[otterley]

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.)

[argvargc]

It's not terribly clear I would agree, but what I said was there is a reason crypto adoption is huge in some countries.

For example, El Salvador recently made Bitcoin legal tender. In Venezuela it's in everyday use: https://www.caracaschronicles.com/2021/11/02/a-snapshot-of-c...

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.

[vanusa]

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.

[argvargc]

Current legacy media reporting on El Salvador indeed makes it seem as if the idea is wildly unpopular. That doesn't mean however, that this is reality. As for basket-cases; the USD money supply [0], and again, no real "news" coverage.

4x supply over the past 20 years is a crude average of about 7.5% inflation per year. Even worse, it's exponential.

[0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WM2NS

[otterley]

You are calling opinions and predictions facts.

[argvargc]

You're replying to new information based on multiple references, instructions on how to locate more, and well-reasoned arguments about these things, with a single, flippant sentence that pretends none of it exists.