Chuck Schumer said today, "We all believe in the future of crypto." I say, speak for yourself. There are still a few of us who haven't lost our minds.
This reminds me: Has anyone yet come up with two cases in which crypto is useful to an ordinary person for a legal purpose?¹ By useful, I mean that it's faster or more reliable or cheaper to use than any of the dozens of ordinary payment methods already available.
No drug payments. No transfers to, say, Iranians in contravention of US sanctions. Nothing that's "better" solely because it lets you avoid taxes. Legal, normal, and useful.
Note that I'm not talking about blockchain. That may very well be useful. I'm talking about crypto coins and their supporting architecture.
Anything?
¹Why two? Because you never know. Even the stupidest things can have one redeeming quality.
Cryptocurrencies have ONE massive advantage
They are incredibly useful in extracting real money from the gullible and sending it to the horrible
Bilking investors. That's a thing.
Oh, and confusing Donald Trump. That's another thing.
It's become such a habit for me to parse Mike Johnson's statements to see if they actually commit him to anything (which they usually don't) that I do it with other people too, now.
Schumer's statement commits him to nothing at all. But it doesn't alienate people who are crypto enthusiasts.
Meanwhile, I say even blockchain has serious issues. The primary one being that it's not "one man, one vote" It's "one computer, one vote". So, it's equivalent to "the person with the most money wins".
The next one is that a disagreement over a transaction can, instead of resolving, split the blockchain. This is not hypothetical, it has happened.
Which says to me that the old school way in which we manage real-estate ownership issues (very much a careful chain of custody), operated by a government that can be changed by a vote of people, not computers, is still a better system.
To sum up, the legitimate uses of cryptocurrency discussed in this thread:
(1) Anonymous payments (when used for legal purposes)
(2) Lower transfer costs
(3) Ability to pay where other forms of payment are not allowed (as somebody mentioned about Pornhub Premium)
(4) As a store of value (Bitcoin being like buying art or land)
Nearly All Chinese Banks Refusing to Process Payments from Russia,
https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-economy-all-china-banks-refuse-yuan-ruble-transfers-sanctions-2024-8
So they're going to fall back on crypto and barter.
Mother of Mercy, is this the end of Rico?
No, nobody has found a real use for blockchain, either.
There’s at least one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axoni
The concept of a distributed ledger definitely has some niche uses, but in the vast majority of cases you’re much better off using a centralized datastore. The massive hype did it no favors.
Surprised that no one else has mentioned it yet, but if you want to know how crypto is really being used, you could do worse than the scroll through https://www.web3isgoinggreat.com/