[web4]

and now there is one more way to do that: crypto.

it is like asking “Why Does PayPal Exist When We Have iBAN?” obviously some subset of the globe finds it more useful than iBAN transfers for their needs (like setting up an online shop).

[Closi]

So you have friends that you transfer crypto to if they need to purchase something at a shop and don’t have the funds?

God that whole process sounds painful.

In the Uk we would just transfer the money across with a bank transfer as all banks support instant transfers which have no fees (including between banks).

[web4]

not everybody lives in the UK.

the point is not to be a system that beats a single service for sending GBP from A to B in the UK. the point is a system that has a variety of uses and applications accessible by anybody, regardless of which country the user resides in.

even in countries with good banking like UK, many e-commerce companies will still choose Stripe VISA and PayPal to reach customers outside the UK and integrate a payment processor API. an online shop could offer crypto as a payment mechanism if they wanted to avoid using these companies and if it met their needs.

[FireBeyond]

You complain about the lack of timeliness with wire and interbank transfers in the regular system, and talk about the 'underdeveloped' economies that don't afford people many luxuries...

... so suggest that they use crypto, which for many, comes with an onerous fee too, to be timely. Your "buy from the shop" example better not be urgent, otherwise you're paying gas for someone to verify it, or it sits in the queue.

[web4]

ETH fees at time of writing are about $1-3 for a transaction finality of < 60 sec. note that is fixed, the same if you transfer 1 or 100 or 1000 tokens.

though eventually as these networks scale most users will be transacting and interacting with L2 rather than L1. fees in L2 are in cents on the dollar, transaction finality is often very quick, and security assumptions are typically good enough for most use cases.

https://www.useweb3.xyz/gas?source=ethgas.watch&referrer=eth...

[Closi]

This doesn’t explain why paying with Crypto is better though in this use case.

The UK example just shows that a decentralised blockchain approach isn’t required to meet the use case you are describing - in fact it’s worse for the described use case in almost every metric.

Having a different, worse alternative isn’t exactly something to shout about.

[web4]

use case depends on consumer. paying for an abortion in a southern US state or paying a Russian or Iranian contractor for web design services might be a suitable example of crypto. paying for an in-game asset to avoid 30% App Store fees may be another use case in the future. or purchasing digital assets like art, domains. and smart contract functionality like escrow, auctions, loans and lending, global crowdfunds is another use case.

whether it is better or worse for each of those depends who you ask and what their goals are, and also in what year you ask. ten years ago it was inconceivable to do these things with crypto, ten years from now it may be that these systems will continue to improve in terms of fees, privacy, scalability and user experience. consider the current cohort of users to be beta testers who are taking on additional risk and technical burden while the system continues to improve.

[Closi]

Well paying for an abortion isn't really an issue at the moment unless i'm missing something (you can just use cash? The issue here is insurance cover, but that doesn't change). Also I have tried to search for 'pay for an abortion with cryptocurrency' but can't find anything relevant on this happening in reality (other than people suggest it could possibly happen?).

How would paying in crypto avoid app store fees? Presumably you mean the Apple / Google App Stores, when Apple or Google will still want to take their 30%? How do you bypass that?

> purchasing digital assets like art

Who is using Crypto to purchase art? (Note: NFTs are not purchasing Art, you own some metadata that refers to a piece of art publicly hosted somewhere else). I can certinaly use my fiat currency to purchase both the rights to artworks, to purchase actual physical art pieces without having to jump through payment hoops, and even to purchase on-demand streaming of performance art. I cant really do any of that with Crypto without turning it back into regular fiat currency first (without searching out the tiny amount of places that accept crypto directly, but even then - whats the advantage to just paying in fiat?).

I mean I'm entirely unconvinced there is a compelling real use-case in anything listed here.

> ten years ago it was inconceivable to do these things with crypto, ten years from now it may be that these systems will continue to improve in terms of fees, privacy, scalability and user experience.

IMO if a technology is actually transformative, it will find a valid use case quicker than this. The only real use-cases I have seen seem to have been creating ponzi-schemes, effectively laundering money and speculative gambling on the price.

[web4]

it’s easy to dismiss nft and the like if you are dead-set on your opinion that it’s all ponzi, but it is making traction in art and media: see Christie’s and Sotheby’s and a variety of notable artists and galleries not to mention Meta, Spotify and other platforms.

> you can just use cash?

this question sorta gets at one of the primary values of crypto, that it’s peer to peer, transferred non custodially and pseudonymous. many countries are moving away from cash into digital only forms of transactions, and having a system that upholds peer to peer transactions can be useful.

replace abortion in that example with other legally questionable actions depending on your state. maybe buying marijuana or psilocybin for medical purposes, paying somebody like Edward Snowden for giving a lecture, or purchasing a VPN subscription. for citizens who are rebelling against their state in some way, such as abortion rights protests, or climate activism like extinction rebellion, or a person that lives in a less democratic regime, it may be desirable to use certain crypto systems to mitigate state oversight.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/14/style/abortion-crypto-don...

[abofh]

I'm not anti crypto, I simply argue that the problems alleged by OP don't really exist except in the mind of people who once had a bank twenty years ago. By and large, if I want something that holds its value pegged to the US dollar, I hold a US dollar. Moving a US dollar costs me nothing anywhere in the world. Moving a USDT or whatever means I now have to set up an exclusive banking relationship with someone I trust even _less_ than my bank. Maybe it solves a problem for some subset of the globe, but I'm not convinced their problems are the noble ones stated above.

[web4]

sure, if you just want USD then hold that. if you want an asset that tracks USD, but has the freedom to exchange in crypto markets, be held in a non custodial way, and operate with smart contracts, a USD pegged stablecoin makes sense.