It can be argued that the resources spent on keeping Bitcoin running are disproportionately high to the utility it provides. Some would even say that the utility is negative, as it facilitates money-laundering.
Let me guess. From the time you are replying you are probably from west Europe, live under a stable democracy and financial system and have very broad interpretation of what constitutes money laundering - that is anything outside the current financial panopticon.
You probably cannot imagine why permissionless currency that can't be controlled by government is a desirable thing. After all you've never lived under tyrannical governments. It's not like there are say 45 countries in this planet where woman are forbidden to manage money, have a company or even a bank account. Pff... preposterous right? Why should allow Mohamed to send money to his mother in Palest... I mean commit money laundering?
My trouble with the argument that crypto will liberate underprivileged classes in general is that it seems to miss key holistic issues I'm enumerating below. Perhaps I'm wrong, and I'd appreciate knowing the way I'm wrong.
1. Crypto wealth only translates into real wealth if there is either (a) vendors who accept native crypto as tender or (b) there are exchanges that convert from crypto to authorized legal tender in a country.
However, it seems (a) has not happened in a meaningful scale without (b), and (b) has been frustrated because of underlying price volatility, high fees, low transaction processing compared to traditional finance, etc. There's the problem of "too many cryptocurrencies" which frustrates user choice.
(I'm aware independent proposals to "fix" all of this have been proposed, but there don't seem to be any clear winners e.g. stablecoins should have "fix"ed price volatility, but the leading stablecoin - TerraCoin - collapsed.)
The net impact of this is that people are cut off from real-world markets they live in. Someone who has no access to traditional finance will not have an easier time purchasing goods and essentials with crypto wealth, and this their ability to participate is only marginally improved.
2. Crypto has higher barrier to entry than traditional finance because it requires higher than usual technical literacy, which people in these classes don't have. Wallets need protection, smart contracts need auditing, and so on. I would struggle getting people to use (say) hardware tokens.
3. There's nothing ultimately stopping governments from banning crypto exchanges or crypto vendors or more if they really want to prevent the disenfranchised from getting some. They might not eliminate the network, but they can certainly go after people for suspicion of participation in it (such as vendors). The crypto model requires governments to be foiled by technical limitations, but this is rarely the technique they need.
Based on all of this, it seems like basically you need to solve the problem of vendors really caring enough about crypto for regular folks to get an advantage when the advantage is not clear. Is this not the case? What have I missed?
With the possible exception of Afghanistan (although the Taliban can't seem to get even their own policy straight), I don't believe there are any countries where "woman are forbidden to manage money, have a company or even a bank account". For example, all those are not just possible but common in Saudi Arabia.
And you also haven't addressed how blockchain would improve women's lot, compared to, say, a stack of US$100 bills.
Countries score a zero on that survey if "women do not have the same rights as
men to open a bank account at a formal financial institution." The word "same" is doing an awful lot of heavy lifting there, and does not equate to your assertion that they're entirely unable to open accounts: for example, historically in Saudi they had to use separate bank branches run by women for women.
And oh, Western Union is more than happy to send your stack of filthy fiat to Palestine:
> It's not like there are say 45 countries in this planet where woman are forbidden to manage money, have a company or even a bank account. Pff... preposterous right? Why should allow Mohamed to send money to his mother in Palest... I mean commit money laundering?
I haven't seen much evidence that crypto is actually heavily used for this. Its main use case remains mostly "tech casino" with huge costs.
Ooh yes and the value of bitcoin dropping 2/3 in a year is a wonderful thing for those oppressed countries right?
Are these people getting value for money with crypto or is someone fleecing them an awful lot for the privilege or not using fiat? Always these third person anecdotes without any actual evidence.
The other thing is not being controlled by government seems to imply either not controlled, or controlled by 'good' people, of which neither seems to be turning out true in any case.
Your oh so enlightened west European point of view misses the fact that the fiat in this case is not the dollar or the euro. It's the Turkish Lira, Bolivars or Lebanese points. It's not the money that France controls and prints (its not euro) for their ex-colonies.
Is everyone using bitcoin good people? Definitely no. Is it used by criminals? Yes. Drug dealers are definitely criminals, just as the people protesting for fair elections in Belarus or the feminist coalition fighting to end police brutality in Nigeria. Those are all criminals.
But If you have any idea of how can these people participate in the economy without permission (stables fail here) that isn't volatile please let us hear about your idea.
People commonly use Dollars and Euros in those countries to store their cash. I have seen this first hand, especially in South America and there are advertisements for that everywhere. Where that is illegal, crypto is/can be also illegal.
My country currently charges me 1%/mo for every USD/EUR account, there is no cash in ATMs for months and no way to take more than a vacation penny with you when you leave.
Where that is illegal, crypto is/can be also illegal
There’s a big difference between illegal and physically seizable.
Paper bills are scarce and pack a premium in these places. Meanwhile someone could learn marketable skills over the internet and receive digital currency. You can argue stables are better but those aren't trustworthy.
I actually am from a country in South America with very weak democratic values. I've been blessed with skills that are marketable. I might or might not commit """money laundering""" every month to feed my mother and brother.
I hope you do realise that while you are saving lets say half of your money from the incompetent government or whatever is the case there, at the same time your South American oligarchs are using the same token system to steal billions from yours country, and from you indirectly.
What you are proposing is eventually devolves to the social darwinism. You have a global aggressor - your government. You have a lot of citizens i nthe country, both rich and poor. All were hurt by aggressor (financially), rich less so, poor - a lot. Now you introduce a new system in the equation - tokens. It works like a private pipe from a shared pool. Now the individuals are are more proactive, smarter, and richer will utilise such pipes earlier and more thoroughly, funneling money to the offshores. And people not utilising such pipes/tokens are left "having fun staying poor". You personally is simply hoping to save your own money faster than aggressor takes them from you.
The problem is that you country will be in the worse position when such "money saving" system will be working at scale.
I hope you do realise that slang names like beta, soy, avocado eaters etc. is predominantly used by conspiracy theorists themselves. All those flatearthers, climate change deniers and so on.
He said "one can argue", he did not claim he was 100% right. They are definitely points that you can debate around, they are different from what The Economist was talking about.
Apologies, I was being facetious because I was tired, and I think your previous comment was correct. I did the non-HN thing and misinterpreted (towards negativity) the original to which I first replied.
“Facilitates money laundering” is another way of saying “preserves freedom”, they are two sides of the same bitcoin.
The argument of whether governments and payment processors should have the power of prior restraint on all transactions (e.g. by going cashless) or not is older than cryptocurrency.
The question is - are benefits of token systems outweigh the negatives? Since the purpose of all these systems is law avoidance (both "legitimate" and "oppressive", all of laws), then in my opinion negatives are much much bigger than benefits. And I say this as a person who can benefit from tokens, i.e. send my money cross border without any legal oversight. But in reality for a the few grey private transaction, the majority of this system usage will be utilised by corporations, billionaires, shady governments, mafia etc. Tokens in the current state are net negative for humans. And hypothetically tokens with control and oversight and protections are just overall worse and more limited digital "money".
And the US dollar punches well above its weight in "preserving freedom", despite all the rules, all the enforcement, all the regulation, all the threat of violence, all the drug wars.
You probably cannot imagine why permissionless currency that can't be controlled by government is a desirable thing. After all you've never lived under tyrannical governments. It's not like there are say 45 countries in this planet where woman are forbidden to manage money, have a company or even a bank account. Pff... preposterous right? Why should allow Mohamed to send money to his mother in Palest... I mean commit money laundering?