Is it possible that somebody will make money speculating on cryptocurrencies? Sure. Some people make money from MLM schemes too. But ultimately these are negative-sum activities: more money goes in than comes out. And a lot of the money going in is from suckers being taken for a ride. I think there's nothing wrong with people being negative about that.
Like most, you have trivialized the use cases in places like Venezuela and Zimbabwe where the state backed financial system has failed. With the current state of technology, Bitcoin has no ability to replace the global payment network. Claiming that means it's a failure that hasn't lived up to anything is hyperbole. The system's very existence and self maintenance after over a decade is impressive enough to me. I also believe the financial utility of a new asset class with new properties is interesting and useful on its own, although I doubt the layman would agree.
Those are utterly irrelevant until you solve the initial distribution problem. Ready for it?
- Those people don't have money.
- The only way to purchase a meaningful quantity of BTC is through purchase on an exchange. After all, it's twice as hard to mine today as it was yesterday, and in Venezuela you'll just get your mining rig socialized (this has happened a few times).
- If you exchange within the country, then you're just moving the poops around. It's zero sum. Steve has a bunch of Bolivars. He exchanges with Alice for BTC. Now Alice has a bunch of Bolivars, and Steve has BTC. The net worth of the system was preserved perfectly. BTC did nothing for the union of Alice and Bob -- except they lost a ~$0.50 transaction fee, which is a few days wages.
- If you exchange outside the country, who on earth outside the country wants your Bolivars?! If you can exchange outside you may as well buy Gold or Dollars. Those haven't dropped 50% in the last 3 years. Even if you did buy BTC, it's still a zero net sum situation -- except they lost a ~$0.50 transaction fee, which is a few days wages.
Bitcoin is meaningless for third-world countries in aggregate until the initial distribution problem is solved.
The problem in Venezuela isn't a piss-poor currency, that's a symptom of a piss-poor government. No amount of magic beans will change that, until the people solve the problem.
Nobody. So you don't buy BTC with Bolivars, you sell art commissions or do some work on Mechanical Turk or grind for online game currency with a real market value, and arrange to receive payment in BTC. Then you buy stuff with BTC.
Meanwhile if there isn't that much BTC in the country, that doesn't matter -- currencies can have a different value in different places when arbitrage is restricted. So maybe BTC is worth more there. Or maybe arbitrage isn't really that restricted in practice and if it started to be more expensive there somebody would make a profit by supplying BTC in exchange for exporting boatloads of oil or coffee beans or whatever people in those countries produce.
Yes, you can buy things with BTC.
https://reason.com/2016/11/28/the-secret-dangerous-world-of/
> that's a symptom of a piss-poor government. No amount of magic beans will change that,
Did it solve their government problem? No. But it resulted in a little more food in the country then there would otherwise be by allowing citizens to subvert their government's financial controls. BTC provides a base level quality of money, that basically acts as an insurance system against the worst governments. Does it have a huge use case in a country with a healthy and functional financial system? No. But if things go to shit in a country, people can still use Bitcoin and safely transfer value online instead of reverting to trading gold coins in person.
I know you want all things BTC to be bad. But try to keep it intellectual, not emotional. What about the technology -- do you think it's fascinating that a relatively simple and elegant protocol of incentives and cryptography can result in a self sustaining financial system still running a decade after its release?
If they have use for them, why not? Also money are indeed a zero sum tool designed solely for moving poops around, shouldn't be a problem, and yes, BTC is money.
Huh? The Bitcoin price on 2017-05-12 was $1686. It did hit $19345 on 2017-12-16, however.
