[wittyusername]

I like the guy, he seems like a genuine technologist / hacker. I wish him well.

None of the things he has worked on are any good so far. Objectively nobody actually uses this stuff. My definition: nobody would choose this stuff at arms length from a financial interest in pretending it is the correct technological + business choice.

[aqme28]

> Objectively nobody actually uses this stuff.

Why did you use the word objectively here? It seems like people objectively do use this stuff, though you possibly don't think that they're actually getting value out of it. Ethereum likely has more users than anything either of us will ever build.

[halfmatthalfcat]

No meaningful percentage of the global population uses crypto and a large majority that do are bad actors, either in their use or their motivations for marketing it's "uses". Maybe "relatively" would have been better but the point is the same.

[cypress66]

> Objectively nobody actually uses this stuff.

Objectively this is trivial to disprove.

[DennisP]

Yep, just Uniswap alone has transaction volume comparable to major centralized exchanges.

https://decrypt.co/114665/uniswap-overtakes-coinbase-second-...

[golergka]

> Objectively nobody actually uses this stuff.

Spoken with a privilege of a first-country citizen with a working banking system. I personally know dozens of people who use crypto for their main purpose: to transact. Without it, they wouldn't have been able to earn their living or have any access to their money.

[dayve]

I am based in Nigeria, a ‘third-world country’, I work remotely for a company domiciled in the US and get paid in Stablecoins (USDC & USDT). Crypto has been a life saver for me. Before that, one alternative was to get a USD account in a local bank & get paid via Western Union. The challenges are numerous. To setup a USD account locally takes a long time & multiple requirements. Assuming that hurdle is crossed, the more challenging issue is how restrictive Central bank policies are. In an economy with high inflation & parallel market rates for USD, there’s an incentive for the government to retain as much USD in the economy due to poor trade policies preventing $ revenues from coming in. Withdrawal limits have been reduced over the last 2 years alone, & the flexibility to make $ payments is hindered by low transaction limits with a USD card ($15 per transaction). To navigate this, I tried creating a virtual USD bank account with a local Fintech, with which to receive salaries. However these virtual accounts can only receive payments from US accounts (via ACH transfers) so can be restrictive. The most seamless solution to my problem has been to setup a crypto wallet. In minutes I receive my salary and can spend any amount, whenever I like. Plus, it makes it easier to save in USD, avoiding the local currency devaluation (The Naira has fallen 52% in the last 7 years under the current regime). So speaking as a ‘third-country citizen’, crypto provide a far more effective banking system.

[moritonal]

Neat, in what kind of industry/countries have you seen this?

[freejazz]

Maybe people should be clear that they meant it'd only be useful in the context of living in the "third world"?

[tgv]

Strange. How did anybody live there before 2015?

[arcticbull]

Ah yes here comes the privilege argument to derail legitimate discourse. You love to see it.

Your first approach should be a Wise multi-currency account.

Where Wise doesn't work the only thing that makes any sense are stablecoins from a proper issuer, like USDC (definitely not USDT). These are of course issued and controlled by centralized entities, making them antithetical to the very principles of crypto. They may as well be private scrip CBDCs.

Any decentralized/floating-rate coins are utter garbage for folks without access to meaningful banking systems in so-called third-world countries due to the volatility, embedded systemic leverage, high fees and potential long transaction times. These folks are the least able to stomach the 90% drawdowns (and 100% rug-pulls) we've seen market-wide. Frankly, I think the Turkish Lira has outperformed every major cryptocurrency for the last year.

What these people need are actual privacy-preserving CBDCs, of which there are exactly zero in the market.

Please put away the faux privilege defense. Folks of any level of privilege are able to comment meaningfully on the fitness of a technical system for purpose. Allow their arguments to stand on their own merits.

[thefounder]

I thought ICOs had a chance to help small projects but unfortunately they became the worst of crypto. I don't blame the technology though. It's the "investors/ponzi hungers" that blew it.

[lottin]

It's inseparable from the technology. The technology is about issuing and transferring, and exchanging virtual tokens. This is all it does. And what can you do with virtual tokens? Not much, other than trying to sell them for money. I think Ponzis will always be one of the main use cases, if not the main use case.

[iskander]

fwiw, I use USDC transfers on Ethereum in preference over wire transfers (which for me seem to require a physical bank visit to clear) or Zelle (which has very low max limit per day).

I actually don't know of any robust alternatives in the US.

[legulere]

Playing with new technology and research is an important thing, but you have to be open that you are doing that and don’t pretend you are developing a usable product.

[RetpolineDrama]

So what's the next hackernews? Anyone have a link?

Reason I ask is comments like this are objectively wrong yet continue to be the norm here.

[karaterobot]

He starts the article with an example of someone using Ethereum in their store

[overtonwhy]

The son of a Russian computer scientist who cloned Bitcoin as a teenager definitely all by himself?

[dylkil]

>Objectively nobody actually uses this stuff

Stay tuned for major central banks deploying CDBCs on ethereum. Swiss, EU and Singapore are launching a pilot program.

[polygamous_bat]

You can't claim something that large without a source. And why should governments pick Ethereum to enrich the bagholders with tax money?