I can send a billion dollars to someone in Uganda with no intermediary or oversight. This was not only impossible before but most likely would never have been a possibility. Being able to hold massive amounts of value in the ether and control it from anywhere, you don’t find that impressive? Sure, this is mostly used for nefarious activities, but let’s not pretend it’s solving no problems. It’s incredibly difficult to transfer money into a third world country without incurring massive fees, unless you use crypto.

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GRiMe2D 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Okay, let's image that I've sent you 100 BTC. Now, can you tell me how exactly you would convert the "money" I've sent you into bread and milk?

Because, most of the time people say that just in the context of the blockchain. In that sense I can also say that you can control vast majority of money by just having knife and glove skins in Steam (for the game Counter Strike). You also can trade/send/receive. But the moment you decide that you want to convert to "food" all sorts of problems arise that are worse than what banks offer.

I'm telling you as a person who received salary in crypto while living under sanctioned country

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immibis 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

There is no conversion of money into goods, only exchange of money for goods.

I'll give you some bread and milk for 100 BTC if you want. I'll even fly to your country to personally deliver them to your house.

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stavros 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Yes, you convert them into bread and milk the same way you convert little pieces of paper into bread and milk: You find someone who's willing to give you bread and milk in return for them.

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ranguna 2 days ago | parent [-]

Good luck finding someone who will accept btc for literal bread and milk

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spaceman_2020 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

There are massive P2P economies already built in most third world nations that work on crypto. They prefer stablecoins but will happily accept BTC as well. It's a serious enough problem that they've started using code words to refer to crypto currencies ("goat" for USDT, "chicken" for ETH, etc.)

If a corrupt third world government is scared of a piece of tech, it is, imo, good tech

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solumunus 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

People are already using crypto in this way so you can stop fighting the hypothetical.

	▲	2 days ago \| parent [-]
		[deleted]

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stavros 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm pretty sure I could find someone who'd accept 1 BTC for bread and milk. After that, we're just haggling over price.

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kayamon 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

bitrefill.com

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derriz 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

How exactly can you send a billion dollars to someone in Uganda using Bitcoin?

Purchase and sale of bitcoin is highly regulated and obviously tracked - and the blockchain itself provides little privacy - I’m guessing state-level actors have already attached identities to most of the wallet addresses out there.

So if I hand you access to $1 billion dollars - cash or in a bank account - how could I practically get $1 billion dollars to an individual in Uganda so that they could spend the dollars?

	▲	solumunus 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		There are people that hold billions in Bitcoin and they could send it to someone in Uganda without friction, do you dispute this? You’re being pedantic, stick to the hypothetical. Change the example to $1,000 and yes it’s trivial to do and will be cheaper and quicker than using traditional systems.

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tiku 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

A lot of countries don't have access to bank-accounts, by not having valid id's for example. But they do have cellphones so they can download crypto apps to accept payment for jobs etc. And then there is the money receiving from relatives in other countries, yes.