Crypto has allowed citizens to circumvent oppressive and corrupt government financial abuse, as well as provided much cheaper, faster, more reliable and convenient means of transferring small - yet, life-changing - amounts of money cross-border.
An example of the latter:
A worker in one country sending half of her weekly paycheck back to her family overseas has two options presently: days of waiting (which means no food on the table for those days), uncertainty it will arrive at all (starvation, stress and pressure toward crime), and exorbitant fees taking anywhere from 15% - 50% of what she sends (shamelessly robbing the most vulnerable). By using the correct crypto alternatives, she can send the full amount, at a cost of fractions of a percent, and know with certainty if it has arrived - in seconds.
There is a reason crypto adoption is huge in poor and oppressed countries such as Venezuela, parts of Mexico etc.
There are other benefits, but this should be enough. Nothing else has been able to, nor likely could be able to have such an impact in any short space of time in these areas, and not without possessing many of precisely the same core principles shared by most crypto projects.
This doesn't mean crypto is perfect or doesn't have problems. And it doesn't mean we should ignore those problems.
But it does mean that the endlessly served-up misinformation that crypto "has no benefits", works toward harming less-fortunate people who've suffered more than anyone should have to.
Do you have any data showing how “huge” cryptocurrencies have been for facilitating legitimate international money transfers, compared to pre-existing alternatives?
The XRP Ledger, often in conjunction with local cryptocurrency exchanges, has been involved in many such projects. It's one of Ripple's main marketing points.
For others, conduct a simple search for the name of low-income, despotic, crime-ridden nations plus "cross-border" and "cryptocurrency" to find news coverage.
Finally, look at the overall crypto market capitalisation. It's in the trillions.
It's ludicrous to think that a decades-old, trillion-dollar industry has literally ZERO real-world benefit applications.
Here's an article in Mercator's Payments Journal I found in 3 seconds:
I’m not saying it’s not possible for it to be used this way. But you used the word “huge” to describe its popularity for legitimate cross border transactions, which is meaningless without data. On the other hand, if the vast majority of its use is for speculation and money laundering, then policymakers may decide to throw out the baby with the bath water.
It’s sort of like BitTorrent. Does it have legitimate use cases? Sure. Is the vast majority of its use to illegally share files? Also yes. (Note that approximately zero mainstream content providers such as Apple Music, Spotify, or Netflix use BT for delivering bits to customers.)
The "reason" I was referring to was the context of the discussion, ie, whether or not crypto is legitimately useful for anything. Well, it is - it's tremendously useful, even vital, to the underprivileged populations of some countries.
One of those uses I gave as an easy example, is cross-border payments, and indeed nevertheless I suppose it could still be argued this could also be "huge" in some places.
Of course mainstream content providers are not going to use BT to deliver content, despite it being well-suited in many ways and would save them a shit-tonne in expenses and benefit consumers greatly. The problem is its unfounded stigma, which is fuelled by precisely the same kind of uneducated hyperbole seen here regarding crypto.
Look, the simple facts are the following:
- the existing monetary system is either collapsing, inefficient, holding us back, or all three
- a new monetary system has been developed that is already replacing the worst excesses and failures of the old one. It's been in use and development for over a decade and has grown into the trillions
There are no other alternatives I'm aware of with even remotely the same level of adoption, person-hour investment, or financial backing that could possibly have a hope in hell of replacing the incumbent systems anytime soon.
Iterative updates and sad caricatures of crypto run by governments are not going to preserve your life savings when a government defaults on debt and freezes citizens bank withdrawals.
Existing crypto can do and has done that, among other things.
For example, El Salvador recently made Bitcoin legal tender.
The government has proclaimed BTC as legal tender. Whether people will actually use it is another matter. Current indications are this move is wildly unpopular and its adoption is floundering.
In Venezuela it's in everyday use
In a country with a truly basket-case economy like Venezuela I can imagine BTC making some sort of sense.
People should be free to spend their wealth on whatever they want, whether it's crypto, high-powered gaming computers, or abstract art.
If the environmental costs of crypto mining are genuinely your concern, the best solution is to advocate an agnostic solution, like restricting CO2 generating sources of energy, or energy consumption for ALL non-essentials (e.g. tourism, video games, crypto, etc).
Singling out crypto for its environmental costs, and calling for targeted restrictions on it that exempt other non-essential uses of energy, suggests a superficial basis for your position, like a negative emotional association, or dislike of crypto proponents.
>>So, you're saying I should run my unlicensed nuclear testing facilities?
That is not a voluntary interaction. Nuclear reactors pose an uncontrolled risk to all those in their vicinity.
Yours is a hyperbolic analogy, and likely just a trope you wheel out whenever you encounter an opponent of your anti-libertarian "you only have the rights I agree you should have" ideology.
>>It's a hyperbole, but Bitcoin suffer from both of those: heavy externalities, and interfacing with black market.
I've already commented on how the externalities should be addressed.
As for the "black market" angle, there is a fundamental difference between designs for weapons of mass destruction, and targeted restrictions on their dissemination, and dragnet controls over all financial interactions, in an attempt to preempt a host of crimes.
The former targets a true threat, and takes proportionate measures to mitigate it. The latter rejects the first principles of a free and liberal society, in instituting warrantless mass-surveillance and centralized gatekeeping of practically all private economic interactions, in the name of preempting crime, and in doing so, creates a hyper-centralized power structure that is in itself a massive threat to humanity.
Life doesn’t work that way. We should try to prioritize the use of valuable and finite resources to those things we think are most valuable to society. Usually we leave that prioritization to the free market, but we also sometimes have to take corrective actions to prevent misallocations that would be harmful or destructive to society, the planet, or the human race.
Life works however we want it to work. "Life" doesn't mean "my ideology's preferred state of affairs".
>>We should try to prioritize the use of valuable and finite resources to those things we think are most valuable to society.
No, we shouldn't. People should always be free to decide for themselves how to expend their share of those finite resources. There is nothing inherently more valuable about one non-essential activity over another.
If a person wants to spend their resources running high powered gaming machines, that is not inherently more valuable than spending it mining crypto. Your subjective determination that one non-essential activity is more valuable than another is just that: a subjective opinion. It doesn't govern someone else's subjective determination.
>>There’s a whole encyclopedia of free-market failure modes that’s worth reading up on
I did not advocate an absence of government intervention. I explained how to make such intervention congruent with the values that are stated to be the intervention's motivation:
>>If the environmental costs of crypto mining are genuinely your concern, the best solution is to advocate an agnostic solution, like restricting CO2 generating sources of energy, or energy consumption for ALL non-essentials (e.g. tourism, video games, crypto, etc).
>>Singling out crypto for its environmental costs, and calling for targeted restrictions on it that exempt other non-essential uses of energy, suggests a superficial basis for your position, like a negative emotional association, or dislike of crypto proponents.
We form governments and associations, and have them set rules, in order to accomplish more than we can accomplish separately. This means relinquishing some individual freedom of choice and prioritizing our use of resources. If you disagree with those choices, that’s fine, and you’re free to make your disagreements known and vote accordingly, but living in a society means accepting that you can’t just do whatever you want, everyone else be damned.
>>We form governments and associations, and have them set rules, in order to accomplish more than we can accomplish separately.
One more time: you are arguing against a strawman. I've already shown I am not opposed to government intervention in principle.
>>This means relinquishing some individual freedom of choice and prioritizing our use of resources.
No, the existence of government and the pursuit of common goals through it does not require restricting any one's right to freely interact with other consenting adults, or depriving them of their private property.
>>but living in a society means accepting that you can’t just do whatever you want, everyone else be damned.
Living in a free society means being able to engage in voluntary interactions with other consenting adults, the judgment of others be damned.
An example of the latter:
A worker in one country sending half of her weekly paycheck back to her family overseas has two options presently: days of waiting (which means no food on the table for those days), uncertainty it will arrive at all (starvation, stress and pressure toward crime), and exorbitant fees taking anywhere from 15% - 50% of what she sends (shamelessly robbing the most vulnerable). By using the correct crypto alternatives, she can send the full amount, at a cost of fractions of a percent, and know with certainty if it has arrived - in seconds.
There is a reason crypto adoption is huge in poor and oppressed countries such as Venezuela, parts of Mexico etc.
There are other benefits, but this should be enough. Nothing else has been able to, nor likely could be able to have such an impact in any short space of time in these areas, and not without possessing many of precisely the same core principles shared by most crypto projects.
This doesn't mean crypto is perfect or doesn't have problems. And it doesn't mean we should ignore those problems.
But it does mean that the endlessly served-up misinformation that crypto "has no benefits", works toward harming less-fortunate people who've suffered more than anyone should have to.