It is easy to not for westerners who live in stable economies to not see the social benefits of cryptocurrency. But for economies strife with corruption and hyperinflation, the need for censorship-resistant money (cryptocurrency) is obvious, as is the need for censorship-resistant speech. In Venezuela, some people have no choice but to use cryptocurrency to merely survive and afford basic things (https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/24/bitcoin-mining-is-popular-in-venezuela-because-of-hyperinflation.html). Let's not forget that Bitcoin was first popularised when WikiLeaks used it to overcome its banking blockade that prevented it from accepting donations.
The original adopters of cryptocurrency are cypherpunks - Satoshi invented Bitcoin partly as a way to overcome the problem of monopolistic banks that are 'too big to fail' (leading to the 2008 of bailout). Do not get confused: people who actually need cryptocurrency because of corruption, hyperinflation or capitalistic monopolies (i.e. Western Union) couldn't care less the 'blockchain' and 'ICO' hype that is being taken advantage of by people trying to jump on the bandwagon. On 06/11/17 11:08, helen varley jamieson wrote: > > looking at the environmental impact of it all is really important, > because huge amounts of resources are being devoted to something that > - as far as i can see - serves very little actual purpose. with the > exception of projects like julian's, the focus seems to be > predominantly on personal wealth gain & speculation & any supposed > social benefits of the technology are just a way to justify it. > _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] https://lists.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
