Something that tends to be underappreciated is the risk associated with contemporary mobile payments solutions. Both the individual and the local economy become incredibly reliant on a small number of private companies.

For more well-off individuals who can spread their risk ad easily switch providers, this is much less of a practical risk and therefore are likely to shrug off. They also tend to have access to providers with human support and better platforms.

Consider also that for multi-national providers, they become affected in new ways to foreign domestic and international policies and politics.

These are just some ways in which people become serfs, at real mercy of the whims and fate of politics and businesses.

Last week, thousands of people who had Coinbase accounts in Japan are now forced to close them due to them now only being available for Japanese citizens (as opposed to residents).

This is probably not more than an annoyance for most of those affected, but transfer that to migrant populations and mobile banking in Africa and things get dark pretty quickly.

Cryptocurrencies (when done in a way that liberates the user as opposed to being wrapped in centralized fintech) break this dynamic completely.

Now, tell me how to do this exactly? (At least a general sketch?) Because I really think that this is really not a problem that can be seen with cryptocurrency, but rather with how societies work, which is hard to solve.

I don't want to favour one or the other, but societal problems are something that require all of the cogs are working. Even if I assume that people are willing to use cryptocurrencies, oppressive governments can seize digital gadgets out of their hands, much as they can block transactions. I also don't have a solution to this unfortunately, and I feel that this is unsolvable.

With crypto, if I can remember 12 words I can freely transport my life savings anywhere in the world and no government can seize my wealth without torturing me into giving up my passphrase. Can you share a similar strategy for refugees using fiat, gold, real estate, stocks or bonds?

I personally want to understand from people who understands how they do function if they do have ideas to actually do it in a practical way. While the idea presented by the GP is indeed good in the long run, it still doesn't solve the problem that most unbanked people in those areas have only either a basic phone (i.e. purely calls and text) or even none, which precludes the habitual use of cryptocurrencies. I also acknowledged that for long-term storage away from often-opressive regimes, there are solutions available.

However, unless you can give everyone in Africa a smartphone and build the infrastructure necessary to have a reliable internet connection, I cannot say that, as of what I've read, have a realistic solution to everyday use of cryptocurrencies hold well.

Unfortunately, you've just stated something that is frankly unhelpful. I've read the article, I've read the comments and be very careful since that these types of discussions tends to catch fire quickly. I've just pointed out that for realistic use in this case, it is currently simply impossible in inner reaches of Africa. Even 3np acknowedges that costs on dedicated wallets should decrease (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28736599) if Africans will use it. As of now, it's not simply feasible.

close to 50% of sub-sharan africa owns a cell-phone and internet quality is of little consequence to crypto as any short frame of connection can facilitate much of what was being described in your parents context (which is infrequent "savings account" type transactions)

crypto doesn't have to be the only system of currency and probably shouldn't be until things like cell phones are ubiquitous - this isn't a criticism against crypto it's simply a lack of infrastructure needed to aid crypto in solving every currency need.

Paper money suits people without internet much better than crypto for daily trading - that doesn't mean there is no place for crypto in securing peoples savings. If you want to start saving wealth, you'll probably not want to do that in a society where everyone has cash on hand (which promotes theft) but instead you'll want to make infrequent visits to someone with internet and purchase a cheap device to facilitate savings account types of transactions that you know you can secure easily even in the event your cheap device fails. This property is one of many properties that is extremely valuable for money. Something fiat achieves with large expensive bank infrastructure that even though the concept has existed for at least thousands of years, yet is too expensive to serve people in many many places as this article outlines.

It's also likely to be expensive to send paper money to your internet bank account as you'll be purchasing wire services or similar, whereas crypto vendors could be nothing more than a contact you have buys crypto and sells in exchange for paper currency.

I don't know enough about these peoples situations to know what will end up serving them best, but I do know having options will always be to their benefit and at the very least crypto will be competition on competing forms of currency.

Apart from being sold directly to consumers, it could be issued by providers of banking services (lending or payments for example) to clients.

You would also have service providers offering key recovery services (could be shamired)

Also, your solution doesn't work against oppressive governments. (Again, I don't have a solution to that, just pointing out that they do exist.)

I'm just not 100% sure that it is a real problem, but those who buy it either believe it to be, or at least, want to hedge for it.

What if I told you that the root cause of inflation is not the price increases, those are a side-effect. The real cause is that the value (aka purchasing power) of your money is being diluted by means of central banks printing money and stealing value from the populace over time.

70% of the US dollars that were ever created were created since the invention of Bitcoin. It is only natural that the real value of those dollars has fallen.

Inflation is theft by central bankers to pay for politician’s desires without openly increasing taxes on the people.

Bitcoin fixes this because no politician, central bank or corporation can ever inflate the supply over 21 million, nomatter what they do.

Anyone can make their own crypto, and they do - so cryptocurrency as a whole is hyperinflationary.

Bitcoin maximalists say, but bitcoin is first and unique in many ways. Certainly - but not in ways that the trading or payment markets appear to care about. The "banking the unbanked" proposal is much closer to the payments market - nothing about it seems to depend on bitcoin's special characteristics.

I note that you're proposing a bitcoin version of Austrian economics there, with the word "bitcoin" substituted for "gold" - but Austrian economics proponents have long noted this cut'n'paste cryptocurrency problem with the bitcoin proposition.

Seems to me we're actually heading for the competing private currencies advocated by Hayek, who thought the result would be long-term price stability without the need for top-down control.

Denationalisation of Money was arguably disproven by the ICO boom - it turned out that actual users just treated the shitcoins as proxies for BTC and ETH, and BTC and ETH as proxies for dollars.

But fine, I'll admit I have little to go on. Are you willing to admit the same? Because you're even further from the actual data so far.

as in, demand for using crypto as a transactional currency, rather than as a speculative asset right?

The demand that is unstable is because it is driven primarily by speculation. There's very few commodities being exchanged via crypto.

So to reach stable demand, crypto must be a currency that is used for non-speculative transactions (such as buying groceries, or buying oil from countries). I don't see that happening any time soon tbh, except for may be countries that are trying to escape USA sanctions.

...So apparently you will not admit that there's little evidence to support your hyperinflation theory.

So they claim. Could it also be that debasing the currency is far easier than taxation as a form of wealth appropriation since the effect is subtle and indirect?

Bitcoin claims it's a "currency" but almost everyone uses it like a store of value (HODL) because its value keeps increasing.

This is weird. Inflation can happen without any central bank activity. Regular banks can lend out money. People can spend their money faster. All of that creates inflation without benefiting the government at all.

Inflation like what we had under the gold standard is bad, it leads to currency hoarding. Deflation is bad, as it leads to all sorts of bad effects. And minimal inflation can also be bad, as it leads to higher asset prices if the velocity is dropping.

I've been working through a thought experiment where we have a cryptocurrency that ensures that velocity stays constant. It does so by enforcing a tax on transactions, where you lock in a transaction to occur at a certain time in the future, but you can pay for it to occur sooner. The more we are taxing, the more we can ensure that the economy is doing well, the more the money supply is allowed to expand.

I'm also thinking that PoW is an extremely bad model, and I would prefer to work with their proof-of-weather, where weather is determined by a combination of many different weather trackers that we can prove occurred but are unable to predict much ahead of time.

It seems to be a good model, but there's still a lot to think about.

1. there are multiple competing implementations

2. it's ultimately up to the users/merchants/miners what software they run. A commit making into the bitcoin core repo doesn't mean it's going to be adopted by the network.

"Decentralised" is a phantasm.

Or a pyramid scheme in need of an excuse / justification.

1) persecuted: For example, a religious cult grew to require power in the government in Turkey, clashed with the official government and even tried a military coup and failed. Following the coup, those with direct involvement to the coup went to jail and anyone known to be associated with the cult lost access everything and even their bank accounts were closed(they had a regular Banking institution that was seized) and other banks often refused to open an account for those who were associated with the cult. As a result, they started using money transfer services that are not banks and keep to money in cash.

2) financially ruined: People who screwed up or got unlucky in something and lost everything. Many would work and do business outside of the official channels and as a result they don't want to keep the money in traditional institutions because the money can be blocked or seized due to their financial situation. Also, they won't be able to get any benefit of a bank, so all they need is a way to keep and transfer money.

3) irregulars: Those are usually immigrants who entered a country trough illegal ways or overstayed their visas. In most places, they wont be able to provide the documents to open a bank account or even get a TV subscription but they will be working and making money for many years until they sort out their situation. They will need ways to get payed and pay bills, rent etc.

Therefore, "unbanked" doesn't really mean too poor, many times it means "unserviceable clients". The "decentralised" aspect can actually mean no one is left out since the usreviceability of those people come from the central government in the region.

For 1), they often seize everything, to the point that they seize computers and phones. Even if they are smart to have a backup, I'm pretty sure that they will try to hoover up anything and everything, even regular currency.

For 2), I think that this is a societal problem, really. In France (as an example), you are entitled to a bank account regardless of your status, that even means if you have been convicted of money laundering. On the flipside, and I am assuming to use cryptocurrencies like Monero which makes transaction tracking harder, if you are really wanted you could end up in situation that I described on 1).

Sure "conventional" paper currency is already a good solution for in-person payments, but it doesn't work for remote payments, international transfers or savings.

Cashapp has compelling answers for remote domestic payments and savings in the US, and TransferWise is great for international transfers among wealthy nations.

These three are the use cases we're seeing blossom in El Salvador where Cashapp and TransferWise aren't available.

I suspect this is an Innovator's Dilemma situation, where crytpocurrency solutions are honed and adapted in emerging markets, then eventually compete with established players in rich nations.

The problem is that centralized trust creates moral hazard and over time tends to be abused. Abuse of centralized trust can be incredibly destructive both financially and in humanitarian terms.

To me the key question is which is cheaper?

Is it cheaper to run cryptocurrency with all its overhead or is it cheaper to use faster cheaper simpler centralized systems and “eat” corruption and abuse since those represent the hidden costs of those systems.

The answer differs depending on which society you are evaluating and it’s corruption index. It’s not the unbanked that represent a hidden base of cryptocurrency users. It’s those that reside in kleptocracies and failed states.

- Wars. Most people in warzones don't want to hold a bank account because it is very unreliable. Cryptocurrency won't solve that problem, in fact it will exacerbate the problem because of your phone or computer is damaged it's game over[1]. Also, how do you even transact when you don't have any form of communication?

- Actually don't have anything to bank on. Their money is just enough to survive, so they can't even bank, regardless of its form. Giving cryptocurrency is often a proposed solution, while forgetting that regular currency works fine too in these situations.

- Cultural differences. Most, to be honest, don't want to depart their money to someone they don't know. They were introduced to money just a generation or two ago, so they are relatively new here. Good luck convincing that cryptocurrency is trustworthy in a way that can be easily understand.

[1] I mean you could write them on paper, but that's really stretching it, mainly because you need a computer to execute transactions.

Cryptocoins won't solve those issues, nor can they bypass them.

1) I mentioned M-Pesa because it is the largest one in Africa. There are also smaller players there.

2) While there are problems that is specific to M-Pesa or even conventional currency, looking at the landscape of cryptocurrencies some problems, which in my opinion is inherent in how do you define value, are problems that even cryptocurrency has fallen trap into.