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Comment by golergka | Hacker News Reader

> Crypto needed a tangible market/reason d'etre to be valuable.

I have recently paid $40 for a $240 SWIFT transaction that I made on behalf of my father, as his bank (with most Russian banks) have been cut of from the world's financial system. Crypto is fulfilling a real need felt by many people all around the globe; it's just most of those people don't live in first world nations.

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tbh, that example kind of underlines the lack of linkage between crypto assets' market value and real world use cases. A significant number of hitherto law-abiding, middle class and computer literate Russians who suddenly wanted to take all their money out of Russia and/or realised they needed a different way to continue to paying for services as their banks were hit with unexpected sanctions is pretty much the ideal real world use case for BTC.

But BTC actually fell in value sharply this year instead (and the spike in ruble/BTC trades was surprisingly small and short lived), because Bitcoin's peak valuation was more or less entirely unlinked to its theoretically increased usefulness for possessors of rubles.

I'd be careful about admitting to evading financial sanctions in public, myself.

What makes you think their father is a sanctioned person? It's not very likely, given the number of sanctioned persons vs. the number of Russians.

What is your nation? How the law is enforced varies greatly from country to country so it depends a lot.

>most Russian banks have been cut of from the world's financial system. Crypto is fulfilling a real need felt by many

skirting sanctions for unprovoked war targeting civilian population, got it

I think most people would prefer for the sanctions on Russia to be more rigorously enforced

I would prefer if Europe actually put in place oil/gas embargo and stop giving Putin's regime billions of dollars to wage war instead of blocking the people who have spent years protesting and are now trying to flee the totalitarian regime, but here we are.

That's a decent use case for real stablecoins, not for something that can go up and down 20% within a few hours

The systems that execute the code for and track the values of stablecoins are themselves networks that only work because of consensus systems designed around a cryptocurrency incentive. So if you want to be able to send some large amount of USDC you need some small amount of ETH or MATIC or AVAX or whatever to pay for the usage of the shared ledger, and that's where these cryptocurrencies then get their underlying value.

Why would one expect Bitcoin which is more-or-less trying to disrupt the world order to be stable at this point in its evolution? Maybe in 20 years it'll be stable, but now? Sort of like saying that there was political instability in US following the revolutionary or civil wars and that therefore the US would never be a country that could be depended upon for international trade.

Even those users still need price stability in order for your use case to work. And fiat on/off-ramps (as which Binance functioned for many).

> I have recently paid $40 for a $240 SWIFT transaction

That is way more than it should be, but could easily be solved with traditional methods (banks & fintech) with some competition and sensible regulation (like SEPA transfers in Europe being basically free).

I recently had to pay nearly 100$ for accidentally data roaming a few MB abroad, but the conclusion is not that the internet and 5G is fundamentally flawed and need to be replaced by web3.

> Crypto is fulfilling a real need felt by many people all around the globe

Yes, the need to circumvent regulations regarding money transfers.

So, what you're saying is that sanctions are in place and you're unhappy about them ? sounds exactly like what sanctions are for, and all crypto is good for is evading sanctions that a massive part of the world has agreed in.

Many sanctions harm completely innocent people.

I think that there are missiles on the other side that are hurting people in more physical, fatal ways.

Of course. But fighting against the war shouldn't involve creating more harm.

That's a noble, yet completely impossible sentiment.

That is the point yes. We have collectively decided that assassinating heads of state was pretty bad, and moved on to applying sanctions, so that if they hit hard enough back, said innocent people do need to get rid of the leader or the system that got them in such a situation.

That's presuming that Russian people don't support they goverment, which is far from proved afaik.

What makes you think everyone has agreed to them?

You have elected a representative who agreed to them. Your personal opinion doesn't matter on the subject.

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