[y3sh]

^^^ for your user class, probably true. But for others, it is deeply needed. The two mainstream use cases I see are transferring money where a fiat bank was too problematic (fees, limits, audits, etc) and purchasing items with the perception of anonymity (e.g. an incognito subscription with a coingate payment option alongside Visa). It is nice to know there is a way to digitally pay for things without major payment processors running analytics on my spending.

And in providing foreign aid, crypto has helped us reliably transfer funds without corrupt intervention. Culture ebs and flows, but in this case core user needs are being met by the tech.

[shafyy]

Re transferring money: Do you think transferring money abroad is expensive because of technology? It's not, it's because of regulation, international agreements etc. What do you think will happen when crypto should go maintstream? Do you think it will just stay unregulated? No, we're already seeing countries starting to regulate crypto. And then you'll just end up at square one.

Re anonymity: Your every crypto transaction is publicly viewable under your pseudonym. Once somebody connects your pseudodynm, all your anonimity is gone. If you purchase something with Visa, only you, Visa, and the company your purchasing from sees your info. I'd take that each time over a public trail of my purchases.

[y3sh]

These are great points, let's go a bit further.

Trying to regulate crypto is like trying to regulate the internet. There are some good attempts, but by using different routes we can circumvent (even in china). Blocked by firewall, use cell, blocked cell towers, use satellite, block satellite??? With crypto, regulate one, fork it, change the network, make another... change the route... use a different crypto/fiat vendor. Good luck.

Right on anonymity, but users doen't care... they just need the "perception of anonymity" or good enough. If you watch teenage trends, it's a great predictor of the near future.

Consider the teen buying weed with the choice of fiat or crypto. On their child bank account under their parent, even if they use cash, those withdrawals raise questions. But that same teen who tells their parent, yeah I just put $300 on coinbase for crypto. Now that teen can use funds without their parents knowing. Sure the trail can be traced back with some work, but it's really hard for the parent. And by trading crypto for cash outside regulated exchanges, it becomes increasingly difficult to unwind anonymity. Now reread this paragraph swapping out teen for average citizen, parent for government, and buying weed for sending money to support mom.

It's ok to not see the use case personally if you don't need it. In 1993 people thought mobile carphones were a pointless trend, and they kindof were -- nobody today uses phones mounted in a leather case in their car to call people. But with some design iteration the most profitable companies on the planet emerged. I think we're at 1993-carphone of blockchain. The use case is kindof there, but as you said the "mainstream" use case hasn't really emerged yet. However that doesn't mean it won't.

[matthewdgreen]

> Re transferring money: Do you think transferring money abroad is expensive because of technology? It's not, it's because of regulation, international agreements etc.

Yes! And this is artificial and problematic, and cryptocurrency is an inevitable symptom of such an artificial regime.

There are a handful of communication functions that people in every society want to avail themselves of: to talk to each other, to read/write and find information, and to transact value for commerce. For the first two applications the Internet has made those functions possible in increasingly powerful and useful ways: we went from 300-baud modems and BBSes to broadband and Twitter. Search and unlimited music catalogs and electronic bookstores are all available in virtually unlimited amounts at 1/100,000th of the 1990 cost on amazing portable devices we carry in our pockets.

So you’d expect that the ability to transact value on a computer would also have followed a similar trajectory. But weirdly (and crucially: artificially) it hasn’t. Sending an international wire is better than it was in 1990, but not orders-of-magnitude easier or cheaper like the functions I listed above. Similarly, buying products on retail websites has improved in many ways, but it still involves typing in a 16-digit number off a plastic card (and then insuring that card expensively to guard against fraud.) Sending money to a friend is just barely possible in small amounts recently (thanks to a few services like Venmo etc.) ACH will go from 3-day to 1-day settlement “soon” (has it already happened?) There’s nothing like the visible improvement and IT cost reduction you see in every other electronic product.

And the reason you don’t see that improvement is not because the technology makes it impossible, or that sending money cheaply and easily is technically infeasible. The reason you don’t see those improvements is entirely artificial. The technology can exist but has been deliberately held back by cozy business arrangements and government regulation. I will even grant that much of this regulation is well-intentioned. But the thing is, nature abhors a vacuum. The result of trying to artificially stop technical progress is that the technical progress happens anyway (when PCs and p2p gets cheap enough) and then it happens in weird ways that are outside of society’s control. That’s where we are now, and it’s our fault for letting things get here.

[shafyy]

Transferring money has also become extremely easier compared to the past. I mean, using something like Revolut or Wise I can transfer money quickly and cheaply to all major currencies and countries.

But keep in mind that money is different than sending an email, because of crime. Rightfully, governments want to prevent criminal transaction, money laundering and so on - and that leads to increased transaction costs.

I'd rather have my transaction take one day or cost a couple of cents than let financial crime run rampant.

[matthewdgreen]

“It has become easier” and “it has become easier in proportion to the massive many-orders-of-magnitude technological improvements every other IT function benefits from” are very different statements.

Re: crime, I am in agreement that the purpose of much regulation is to prevent crime. But it’s 2022 and I still buy things on the Internet by typing in a 16-digit static credit card number, or send wires/ACH by giving people my static bank account and routing number (from which, here in the US they can withdraw arbitrary funds!) We have the technology to vastly improve the security of these mechanisms, but instead of doing that we operate with 1980s-era technology undergoing constant fraud, and rely on layers of regulation to keep them viable. That’s not inevitable, it’s a very artificial choice. Cryptocurrency is the inevitable result of making that choice, just as Napster and Apple Music were the result of record labels' decision to pursue a (profitable) CD-based music sales model in the era of the Internet.