion all of this is just a version of tragedy of the commons.

Doing good only leads to you being exploited.

At this point I only judge people on the harm they avoid doing to others. Just don't make a world a worse place and we're good.

I wish every dollar spent on video games was just given to the world’s poor instead. Just crazy that with all the suffering in the world, billions of people spend money on frivolous entertainment.

People who play video games don’t act like video games are a technological gift from god that will cure all our woes and for which there are no negative externalities.

The problem here is we simply can't. If people were good and elites cared about plebs we wouldn't be in situation where there are poor peoples. Tax money would suffice in many cases.

Lets say we spent every dollar spent on video games. But once we start draining money to these countries human greed starts to activate and only few amount of money will reach to hands to poor. When I was kid my parents used to tell me for every donation of 100 only 10 goes to poor people (can't verify). But if we go to visit poor country we will realize money is not that big problem. The biggest problem is greed, corruption and malfeasance.

I can see merit to the argument that cryptocurrencies can provide easy and fast access to financial instruments to poverty stricken people that would otherwise be hard or even impossible to obtain. take for example the case when family members who work in high wage economies send money back home. it's not hard to see how cryptocurrencies can help in this situation: faster easier and cheaper transactions

>easy and fast access to financial instruments

Stable financial instruments.

>it's not hard to see how cryptocurrencies can help in this situation: faster easier and cheaper transactions

Transactions speed can vary and/or be tied into the transaction fees one is willing to pay.

How does that make the life of people who already don't have enough disposable income easier?

No doubt it's changing some lives.

Particularly those who want to transmit money across borders free from government control. And perhaps the lives those people affect.

The positives should not be ignored, but neither should the negatives; which this piece does.

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