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Comment by DickingAround | Hacker News Reader

Requiring any disruption to take broad effect before saying it's a 'disruption' makes that word useless. That would be like saying a crack in a wall doesn't matter till the wall falls over. The real question is whether this is hairline crack that the rebar of their society will keep in place or if it's a crack that's unchecked and will continue to grow?

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Requiring a disruption to at least barely register is pretty fair though. Bitcoin itself barely registers as an economic disruption (though it's got a lot of coverage for its reputational relation to criminals and scams), and this "disruption" barely registers in relation to something that barely registers.

This article is a press release for a book.

It may disrupt the traditional way money is moved around in the River Plate: in bags and attached to body in the ferry to Montevideo.

> That would be like saying a crack in a wall doesn't matter till the wall falls over.

If you point at a crack in the wall and say "The wall is falling over!" I'm going to laugh in your face. Then I'll get some spackle.

"Threatens to disrupt".

Good call. That would have been wholly correct, enthusiastic, optimistic, and I would have still clicked the link.

How does it make the word useless?

For your wall analogy, let's look at the word "destroy." A crack starts in the wall, and grows until the wall falls over. At this point, the wall is destroyed. But when the crack that eventually destroys the wall is still small, is the wall "destroyed" at that point? Of course not. Does that make the word "destroyed" useless? Not at all.

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