I do understand that use case and it has value. Question is - what portion of the 5 billion internet users see that as enough value to enter the space?
I have friends that have fled war torn countries, dictatorships, etc and I'm glad blockchain now exists for that scenario but again - can that use case (fortunately very rare) justify tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars of investment and over 10 years of work?
This is what I don't understand.
I understand banking has problems (fiat is a much longer debate). What needs to be understood is how many of the 5 billion internet users think the benefit of blockchain justifies throwing out the entire financial (and often legal) system and operating in a parallel one? Not to mention the willingness of average people to essentially be their own bank. For this reason alone I think blockchain is a non-starter for the overwhelming majority of internet users.
How many people care? Answer is: a tiny portion. A very optimistic estimate of total blockchain "users" worldwide is in the range of 100m. 13 years and untold billions of dollars of investment to reach 2% adoption of the internet population isn't exactly a success story that speaks well to the utility of the solutions provided and the real world problems they solve.
I would argue the negatives outweigh the positives here:
Tax evasion, money laundering, trafficking, drugs, sanctions evasion etc.
Since the introduction of KYC it's very hard to do any of these in the traditional finance system. And each of them has very serious implications for people's lives.
You must be joking. What exactly has stopped since KYC? Absolutely nothing. The ones doing the laundering are literally the banks/governments/big corps. KYC was just an excuse to increase surveillance
“Hey, I will give you this trunk full of cocaine if you make sure to win one of my relatively unknown paintings at the next auction for a least $1m. My friend will bid it up that high for you to take the win. You probably can not resell it for that, but donate it to a museum and take a $1m tax write off for your trouble”
Money spent to buy the art is clean in one shot because art is worth whatever someone pays for it and it is hard for an investigator to prove you didn't simply -really- want that particular painting. Someone showing up to a bitcoin exchange with $1m in BTC trying to convert it to cash is going to invite law enforcement questions about the source of those funds really fast.
Art remains one of the most effective money laundering and tax evasion tools.
Cash is traceable in a similar way to Bitcoin. Investigators frequently follow the serial numbers of large bills to track down criminal transactions. Banks even help.
>Maybe the problem is that you lack an understanding of what money should be and what problems banking and fiat have?
I don't believe people are capable of grasping the nature of money. Money is supposed to be a medium of exchange yet everyone wants to turn it into a forced store of value with no consent, that is basically the equivalent of slavery.
Maybe the problem is that you lack an understanding of what money should be and what problems banking and fiat have?