Although I refuted some of your arguments above (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24033759), I agree that cryptocurrency has fairly limited utility, especially given the costs.

The biggest issue I have with cryptocurrency is that it’s an utter waste of resources. It incentivizes the consumption of electricity (and talent) purely to print money, rather than to produce value. Yes, currencies provide some value to society, but we already have more sustainable options.

I see the appeal if you hate taxes and regulations or live under a particularly oppressive regime. However, given that it relies, to some extent, on public infrastructure like internet and electricity that governments can outright shut off if they so desire, there are better options. Raw materials and bartering work pretty well. Just don’t invest in tulips.

The waste of electricity/mining gear is mostly due to Proof of Work consensus, but moving to Proof of Stake/other consensus algorithms will eliminate basically all waste (eg. Ethereum is moving to PoS).

I feel like I've been hearing about ethereum proof of stake for years. When are they actually going to move to it?

From what I can see, cryptocurrency is technologically frozen right now because any change results in some people making less money so there can never be a consensus on anything.

No one has a demonstrated effective PoS implementation yet (that isn't simple centralization). ETH will not move to PoS anytime soon enough to be meaningful, nor will any other cryptocurrency.

That's because you live in a country with a functioning currency.

I keep hearing that, but I am not familiar with any data that shows actual widespread use by common people* in those countries without a functional currency.

Most of these countries barely have a stable internet connection or even stable electrical power, so I wouldn't surprised if these 'currencies' aren't so helpful in practice.

* Note that use by corrupt politicians to launder their ill-gotten gains is not a positive.

It's true that Bitcoin is a poor medium of exchange: it's not stable, has slow transaction times, does not work well with mobile devices, and has intimidating identifiers, but it did open the door to new ideas that will likely soon have a huge impact on exactly the uses you're describing.

I feel like I've been hearing this for over 5 years. I hope it materializes, but to be honest it's hard to not be skeptical, not in the least because a lot of the original values of Bitcoin/cryptocurrencies seem to have been subverted by certain people to serve their own needs (which ... is what usually happens if there are no rules to set boundaries).

I'm a little biased, but check out celo.org and valoraapp.com. Celo is a Proof of Stake protocol built to work efficiently on mobile, with stable value, and with phone numbers as identifiers.

I pay for translation services in cryptocurrency (XMR lately) to Venezuelan citizens who can't readily use USD. Easily thousands of dollars per year.

Cypress in 2013, Venezuela currently.

Cyprus currency is the Euro, hardly a bad local currency as far as value is concerned, and the local residents are already adept in keeping funds in other currencies. Historically, Bitcoin had little marketshare there and made no difference. Are there any evidence of large scale use in Venezuela?

Countries without functioning currencies just use (or at least peg) all transactions to Dollar/Euro, etc

Yes, bitcoin can play a role but it's not like you're paying for your groceries in bitcoin. Cash under the mattress > blockchain

There are simpler solutions, such as dollar bills, or a centralised digital banking system in a trusted currency.

These depend on a functioning legal system in a country that recognizes human rights. Dollar bills may work in incompetent states, but they don't in oppressive ones.

I'm not convinced that it is negative. After every high profile hack or breach, we complain about how organizations regularly get away with poor security practices with mere slaps on the wrist (in terms of legal penalties they end up having to pay).

Perhaps these ransomware attacks are the market's way of making things... more fair.

So far, these attacks don't seem to have prompted security improvements. I guess that for large companies, the payment is a small sum, comparable to the fines they pay every once in a while.

Security improvements seem to be driven more by regulation (GDPR), competition (when did ElasticSearch release TLS support for free? Not after the Nth open ES cluster - only after Amazon competed with them), and large costs (switching to Linux servers because they're cheaper. Though there are concerns about current security practices there too...).