Yeah sending value through the internet without an intermediary that can't be stopped, confiscated or censored is whatever
Maybe the problem is that you lack an understanding of what money should be and what problems banking and fiat have?
Maybe the problem is that you lack an understanding of what money should be and what problems banking and fiat have?
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.
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.
Those are even better money laundering tools than Bitcoin.
How are cash and art better for money laundering than Bitcoin?
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.
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.