The decentralised mode never interested general public, even though it was mildly interesting as an idea to skip hierarchical trust. The established use of crypto is exclusively money laundering and investment scams, made usable for general public though use of centralised exchanges. The crypto isn’t important, it is just an excuse.

At least initially, much of the "point" was to bypass Chinese currency controls. Buy mining hardware and electricity in yuan funny money. Mine cryptocurrency. Sell it for real fiat currency. Buy real estate in Vancouver.

Crypto was originally born during the Great Financial Crisis. It's not surprising that the idea of: "Hey, wouldn't it be neat if we didn't need any of that," seemed attractive back then, even though that is obviously far too simplistic a view of what the financial system actually does.

But the end result is that crypto currencies never really delivered on their promise, because they barely work in practice, and the only reason to engage with them is for gambling or crime. Anything else is just too slow, too expensive, too cumbersome, too error-prone, and just generally far too inconvenient. What's the point of a digital currency that is best stored on an air-gapped device that must never connect to any network?

I’ve always shared this skepticism. First, crypto can be a poor store of value when its price is highly volatile and most goods and services are still priced in currencies like the U.S. dollar. Second, some crypto networks can make transfers slow or expensive, which limits their usefulness for everyday transactions. That said, it varies by asset and network—some are designed to make transfers faster or cheaper.

I’m also uneasy about the investment case. When you own crypto, you have a reason to want others to buy it too. That can create a cycle where demand pushes the price up, and the rising price attracts more buyers. That happens in other markets too, but productive businesses can also generate revenue and cash flow that help support their value. Many crypto assets don’t have that same kind of foundation, although some are tied to specific services or network activity.

Regular currencies have a more obvious role in everyday life (pay taxes, settle debts, and buy things). Their value is influenced by factors like monetary policy, confidence in the issuer, and the strength of the underlying economy. That doesn’t make them stable or valuable in the same way as productive assets, but it does give them a practical purpose that many crypto assets don’t have.

Gray-market operations usually use crypto for transactions, e.g. distributors of estradiol for trans HRT. Gray market is cheap and doesn't depend on the political climate. Quality control is a problem, though.

I realize the morality of such a thing is subjective, so I'll just say that I've known a number of individuals, especially minors, who have relied on gray market sources.

Crypto was more fun back in the day imho. I remember Bitcoin pre-fork. I bought some in 2016 and was using it to buy stuff online from overstock. It was kinda fun and different, you got discounts and at the time Bitcoin was going up so it was cool to spend money and then see balance increase. I also used Bitcoin ATM back then when I was in the pitch. These days I don't really care much for it.

It's not tied to the dollar and yes, the purpose is to have a neutral currency.

The argument for crypto is that all other methods of exchange have an arbitor that can use their arbitration powers to their own advantage.

There are defenses of traditional currencies that don't hold up to scrutiny, for instance the intrinsic value of gold is way lower than it's traded value. The ability to pay taxes in a currency is only valid while the arbitor allows it to be.

The Blockchain is an impressive design to allow multiple arbitors where you can't know in advance who it is going to be so no single actor can act in advance of that knowledge nor act as if they had sustained control.

The public record combined with an international Comms network means noone is disallowed.

So the good parts are, 1. a mechanism where everyone can use it. 2. No one actor can control monetary policy.

The bad parts are, 1. Uses a lot of power (but less than often reported) 2. lack of understanding and unrealistic expectations allow fraudsters to exploit people.

It is not a stick-it-to-the-man scheme, nor is it a way to perpetually make wealth (it can create and lose wealth over varying time frames but only by guessing how people in the future will value it compared to today)

The dangers of theft of a scale like this are an artifact of there being no single arbitor saying "no you can't do that" there is actually a solution to this, but it is not really being done. It is designed to have no do single arbitor, but if you have a majority of people reaching a consensus on any issue the entire system can change rules to any paradigm they wished. You could theoretically have a majority agree to reverse all of the digits in everyone's balance and then update the system to make it so.

To prevent cases like these huge heists you could have a majority consensus to support an independent regulator that makes decisions that can involve arbitrary changes to balances. While there is a majority consensus to agree with the rulings of that regulator they could adjudicate cases like this. If the regulator started acting in the interests of any particular party that consensus would be lost and miners who disagree would not incorporate their rulings into the chain.

I think there is potential for there to be a better system there. It would likely involve governments becoming miners (or at the very least having some influence on the miners in their duristiction)

I don't think there is enough public opinion in support of doing that though.

Tldr; I can see a way in which it works, but we are not there. We might get there over a long duration (if crypto does not go away for another few decades). To get there quickly would require significant changes in public perception.

I know what’s going to happen. I will explain what crypto is for and then it will get downvoted just because it says anything positive about crypto.

The point is to NOT have a single place with access to all the money, votes, etc. Every participant should be acting as themselves, and there should be no way to do things on behalf of others without their consent.

The point of smart contracts is to have code you can actually trust. Your bank or openAI can change their website, APIs and even their models tomorrow. That’s not great for trust. Trust is what enables things to scale.

The same way you trust other internet protocols to just “route around problems” and not have one single point of failure, that is the substrate for Web3.

Imagine a Web2 website such as a student-teacher marketplace NOT handling millions of dollars, accepting money from students and paying them out to teachers. Imagine it being simply an interface while the actual transactions are approved by the students themselves, and instead of the central site signing payouts with some keys, the teachers get paid through smart contracts and code on the blockchain. The site can still take 10% commission from everything, it would be above board, and it can never change it without the consent of the people. The business logic is in the smart contract.

(Since this comment has the keywords “crypto” and “web3”, I know what will happen in advance already.)

I've never owned crypto.

But, what I liked about the idea of crypto is for the many poor and weaker countries that realistically can't afford to float their own currency in a stable way.

Many countries have never-ending sliding currencies or highly volatile currencies. And the locals don't have a lot of choice but to hold the local currency and watch their hard-earned savings evaporate.

Or worse they can't even do business with other countries because their banking system is highly restricted (because of maybe illegal activity taking place in the country by a minority or their local government being out of favor with the rest of the world) and that prevents legitimate businesses from easily transacting.

There are so many countries in which the national currency is a daily nightmare. And individuals in those countries that are unbanked.

Crypto in the rich industrialized countries never really made sense to me. And even less so as an asset for speculation.

In rich countries, I think it's more for those who are of the criminal or conspiracy theorist variety.

Further, in the rich, industrialized countries, the ability to have a stable national currency and a national currency that is easy to transact with around the world is taken for granted.

And, for those poor weaker countries, dollar access is weaponized as we've seen in many cases. Even if a country is wealthy enough to hold significant dollar deposits, those can be frozen at any time.

In fact even within a country that wants to use the international banking system, that country's access can be frozen at any time, at the stroke of a pen, by a government far away.

And it's naive to believe that this power is consistently used in a just manner.

North Korea is a case in point regarding the value of crypto for a poor or sidelined country.

I won't get into a debate regarding whether that's a good thing or bad thing in the case of North Korea, but it does illustrate why crypto has value for countries that are extremely poor and lack access to global finance. It's not always because the country is run by an evil dictator.

Sometimes it's because the country is just run by an incompetent government.

And in an increasingly hostile world with increasing great power rivalry, crypto has usefulness for countries that want to stay out of the crossfire and transact business without having to kowtow (become subservient) to one of the great powers just to transact payments.

But yeah crypto in the industrialized world is mostly for speculators, conspiracy theorists, and criminals. That I agree with. But I do think crypto has a powerful use case in a lot of the world where the payment system isn't as developed and isn't as well integrated into global finance.

It's for payments for illegal activity. Of course they can't say that in public.