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Comment by elif | Hacker News Reader

the distribution today is evident in redditors being made into millionaires, and in venezuelans buying basic goods and health care.

the traditional government control on value is only starting to erode though, and who knows what the future looks like.

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The idea that this will somehow wrest control from governments is a libertarian fever dream, and will be as long as governments have a monopoly on force. At best, governments will allow it to continue to operate in parallel, albeit subject to regulations. At least for citizens of developed nations with heavily regulated financial industries. I don't know if it will be more true for Venezuelans.

Wrong. Bitcoin is a black swan. For example, me and my friends use it to pay each other for various thing because it's just so easy/painless. There is NOTHING out there that is as easy and painless and cheap (pre fucked up BTC fees, we're using LTC for now to transfer between one another).

How is the government going to stop me from using Bitcoin? Buy bitcoins locally, store them in your wallet, memorize your passphrase, and delete your wallet. Now what? How are you going to know I have coins? All you can surmise is I bought 'something' for $X which could have easily been chips I bought with cash.

Used to work for a popular bitcoin wallet. LOTS of Vene users. Even talked to some personally who used ETH/BTC to pay for goods.

Just to speak of the "fiat" alternatives here:

Alipay and WeChat are free and convenient in China, relying on simple QR code scans to pay contacts. They are free. Other countries have similar things (LINE?)

PayPal is so close to being this too but it's just so clunky and relies on input of your friends' email addresses.

If I remember correctly Visa tried doing their own thing in the UK some time ago (Visa V.me) but it didn't really catch for whatever reason.

Apparently you haven't used Venmo, or any of the other tools for paying your friends using government backed money conveniently, for free.

I have. I can't stand that a third party 'owns' my money and the fact that it's not based off anything. It could be gone tomorrow. You can say the same for BTC, but that's only if someone steals my coins. You also failed to address the use case in my OP.

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