I don't live in the bay area.

idk if you saw this but UN has previously used Ethereum to send aid to refugees.

https://www.coindesk.com/united-nations-sends-aid-to-10000-s...

You have to realize that in the US you have the luxury of stable (corrupt, but stable) government. A lot of other countries dont have that luxury. An international standard is a lot more enticing to someone from such a country than it is for you. Like stability is relative. What you can perceive as unstable, someone can perceive as unstable but stabler than the default.

> A lot of other countries dont have that luxury

The intersection of (a) countries with reliable Internet access and broadly-available Internet-connected devices, (b) a useless national currency and (c) effective controls on the use of cash hard currency is small. The GDP of that intersection certainly doesn't support anything close to Bitcoin's price.

You don't need A. Re B, which countries have a useful currency really? Say Hungarian Forint. Do you consider that a useful currency?

Ok what do you think would be a justified price and why?

A useful currency is a stable currency with predictable small inflation or deflaction. It doesn't really matter if this currency is implemented with people having "faith" in the currency, backing the currency with real assets or via a blockchain without a central bank.

A "currency" that can rise or fall by 30% on a single day is not useful as a currency.

We are very early on. Like' it's still very much in the beta stage.

I can't think of a national currency that is useful beyond faith.

Using a blockchain as a ledger device is far, far different from investing in a cryptocurrency.

> the project run by the United Nation's World Food Programme (WFP) was designed to direct resources to thousands of Syrian refugees by giving them cryptocurrency-based vouchers that could be redeemed in participating markets.

They're not really using the actual Etherium blockchain in any meaningful sense though. They just gave vouchers that could be spent at participating markets. It reeks of a marketing ploy by Parity Technologies for some press.

> The Bay Area, ladies and gentlemen.

Hear, hear. Meanwhile in remote areas of Africa, this is more like what functions as currency:

"If you're in South Sudan and something big happens in your life — you get married, you buy property or pay a penalty for a crime — cows are most likely involved. Cows are currency and credit card and bank account rolled into one. In South Sudan, banks can go bankrupt — cows are more reliable. At least that's how it used to be."

From Planet Money: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/11/15/563788464/epis...

South Sudan is hardly typical of Africa, though. In 2017, it had the single highest score on the Fragile States Index (formerly called the Failed States Index) of any country in the world.

As a person from (West) Africa, I can tell you they've not only heard of Bitcoin but they're mining it, even in villages.

Pakistani here, you really expect us to believe that in countries without reliable electricity in rural areas, nevermind reliable broadband internet access, and 40% literacy rates people who, looking at the average GDPs of countries in the region couldn't possibly afford the necessary computing power are mining Bitcoin?

How hard is it to imagine someone doing this:

http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/18/africa/inside-life-cryptocurre...

Could move to a rural location setup a 3g hotspot (remembering in these countries rural 3g is becoming common is actually fairly cheap) and run generators as backups?

Here's your country:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozBtOtDK4jY

Does anything shown really look that outlandish to do in a rural area with a little more than a backup generator?

Mining is taking off in 3rd world countries too.

I feel like some people really misunderstand developing countries. People living there are very much looking to participating in the world economy, because the local one isn't great.

Interesting. Could you please describe how such a mining operation is setup in one of these villages?

What country are you in?

I’m in the US, but I’m from Ghana, see above comment for details...

This is an egregious violation of the site guidelines, which ask you to assume good faith in other users. In fact it's so noxious that it crosses into personal attack, which is something we ban people for, so please don't do anything like this on HN again.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Look back further in my history and I mention being Ghanaian multiple times...

If you need my life story I’m 23, was born in Ghana and spent about 10 years of my life US so a sizable portion, but spent 3 years in Ghana somewhat recently, and most of my family is still in the country.

What a time we live in when people will dig into your history half-heartedly to try and claim you’re lying about where you’re from instead of believing us stupid monkeys have learned what a computer is or how to look up incredibly popular terms.

My father recently forwarded me a blockhain convention (misremembered the link) in Ghana.

And please, do explain yourself, I’m seething right now so I’d love to understand where you get off trying to imply something like that.

I’m glad you didn’t have the balls to come out and just say what you were accusing me of so I’m sure the response will be “I wasn’t doing that! I just quoted you! You see!”

Yeah fucking right.

Comment written on software and hardware designed in the Bay Area.

I know cryptoppl active in Africa and ppl in remote parts of Africa who have heard of Bitcoin.

I don't think that's the point. Of course people on Hacker News are likely to know people in remote places or barely 3rd world places who know about things like crypto[currency]