Crypto allows people to do 2 very important and useful things:
1) Move money around government currency controls (for a small fee)
2) Invest and speculate on potentially valuable assets. Sure you can't live in, eat, or drive a Bitcoin, but finance/trading is all about creating and betting on abstractions, and virtual currencies are the ultimate abstraction. Crypto is especially attractive given the current easy money low volatility environment)
I am similar to the author in that I was very excited about blockchain and its implications in 2013/2014 and had recently become very disillusioned with how adoption played out in the real world.
I think it's time to move past this disillusionment and face reality instead of continuously being angry at how nonsensical a lot of this is, no matter how "useful" we really think these 2 current uses of cryptocurrency are.
The reality is that we are living in a world (in the US at least) we trust traditional institutions/knowledge to be able to provide common goods and help us raise our standard of living less and less. What do we want to do about that? Getting mad/worried about cryptocurrency speculation is not the answer.
> 1) Move money around government currency controls (for a small fee)
It's also an improvement over PayPal or banking for sellers who don't want chargebacks/bad checks/their account frozen for writing "Nico" in the transaction comments.
It IS possible (but hard) with smart contracts. Integrate with the shipping company API and the payment can be held in escrow until you sign for it plus, say, 7 days.
Caveats:
1. The shipping company doesn't just throw the thing on your porch and SAY you signed for it.
2. You don't sign for it until you've inspected the item.
If you don't sign for it, and seven days passes, the money is deposited back in your account.
Do the same thing in reverse if you choose to send the item back. If the merchant signs for it (upon receiving the return), the money is sent back to your account.
I know it's far from fool proof. There might even be a need for a "cryptocurrency compatible" shipping service in this space.
I think we're on the 5th or 6th one with two more to go in the next ten to twenty years as crypto chews through networks of people at different distances from expertise in bitcoin.
1) Move money around government currency controls (for a small fee)
2) Invest and speculate on potentially valuable assets. Sure you can't live in, eat, or drive a Bitcoin, but finance/trading is all about creating and betting on abstractions, and virtual currencies are the ultimate abstraction. Crypto is especially attractive given the current easy money low volatility environment)
I am similar to the author in that I was very excited about blockchain and its implications in 2013/2014 and had recently become very disillusioned with how adoption played out in the real world.
I think it's time to move past this disillusionment and face reality instead of continuously being angry at how nonsensical a lot of this is, no matter how "useful" we really think these 2 current uses of cryptocurrency are.
The reality is that we are living in a world (in the US at least) we trust traditional institutions/knowledge to be able to provide common goods and help us raise our standard of living less and less. What do we want to do about that? Getting mad/worried about cryptocurrency speculation is not the answer.