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Comment by Cider9986 | Hacker News Reader

Accept crypto for those countries, it doesn't have chargebacks and helps those vulnerable to the financial system.

I went down a bit of a search looking for counter evidence that crypto is likely less available to them, and it turns out both perspectives are true depending on the scale you look at. At the micro-level, survey data from emerging markets[0] confirms that crypto offers immunity against institutional failure and inflationary currency.

But this QJE article[1] argues there's a ceiling to how far things scale. Concluding that the cost to keep a decentralized network secure scales with its total economic value. So while there is immediate value to it's user, it might not scale well, and can't replace a country's financial system anyway because securing it at a sovereign scale would just be more expensive.

[0]: https://www.mdpi.com/1911-8074/17/10/467 [1]: https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/140/1/1/7824430

I dont follow. If regular finance to a country is that much distanced from global financial oversight and treaties where crypto (with awful spreads) becomes the norm that doesnt necessarily mean they are victims of international financial order but that regular financially modeling simply cannot manage their unique risk characteristics

Damn, I made a great reply and it never sent–that sucks.

I was more nuanced and specific, but I don't want to do it all again.

1. The fees are not awful idk what you mean, I pay between 0.1% and 1% fees on Monero transactions.

2. If the modelling can't manage their risk characteristics, they are by definition a victim of the financial system. I was more talking about people who have been debanked, though.

I have a Russian friend who can't pay for things online in fiat because of sanctions and the risk to his life from being on the free internet. So, he uses Monero and Tor and takes his OPSEC seriously. He is a victim of trad-fi, and Monero allows him to take his freedom back.

This is actually one of the major reasons people should be very weary of accepting crypto, especially Monero. Instead of being able to basically outsource sanctions compliance to a bank, you take on the burden of trying to figure out if your customers are sanctioned yourself - with potentially dire consequences to your business if you get it wrong.

>risk to his life from being on the free internet

Idk where you are getting this, but "risk to his life from being on the free internet" is total BS.

It's happened in China:

>Gao Yu, a veteran independent journalist and dissident, has been harassed by police repeatedly for visiting and posting on Twitter.

https://www.voanews.com/a/east-asia-pacific_voa-news-china_c...

It's already banned in Russia, it's not crazy to say that you could get in trouble.

Recently they have been cracking down even more. (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr510de17jlo)

This is not what you said and what I've commented on. Usage of VPN is not illegal in Russia at the moment and "risk to his life from being on the free internet" is indeed total bullshit. It is not "crazy" to say, just incorrect(false).

Have you ever actually used crypto to buy something? The transaction fees are exorbitant and prohibitive, and it's slow as balls.

Yes, all the time. I usually pay a 1 cent fee and the transaction goes through in seconds. Not sure what you're talking about.

I can send you some if you want to try it out, just drop an address(for a wallet I recommend cakewallet, but any popular open source wallet works).

I'm talking about Monero specifically, but your reply makes no sense because there are cryptos that have 0 transaction fee and instant confirmaiton. But they are less secure and private so I don't use them, I only use Monero.

Yeah, monero has low transaction fees. And is a pain in the ass to get, even more so in significant quantity or at a good exchange rate. You pay a significant premium for the privacy. So just different types of fees. Monero is also far from instant in my experience.

I too have plenty of purchasing experience with crypto and I wouldn’t advocate for it for any legal transaction.

> And is a pain in the ass to get, even more so in significant quantity or at a good exchange rate.

It's easy to get in the USA on Kraken from fiat for a very low fee or 0 with their pro plan.

> Monero is also far from instant in my experience.

It's up to the merchant to decide how many transactions before finishing their end of the deal. For small purchases it's low risk to do 0 confirmations and you can scale with price.

I've seen hundred dollar sales given out as soon as the transaction hits the mempool, before the first confirmation as well as 5 dollar sales that require waiting the whole 10 confirmations.

That depends on the currency you use. I've only ever used Monero and the transfer fees are fractions of a cent.

Man people are still using the "it's a currency" grift when discussing crypto, did the El Salvador failure really teach you nothing?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin_in_El_Salvador

Crypto does have the distinct cash like advantage of not having chargebacks. I don’t know of any other digital payment system with that property.

That's less because it was Bitcoin and more because the entire effort was a slapdash affair pushed by Bukele in an effort for him and his buddies to profit off the cryptocurrency boom rather than being an inherent knock on cryptocurrency itself.

Also of all the cryptocurrencies Bitcoin is a pretty poor choice since it could be pretty well argued that it has lost the original purpose and devolved into a raw "line go up" financial instrument.

That's the whole thing with Monero. It's actually used as a currency, not as a get rich quick scam. I believe 99% of crypto is a scam, but Monero is a real improvement for payments. The Monero community actually wants it to be adopted to spend it, it's not a price go up community.

Buy food with Monero on an ebay type platform called xmrbazaar.

(https://xmrbazaar.com/search-category/food/)

Donate to non-profits in Monero

(https://donatemonero.org)

GrapheneOS says it's the only crypto that they regularly get recurring small donations in.

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