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Comment by l23k4 | Hacker News Reader

When you go outside of the nice countries, local money becomes worthless. Nobody wants it, they'd much rather have dollars instead.

Stablecoins for the first time offer a reasonable way for the global poor to store value in dollars, or in the form of any relatively stable currency.

Obviously this comes with all kinds of issues, but it's still better than the original situation where "savings" simply didn't exist except in the form of physical dollars or gold bought at a significant premium.

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While this has a very reasonable point about access to dollars, it's also funny to contrast it against the breathless propaganda from crypto advocates that the dollar itself is going to be the victim of hyperinflation Real Soon Now.

Crypto advocates are not one homogenous blob.

The global poor already had ways to store value in dollars. They could simply exchange whatever meager savings they had into... real dollars! And they have been doing that for decades. I don't know whether anyone in the west really believes in this bullshit of cryptocurrencies that give the global poor options.

This is simply not true. In South Africa, one of the largest African economies, you cannot hold foreign currency unless you are traveling and then you have to sell it back within 30 days of returning to the country. You can open a foreign currency account with a minimum of eg R1500 which is half the monthly minimum wage. Then there are the exchange fees to talk about. You are oversimplifying.

So having foreign currency in stable coins is allowed in South Africa?

iirc isn't the whole point of crypto that no one knows what you have or what you do with it?

They know even less with cash!

Crypto is not as reliably anonymous as cash. Anything with a distributed ledger is pseudonymous so if one transaction can on your wallet can be linked to you, so can all other transactions, including historical ones, to that wallet.

Stable coins are not foreign currency, they are commodities

... and I suppose the solution for these particular conditions is.... drumrolls... stablecoins? They are allowed? Available everywhere? Accepted everywhere? Totaly safe from disappearing overnight?

I suggest you go outside sometimes, you'll see that the real world looks rather different than whatever crypto-obsessed bubble you live in.

I really don't think I need to explain the obvious difference between physical US dollar notes and USDT.

I'll point out that in most of the world a $100 note is only worth $100 if it's in basically mint condition, the value falls rapidly as condition degrades.

What? I have never come across that. No problem with notes in many currencies with folds a creases, even small tears.. In my experience bank notes last for ever anyway. I have various notes from countries I have travelled to decades ago in good condition.

If you're going to Paris? Sure, as long as the amounts are relatively small. Try paying with pre 2009 100USD bills in Africa lol.

Even banks struggle with this https://meduza.io/en/feature/2025/05/30/old-money-new-proble...

Goes to show how viable cash is as a store of value for most of the world.

According to that article it has nothing to do with condition, but with the lack of anti-counterfeiting protection on older notes.

I have lived in, and briefly worked in a bank in, in a country where people do use USD, GBP etc. notes as a store of value, sometimes in large amounts (you hear about that when they get burgled!).

Cambodia official currency is USD (1000 riel = meant to be 0.25c, goes up to 50000 riel) prices are advertised in $ in general with sometimes 1$ = 4200/4300/4500...

Anyway key point is your USD better be mint and at least 2018 or they will refuse it... Same at currency exchanges in most of south east Asia that have their own currency.

In my experience what Paradigm2020 describes is very much the norm around the world.

> and briefly worked in a bank in,

I suspect this might be where the confusion stems from, if you're thinking of places where people go to banks you might be thinking a bit too fancy.

I'm thinking of stuff more like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCDQpm6f_pU

>According to that article it has nothing to do with condition, but with the lack of anti-counterfeiting protection on older notes.

I'd say the age of the money has everything to do with condition, and it matters a lot.

The claim I replied to was that: "in most of the world a $100 note is only worth $100 if it's in basically mint condition"

Somaliland is pretty extreme example and not representative of "most of the world". It is extremely poor, isolated because almost nowhere recognises it as a country which cuts it off from payment systems and currency markets.

I have no idea whether they claim is true or not in extreme places, but those places are not "most of the world".

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