Comment by kevinak | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kevinak | Hacker News Reader

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I can't speak for other people but I personally believe most of the folks into Bitcoin aren't crazy libertarians longing for a world without a functioning society. It's a loud minority.

With regards to practical wins I can see a number that are even playing out today:

- The ability to skirt sanctions making it possible to donate to organisations that are deemed "illegal"

- Banking for those that are deemed unprofitable by banks. El Salvador has a large portion of unbanked citizens. Making it possible for them to interact with the wider world economy seems like a good thing to me?

- The ability for people in extreme situations to store value in something other than their governments currency. Think Lebanon, Argentina, Venezuela, Turkey, etc.

- Promotes the build-out of new energy production; especially renewables since they are the cheapest form of electricity. This is a topic that deserves a thread in itself so probably not worth going into here.

You should care because the world doesn't exist solely in the privileged western hemisphere.

Maybe to take these one-by-one

- Where does this end in societies governed by the rule of law? Who can decide to opt-out or in?

- That can also be achieved by mandating banks to offer accounts (as some countries have). So I put that down to a political failure.

- Valid(ish). But also other stores of value exist and governments have many options for coercion, in the end, nothing will be safe.

- Could be used like that, but so can normal money and incentives

Generally, I'd say using crypto as fallback in broken political systems/societies relies on having at least somewhere working parts of society that can keep suppling/cooperating (or indeed from the outside).

Sure:

> Where does this end in societies governed by the rule of law? Who can decide to opt-out or in?

I think individuals themselves should decide what is and isn't OK to spend money on. In such a world you rely on law enforcement doing actual work instead of using vague KYC, AML and Terrorism laws that are extremely obtuse.

Real criminals just use a middle man while regular citizens have to endure this insane regulatory environment without any benefit.

KYC/AML is just a waste of time, energy and manpower.

> That can also be achieved by mandating banks to offer accounts (as some countries have). So I put that down to a political failure.

What if you don't have a functioning banking sector? Or even a functioning government? You're just supposed to accept that you're not going to be able to participate in a global society?

> The ability for people in extreme situations to store value in something other than their governments currency. Think Lebanon, Argentina, Venezuela, Turkey, etc.

Sure, but most (if not all) of those things can be taken from you. Bitcoin can not. Of course, there's always the $5 wrench attack but relative to other assets, Bitcoin is superior in this regard. Even if it's just slightly better than other assets it's a win.

> Could be used like that, but so can normal money and incentives

Yes, but Bitcoin mining is a natural free market incentive to this problem, incentives and money is not.

So I should be allowed to fund proper terrorist groups then? Saying that maybe KYC/AML/CFT etc. is disproportionate to its effects is one thing, but going the other way and having no control about who funds what could be outright enemies is certainly an extreme position.

And if a country has no functioning government, no banking etc., i.e. it is broken, then the country or place needs fixing, not some magic crypto sprinkled on top (might alleviate the symptoms, but not the cause). I see this all the time as crypto point, but society building is so much more difficult than that. Once you are in a environment where physical violence is the norm, things are really different.

So in the context of a functioning society, bitcoin is useful for driving up electricity costs and sending money to criminals?

If anything, what I wrote would lead to lower electricity costs.

One country's criminal is another's activist. You're making it sound so simple.

So laws shouldn't exist because some countries imprison political activists?

I agree with all of that, but 99% of actual crypto usage I hear about is in rich countries, as speculation and as pyramid schemes.

I'd really, really love to hear about stories of widespread cryptocurrency usage in developing countries.

Also, considering the low transaction rates and the high transaction fees, how would this magic vision of the future work for poor people, anyway?

I agree, most of the crypto usage is just speculation. I'd even go so far as to say 99.999% of all cryptocurrencies are scams of some sort, either incidental or intentional. I view Bitcoin as pretty different to the others.

I'd suggest looking for news stories or posts from El Salvador. You can find both positive and negative ones, of course.

The low transaction rates and high transaction fees argument isn't really valid anymore. A lot of the transactions have moved to L2 (Lightning Network) and thus current transaction fees on Bitcoin are regularly reaching $0.05. Using LN you also bypass any bottlenecks associated with number of transactions per second and confirmation time.

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