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628 points cratermoon | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.253s | source
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mumbisChungo ◴[] No.44461390[source]
I think there's a decent chance that folks on the fringes find interesting uses for immutable and programmable distributed ledgers, even if the prevailing culture of crypto is hellish.
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Analemma_ ◴[] No.44461432[source]
I keep hearing this theory, that “eventually” we will find the use cases for distributed ledgers, and I don’t buy it. Bitcoin was invented at roughly the same time as the iPhone, and the iPhone immediately found use cases. Right away the global economy reoriented itself around the smartphone, because it demonstrated real value to actual people. We did not need to wait and twiddle our fingers for years going “I think there’s a decent chance people find interesting uses for this someday”.

Immutable distributed ledgers, by contrast, have found no use cases other than crime and financial speculation in coming up on twenty years. Exactly how long do we have to wait for these interesting uses that are “surely” coming?

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1. m0wer ◴[] No.44463591[source]
Isn't being able of anonymously send you something of value that no one can take away from you a pretty big use case?

A third of the world is unbanked. A permissionless monetary system makes a huge difference for those.

When I was still very skeptical about Bitcoin, I met a guy in Turkey who was from a very poor African country and was just studying there. His father would buy Bitcoin in their home country with the local currency (P2P) and send it to his son, that would then convert it also P2P for Turkish Liras. They could do this securely an within minutes. The alternative was using Western Union and paying taxes in both countries, which in total added up to ~50% of the sent amount.

It's great not needing Bitcoin, as it is great not needing Tor. But that doesn't mean there's no use case for them.