I agree with all that, but how can you run a business with a currency that can change so much in value over very short periods?
I don’t agree with all that, but I still think Tom’s question is very pertinent.
Holding your day to day assets in a form that has such extreme volatility is impractical at best. So why would you expect the average Canadian trucker to have accessible crypto to replace the frozen funds? If they did, how would you expect them to use that crypto to fuel their truck?
Ditto the average Ukrainian.
For all that your ‘ordinary hard working Russian citizen’ may want to use crypto the businesses he would fund may well be the ones run by Putin’s Poodles. How do we apply meaningful sanctions on the oligarchs when they are burying their wealth in binary form?
Once again. And I feel like I have said this many times on this thread. I am not advocating holding your entire net wealth in Bitcoin. What I am suggesting is holding a % of your net wealth in crypto, with Bitcoin being the most stable and reliable one currently. The fact that the government can just decide to freeze all your assets when you haven't actually been charged and judged to have committed a crime is deeply worrying. Yes it is more volatile than many fiat currencies and I would suggest viewing it as a hybrid of a currency and an investment. If you are bullish on the future of crypto and Bitcoin then even better. If you are a business you have it on the balance sheet.
It is interesting that some of the countries where crypto might be the most useful. China, Iran, Russia are the countries where the government is most against it because they want to control everything (generalisation yes, but state control is important in these places). But if these countries are cut off from Swift, Visa, Mastercard etc, then crypto is a viable alternative.
Many people in the world can't even get a bank account, yet crypto enables one person to to transfer it to another anywhere in the world without the need for any financial institution or intermediary as a third party and nobody can stop you or block your payment. Isn't that amazing?
As for how to spend crypto. Well you can buy things with it, you can exchange it for goods and services or you can trade it for other crypto or other currencies. Several people on this thread have said they do this. I believe one person said they did their shopping at Tesco using it. Or at least they could if they wanted.
I have no idea how the Canadian truckers handled it. I don't agree with their viewpoints and suspect that many of them might be fringe nutcases. I wouldn't suspect the average trucker to have a BTC wallet ready to go. But actually there was fundraising in crypto for them and as far as I understand, one of the most tech savvy was trying to set it up for them all and the Canadian government were also trying to block crypto wallets. So I am not sure how it turned out. This is a big case in point as to why privacy coins like Monero which are anonymous might have a big role to play in the future.
The use case for crypto grows every week, every month. My girlfriend has been trying to transfer funds to a couple of specific charities in Ukraine these past few days but it hasn't been possible. If only they used crypto, maybe we could get it done easier.
With regards to those Russian oligarchs then yes, sanctions and removing Russia from the Swift payment system (though of course not the bank that deals with the sales of gas! Oh no) will harm some of them and make life difficult. Let's remember that Russia has 144 million people. How many 'oligarchs' are there compared to normal everyday folk? I suspect many Russians do not want this war but they are stuck with it and their life will get worse as a result of it as their standards of living fall and are cut off from the rest of the world. I would imagine that the oligarchs are smart and calculating people and I'd be very surprised if they didn't have part of their wealth already in crypto for precisely this kind of eventuality. I would not expect this to be reported anywhere though of course.
Pokerpops doesn't see a problem with currency being centralised, and that's fine. It doesn't affect you if it is. Like most British people including myself, You likely have a bank account with a UK high street bank I guess. Perhaps some investments and a pension. Probably a debit card for day to day spending, maybe a credit card. You can use a cash machine if you need physical cash.
If you have trust in British financial institutions and the government, then it is all no problem and hopefully it remains that way for you. If you don't piss off the government or the global financial system doesn't keel over then it will likely be fine and may never need to use crypto. A lot of people are not in this position. So once again I urge you to think outside your particular life in the UK and to people all around the world and see the possible use cases for cryptocurrency for people with different life situations, for people who live in countries with authoritarian governments, for people who live in countries with financial institutions that are not trustworthy. For people who have businesses and want to trade but their country is persona non grata and because they are born or live in that country they are stuck with that. For people who don't trust the banking system or simply want to hedge by diversifying their fiat wealth and placing some of it in crypto. And so on.
I guess many people might think money should be state controlled so the state can turn it off or on again for people and weaponise it against people they don't like. Either their own citizens or other people around the world.
Personally I don't trust the government or visa, mastercard or any bank to have my best interests at heart.
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