But anyway, the amount of value you can provide there is severely limited, as you can only at most undo the value your government is destroying. You can't ever get in a better situation than what you would get with a competent liberal-ish government and no cryptomoney.
That means some business can exist there, and a small amount of it can even be morally acceptable. But it is completely different from the internet boom.
And what if you have only an incompetent authoritarian government? How would you help fight citizens of those governments? Crypto is a great tool there. Just because there are insufferable crypto-bros peddling shitcoins to make a quick buck doesn't mean entire Crypto field is useless. That'd be like blacklisting the entire data mining field because surveillance tech and adtech exist.
Then cryptomoney can give you a limited, non-zero amount of value. Still less than fixing the government, but it is easier to deploy.
Even then, comparing it with the internet boom is bullshit.
Glad we agree on this. Everything else (eg. comparison with internet boom) is a matter of degree and only time will tell.
(in case it isn't obvious, yes, I fully agree that evading government control/taxation is a hugely lucrative market).
Why do you think governments are always right? Haven't you learned any history?
I'm sure this is the 990th time that I have heard this. The fact is, it isn't going away and it seems even more crypto companies have taken interest in using Rust and that is good.
Even some (crypto) companies are sponsoring the Rust Foundation as silver members. Nothing wrong with that. [0]
(1) Not speculation, gambling, or some variation thereof.
(2) Useful for something other than crypto itself.
(3) Actually works and can be used today.
(4) Continues to make sense even in a crypto bear market. (In other words: I will still buy milk even if the US dollar is falling because the point is the milk not the dollar. What in crypto is like that?)
I prepared that post since the question you posed comes up every week here, if not more frequently.
This was all technically possible in 2009. What I was getting at was… what’s new? Billions and billions have been poured into all kinds of app development and R&D in this space and all we have is still what we had when Bitcoin launched.
What are all these people in crypto building? Where is it? Where can I use it?
Imagine if 25 years after the dot com era after hundreds of billions had been spent we still just had e-mail, static html4, and text chat protocols over dialup modem.
Increased social and political acceptance of Bitcoin as virtual money? That is a big deal.
> ...all we have is still what we had when Bitcoin launched.
False. In 2009, a very very small minority took it seriously. Now you have Blackrocks of the world getting in that business and SEC approving a Bitcoin ETF. So after Billions and billions of investment, now Crypto is a "serious business". Which is exactly why people in Afghanistan and Venezuela can rely on Bitcoin. They wouldn't have done so in 2009.
Another use case is digital art. Until NFTs, I am not sure how artists made money with their digital collections. Now, the creators of Bored Apes can fetch ~75 ETH (~100K USD)[1] per Ape, even today after the Crypto market has crashed. That is durable value and Crypto has enabled that avenue for artists. If you think NFTs are scam for laundering black money, burden of proof would be on you to make a case about why that is different from traditional paintings. And if you think traditional art too is nothing more than an avenue for money laundering, then... I'd propose we agree to disagree.
Yet another use case is branding. Just look at the adoption of NFTs[2] among top brands like Nike, D&G, Tiffany, Gucci, NFL, NBA, La Liga or Australian Open. If legit businesses and sports leagues are adopting Crypto for branding purposes, that is a resounding proof about the viability of this particular use case.
[1] https://opensea.io/collection/boredapeyachtclub
[2] https://www.coindesk.com/web3/top-brands-in-web3-nfts-and-th...
Is their work pointless? Sure. But aren't Googlers' jobs not pointless too? That's the sad state of the 21th century: most people have a bullshit job but they need it to pay their mortgage.