For those saying that crypto is useless, here is a great use case. Authoritarian governments are currently preventing individuals from moving their property across borders. Crypto fixes that.
Absolutely. Even the criminals, scammers and extremists using Signal and its E2EE also use it to communicate with each other whilst sending/receiving funds via a private cryptocurrency called 'MobileCoin' which uses an encrypted blockchain and all transactions are untraceable and scrambled. Even they would agree.
Got to thank Moxie and his friends for creating a great tool used and adored by many criminal masterminds all around the world. /s
My only point was, whatever comments people are making in the past few years which fit under the umbrella of "For those saying that crypto is useless", it feels like those have been directed at all the other stuff in the eco-system - while "moving their property across borders" is something which was solved by Bitcoin along time ago.
As a BTC proponent, I just want to say, I don't think this is what gives BTC value.
Maybe at that point there would be two worlds of crypto: you can trade it on the above-the-board exchanges, but can’t move those coins out onto the blockchain in any meaningful amounts. Or you can have it on the blockchain, but you can’t convert it to USD/EUR in any meaningful amounts unless you find a private buyer.
In fact these separate worlds already exist — it’s not like most Coinbase users ever interact with the actual chains, they just trade inside Coinbase’s SQL database. But a lot of the appeal of crypto is about theoretical possibilities, and government regulation can put a real damper on that enthusiasm.
So Bitcoin therefore ends up being more useful to ordinary Russian citizens under sanctions than it does for oligarchical, globe-spanning wealth; the exchanges hold a similar role to the banks and can be brought to heel, but at a small scale you can self-bank. There's always a leak in the system because of this, even if you brought down the hammer on every exchange. Destroy Bitcoin and it'll just mushroom up again in some other form.
Crypto is game-theoretically useful even to elites who suspect they're under threat of being frozen out; they might not be able to keep 100% of what they have, but even 0.1% of vast riches is enough to sustain a comfortable life for some time. And if they lobby to keep exchanges open, they have the possibility of keeping more. This explains why there hasn't been a strong global consensus on crypto yet.
This seems rather naïve. If you can't leave a country because your government requires you to fight a war rather than leave, how do you get yourself, or any physical property, out? If you're in jail, justified or not, how does crypto help you move your property? Or the government you live under simply doesn't allow exiting? What if all international airports refuse to allow flights originating in your country to land, and trains and roads and ships are far beyond capacity? Even your intangible crypto wealth can't be moved across borders, if you yourself aren't able to cross a border.
I would also pose a question, in the case where you have to leave NOW in order to cross that border -- would you rather have all your money in a bank with accounts currently frozen, or have crypto keys stored physically in an apartment or bank in an active war zone that you are unable to reach and faces a real possibility of being destroyed/bombed/flattened at any moment?
Crypto has utility, yes. But it is far from a panacea and actually does not "fix" many of the problems its supporters claim it does.
If crypto is not currency, it needs to be converted to currency before use and as such can trivially be blocked with KYC rules at conversion.
If crypto desires to be a serious currency, it needs to greatly improve efficiency and stop being deflationary.
(Funnily enough, Tesla accepts dogecoin but not USDT, so maybe I am wrong with the second requirement; but maybe not - it's likely just a gimmick in this case)
Fiat is based on people's trust with governments. Crypto is based on people's distrust with governments...
The question is not if "crypto is a novelty that enables some people to go around some laws" - everybody can readily agree to that. The question is whether it is a systemic force/ agent of change, that can e.g. prevent enforcement of some kind of laws forever and thus have long-lasting societal impact. I think the jury is very much out on that. (and no, you can't rely on criminals as exit nodes if you claim to be an unstoppable agent of change)
The deflationary bit, is sort of a problem on the centralization of wealth yeah, but that's a macro problem, not a barrier of entry to individuals
I think that your comment tries to take digs at Crypto in an overly contrarian way, Crypto is digital gold which can be easily hidden, I guess that you could buy a bunch of paper Swiss bonds hide them on a bag or whatever and take a flight with these, but that already has a higher barrier of entry than buying wherever amount you want on ether and put it on a thumb drive, I guess both methods could work, certainly both are easier and sneakier than carrying a brick of gold around on your flight luggage
What you're actually saying it suddenly doubles in value when converted to another currency.
Just the same as if I owe someone $10, in the same currency, then it doesn't matter if the ratio of the dollar to the ruble doubles or triples at the same time. It's still $10 to both of the parties.
Deflation is not an inherent attribute of crypto currency. Only some of them are deflationary, most notably Bitcoin.
Dogecoin for example is inflationary. Exactly five billion new Dogecoin will be created and enter circulation every year.
Maybe a distinction without a difference to some, but it makes sense that a country that bucks the consensus of a number of member nations would be excluded from a consortium of institutions like this. (Leaving discussion of disparate impact and whether this actually achieves national goals for another forum)
I don't personally see a huge distinction between crypto and global banking. Just a different set of ledger-holders. Miners, instead of institutions. Just because it's a different set of folks controlling the ledger doesn't mean this can't happen with a blockchain. Maybe I missed something and the tech prevents this somehow? But not that I've been able to figure out.
Miners are distributed and there is the well known problem of 51% of the mining pool being controlled by a single party, but they would have to control 100% of the mining pool to be the equivalent of the Fed.
If mining pools conspired to, say, fork a chain because somebody stole a lot of tokens due to a bug, it amounts to the same kind of control.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala
The US Treasury department has a comprehensive-looking guide:
https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/terrorist-illicit-f...
You can be sure a system like Hawala works because actual terrorists have used it forever. Like Toyota pickup trucks.
There are notorious pictures of Toyota pickups with frames that have broken in half. Since they have "issues" does it mean insurgents should drive Teslas instead?