[mvind]

Crypto currencies (or atleast DeFI) is trying to solve a pretty pragmatic problem: There is 1.7B unbanked people in the world and banking services are outdated and unavailable for large portion of humankind.

I mean that is pretty good problem to work on IMO. I think articles like this that talk about monetary politics are missing the point a bit.

I live in Denmark, and even then it takes approx ~10-24 hours to transfer funds between banks, imagine if we could reduce that time to mere seconds- or minutes?

[whermans]

You hit on a point that bothers me in all the discussions of cryptocurrency. Not having access to banks is a real issue; quicker bank transfers a less critical, but still real concern. Neither of these need cryptocurrency to be solved, and neither of them are solved by cryptocurrency; so why are they used as arguments?

Concrete example: I have an app on my phone that allows me to instantly transfer funds from my bank account to other people using a QR code with no transaction cost. That was part of the promise of cryptocurrencies and is still trotted out as a potential benefit - but this system does not use cryptocurrency at all and has none of its downsides.

If a problem is solved without cryptocurrency, and without cryptocurrency's crippling problems, cryptocurrency clearly wasn't the answer to begin with.

[nuerow]

> Crypto currencies (or atleast DeFI) is trying to solve a pretty pragmatic problem: There is 1.7B unbanked people in the world and banking services are outdated and unavailable for large portion of humankind.

This take is quite plainly absurd. If anyone has enough access to a working internet connection to make crypto transactions possible, they already meet all the requirements to perform transactions through any other service such as PayPal or even any bank at all.

[toper-centage]

I'm not sure if you're just being naive, but there are lots of people deemed "unbankable", e.g. Imigrants and refugees. And in the coming years, the number of people with that position will only raise. It's 2021, most people in the world have access to a cheap phone and celular, but might not have the same right to certain services that you enjoy...

[pieterhg]

You forget that people in many/most third world countries don't have access to PayPal or even banking

[tablespoon]

> Crypto currencies (or atleast DeFI) is trying to solve a pretty pragmatic problem: There is 1.7B unbanked people in the world and banking services are outdated and unavailable for large portion of humankind.

Huh? Is that the story now? I thought cryptocurrencies were about 1) implementing some kind of cyberpunk-libertarian vision of a world free from the control of central bankers, 2) getting rich quick off of speculation, or 3) rushing to apply a faddish technology to be hip and cool.

I would be very surprised if DeFI's relationship to the unbanked was anything besides "uh, so now that we've made this thing, what use cases could we use to sell it?" (e.g. exactly opposite to what you've described).

[simonebrunozzi]

I don't think that most DeFi projects are REALLY about solving the problem that the unbanked face, despite some of them say so. Facts speak louder than words.