[samastur]

1% chance of changing the world for the better says nothing unless you also specify how much better.

Local bakery makes world a bit better, but not really worth if you needed a whole power plant to run it (intentionally ridiculously extreme for demonstration purposes).

[pshin45]

> unless you also specify how much better.

That is impossible for anyone to say with any certainty, because the future impact of new technologies are, by their nature, impossible to predict.

The oft-cited statistic is that 2 billion adults worldwide are still completely “unbanked” and don’t even have a basic checking or savings account. One percent of 2 billion is 20 million people (roughly the population of a mid-size country), many of them living in poverty.

A global decentralized currency like Bitcoin could eventually allow what happened with M-Pesa in Kenya to happen more easily in any country in the world.

I've written about this as well. You can skip to the section titled "How Bitcoin can help the poor and unbanked" to read data on how m-Pesa has improved life for many poor and rural Kenyans.

https://medium.com/@petershin45/hate-bitcoin-this-might-chan...

[notahacker]

A global decentralized currency like Bitcoin could eventually allow what happened with a global decentralized currency like Bitcoin to happen to the 2 billion unbanked too. I'm not convinced that foisting 50% weekly price swings, MtGox-calibre ecosystem security and Bitfinex-style creative accounting upon poorly educated people who rely on those savings to not die is a net positive for society.

Aside from the obvious downsides, Bitcoin doesn't even do any of the good bits of m-Pesa (local currency denominations, works on dumbphone, instant transactions, intuitive because it's basically mobile credit, loans and repayments)

[pshin45]

I agree that everything you say is true or has been true of Bitcoin at some point.

However, the more important question is how all of those things will change going forwards.

Is Bitcoin's volatility decreasing? Yes.

Will Bitcoin ever become stable enough to be a reliable store of value comparable to gold or the US dollar? We'll see.

Will cryptocurrency security and management improve? Most certainly.

Will new regulations help weed out bad actors? One would hope so.

Will Bitcoin become easier to use on mobile devices? I can't see why not.

Will Bitcoin transactions become instant or near-instant? Many people in the space are working on it.

Will Bitcoin become more intuitive? I would bet yes.