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Comment by ajconway | Hacker News Reader

Anonymous (or pseudonymous), independently verifiable operations with digital goods are clearly in demand. There may exist a better solution, but blockchain works now.

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The demand for e.g. NFTs is rapidly dwindling. Most of the crypto currency space is driven purely by greed, fueled by gwt rich quick schemes. With the downturn of many economies peoples expendable income dwindled and so did their desire to buy a link to an image.

What actual problem does a blockchain solve?

For me personally, it's a low-fee payment system that can't be blocked and doesn't require any KYC. My friends and I use it primarily as a replacement for cash when we split restaurant bills abroad. There are people who use it to donate funds to organisations under repressive regimes anonymously.

Blockchain is just a useful primitive to build stuff on top of it. As an engineer, I would like to embrace it, NFTs notwithstanding.

My bank account has no fees and I am legally entitled to having one. (Unlike crypto exchanges where you can get booted off for any reason) My bank account also has the awesome property of not broadcasting my entire payment history.

Besides, I even said that money is perhaps (definitely not BTC or Eth though) the one area where a blockchain actually solves a problem which might exist.

What else is there? NFTs are a truly stupid idea.

In most countries, banks can freeze your funds or kick you out for any reason, unlike crypto where you can’t have assets frozen if you are holding Bitcoin or DAI non custodially. Many banks have monthly fees, charge for international transfers, invest and loan your capital and give you back almost no interest, and there have been a few high profile data breaches that would not be possible in a private chain like Monero.

You are pretty much ignoring what I said. Monero is pretty much the only somewhat sane implementation of a cryptocurrency, although even in crypto space it is quite a niche coin.

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