What an absolute incineration of time, effort and skill
As someone else has correctly mentioned, ads (and tracking), are sadly the lifeblood of a lot of tech action and are arguably just as (if not more) exploitative. It's just slower and more subtle.
As for crypto itself, I get why it's not an attractive idea, and yes -- a very good bit of it is scam-city, but I'm compelled to admit that the cryptobros are generally correct when they describe the state of the dollar today -- even if their proposed solutions often leave much to be desired.
Okay, but the Nepal client still has to remit payment/receive payment with some source in their traditional payment system, so this doesn't really solve the issue unless they decide to operate all in USDC.
It's not a terrible burden coming from the US, but you've likewise offloaded the problem of having a US bank account onto me, where I now have to transfer my USD into USDC to pay you. It's not hard because I already have a Coinbase account, but it would take a few days for added funds to be released so I can send them to you. It's certainly not easier than something like Zelle.
Ultimately, nations aren't going to give up control of their money systems: China, for example, might use blockchains for a digital Yuan, but you can bet they will be holding the validator keys. Problems bridging between blockchains are as bad, if not worse, than problems bridging between traditional financial systems.
Point is, you're seeing a localized benefit from USDC because you've offloaded the problem of bridging between systems onto your clients, but that doesn't fundamentally fix that there are bridging problems. And even if every system moves onto blockchains in the future, that won't solve those bridging problems--in fact, it will almost certainly make them worse in the short run.
Neither of our anecdotes cancel the other out. People can value different things, and that's ok! I'm amazed people spend their time telling others what they should and shouldn't value. I don't watch football and it has no value to me, but I don't go around telling people they should stop watching it too. If humanity were less self-centered and more empathetic, we'd approach everything this way, including football, ads, and crypto.
Yeah... advertisers. ;)
Cryptocurrencies are pretty bad, but at least if you ignore them, they don't find you and directly harm you.
But you can’t ignore its effects, such as the environmental impact. If cryptocurrencies had zero effect on the people who don’t use them, there wouldn’t be such a large opposition.
In small European stock exchanges without HFT actors, buy/sell spreads on individual stocks can get large and daily volume very small, so you need to do more planning around any trade that's larger than "retail nickles". This is not great for attracting investors to these stocks, even if the companies are worthy.
But in crypto, there's no underlying value. There are no worthy companies who deserve more investor attention, no tokens that should be in anyone's long-term portfolio for any reason but FOMO. It's a 24/7 nothingburger outlet.
That's not really true. It may not be everyone's cup of tea, and speculation may be driving most of price, but these are real tech products. Ethereum, Cardano, Avalanche, Solana are decentralized computing platforms, with utility. Uniswap, Aave are exchange platforms, that allow people to swap currency real time.
They may not be VMWare, Rackspace, JPMorgan Western Union or Moneygram, but they are real companies, with real products, that offer real services.
As of 2021, Allianz, Deutsche Telekom, Intel and Cisco are four stocks where investors that bought at the Dotcom Bubble peak never broke even. Maybe Ethereum, Cardano, Avalanche, Solana are far above their actual potential value, but it doesnt mean they are worth 0.
https://www.coingecko.com/en/categories/smart-contract-platf... https://www.coingecko.com/en/categories/decentralized-financ...
That is still speculation and most of the existing financial system can do payments (the supposed original use case) already.
Take a look at UPI, Pix, etc. A safer, faster and better future of payments is already being built and used to the tune of hundreds of millions of real people. And it is not a complete pyramid scheme.
That cannot be said for crypto, nobody is using it for anything other than speculation, crime and ransomware.