Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by knapcio 1589 days ago
That’s an excellent question. I’ve been thinking about this topic a lot. Here’s some problems I think a good cryptocurrency solves:

- Trust: you don’t need to trust any authority or money emitter when using a cryptocurrency.

- Anti-inflation: It’s not possible to print e.g. bitcoin so you are not hit by the “inflation tax”

- Nowadays, governments and other institutions can easily block a bank account with very little reasons and then you need to go through a long process of proving your innocence. Crypto won’t be blocked. It’s like modern swiss bank hiding place

- A real property: it is one of the things that nobody, especially a government, can take away from you

- A war, blackout hedge: it’s hard to travel with gold when you can easily run away from a hot place to a better one keeping your whole fortune

- Probably way more use cases like easily transferring money around the globe etc

I also believe that crypto are in very early stage of their existence so some of the points may not fully apply yet but they are valid in a long run.

2 comments

> Nowadays, governments and other institutions can easily block a bank account with very little reasons and then you need to go through a long process of proving your innocence.

This has been happening to immigrants from Hong Kong to the UK who have an HSBC Bank account... On the request of the Chinese government. HSBC has quite a big presence in China and Hong Kong, so I'm not sure they have much of a choice. Sucks either way.

https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/hsbc-aiding-crackdo...

You still have to trust the exchanges.

Governments can absolutely still imprison you or seize your other property until you pay your taxes.

The value fluctuates wildly and can collapse at any instant. Unlike gold or many other assets, it has zero intrinsic value.

You can use decentralised exchanges or websites like localbitcoins to avoid any institutions.