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Comment by ShamelessC | Hacker News Reader

And what happens when the internet goes out?

https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/bitcoin-network-power...

Crypto can work quite ok-ish if the internet goes out. You can still post transactions (effectively issue IOUs with some level of assurance the funds existed in the wallet at moment you got disconnected, but no protection against double spend), but the confirmations will take a while. Visa is as bad or worse.

When you live in a, for lack of a better word, "shithole country", you don't plan too long into the future; you play it by ear and find a way to live the next day. One thing to note, though, is that once a technology entrenches the black/gray markets in a society, the rulers and their sons and daughters are almost certainly participants too, and that reduces the incentive/ability to shut things down completely.

Diversification. Why on earth would you bet all your eggs on crypto? Hold a little gold or fiat or just tradeable commodities but don't give up on crypto just because of power outages. You don't throw away your PC just because the power goes out sometimes.

The same thing that happens when the Visa network "goes out". That particular payment type is unavailable until the issue is resolved.

https://www.wired.com/story/visa-outage-shows-the-fragility-...

GiroCard can work around that, by transferring metadata for pre-authorized ampunts of money to the card and attaching cryptographically signed certificates proving the existence of funds to transactions.

But no one cares about useful traditional financial products, as you can't create a ponzi scheme fueled by money laundering with useful traditional products.

GiroCard sounds neat. Will have to look into it.

>But no one cares about useful traditional financial products, as you can't create a ponzi scheme fueled by money laundering with useful traditional products.

You can't create a ponzi scheme or perform money laundering with traditional financial products? Really? That's your claim?

I'm not here to defend crypto, but let's keep the discussion factual.

> You can't create a ponzi scheme or perform money laundering with traditional financial products? Really? That's your claim?

> I'm not here to defend crypto, but let's keep the discussion factual.

You can’t speculate on the currency itself, driving its value up and down as part of your own ponzi scheme.

Or rather, for major currencies you can’t. Maybe you can manipulate tiny currencies of tiny nations that way, but those usually end up using the EUR or USD anyway.

there were a couple implementations of stellar blockchain projects in nigeria that used sms as a base technology.

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