This is a very common trend I see when speaking with cryptocurrency advocates. When asked to point to success stories or real world use cases, 9/10 times the answer is related to some other cryptocurrency scheme: a swaps smart contract or a decentralized market maker, wallet software, etc. It seems like most of the use cases for cryptocurrencies are just more examples of the snake eating its own tail.
The NFTs that artists minted in the boom in early 2021 are still being traded across different platforms, curated in physical exhibitions, indexed and hosted by multiple competing companies, and talked about in online magazines and podcasts. Sales on OpenSea and other platforms continue to pay royalties back to creators and sometimes non profit charities that they set in splits. Hundred-year-old art auction houses are now in competition with open source platforms that take nearly a hundred percent less commission on sales, have a lower barrier to entry, and provide higher artist royalties.
Blockchain hasn’t given us flying cars or replaced corporations or whatever boosters say, but it has given us some new tools to imagine transactions and ownership differently than just whatever Stripe is doing.
NFTs are basically a digital variation of the physical art market....with all that that implies, such as money laundering and wash trading: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/29/business/art-money-launde...
While some view the art world with scorn on HN, I don't think it attracts anywhere near as much derision as crypto and NFTs.
>>>When asked to point to success stories or real world use cases
I use crypto to make micro-loans to a friend in the Philippines, who occasionally runs into cashflow problems with her small used goods business.
Regarding your friend, I’m curious to know how competitive crypto is for your use case. Western union charges about 2% to transfer $5000 from the US to the Philippines and can deposit directly in a bank account. I understand that international wire transfers are comparable. Services like remitly appear to be even cheaper. How does crypto compare in price and convenience?
That is absolute extortion. I sent ~0.05 BTC in May and the transaction fee was 0.067%. Eyeballing the transaction screenshot she sent, she wasn't getting hammered on the exchange rate to pesos either (via coins.ph). There was some KYC involved (sender name/address required to release the funds on her end) that slowed us down a little. It wasn't a requirement several years ago. I bet we could have fed the form fake info but didn't want to risk the funds being frozen, she needed cash in hand in less than 24hrs to purchase new inventory.