> Can we acknowledge that both of those options are utter trash compared to conventional banking, though?
Yes, yes we can.
The only things that ever justified the use of cryptocurrency were ideological fantasies and speculative gambling. Every other justification is just hype created as a post-hoc rationalization for one of those two things. If you look at any of them closely, they completely fall apart when compared with competitor technologies (such as fiat paper money esp. the US dollar, conventional banking, and even gold).
I look forward to a future where "crypto" again unambiguously means cryptography.
Buying drugs online was a real use case that actually worked, as was being able to smuggle wealth out of a country with exit restrictions.
As for legal uses, yeah, there are not many at the moment. Maybe some day there will be a DAO-type org that is worth being invested in or something but not today.
> Buying drugs online was a real use case that actually worked,
Kinda sorta. Wasn't that back when people assumed cryptocurrency provided the same kind of privacy that cryptography does, which was (in retrospect), pretty dumb?
> as was being able to smuggle wealth out of a country with exit restrictions.
That one doesn't make much sense either. How are you supposed to get your cryptocurrency to smuggle out in such a country? Wire your money to a foreign exchange?
> As for legal uses, yeah, there are not many at the moment. Maybe some day there will be a DAO-type org that is worth being invested in or something but not today.
I agree the "best" actual use cases involve illegal activity, but I think even those are sketchy. Most of the ideas don't actually work unless cryptocurrency is ubiquitous, but that doesn't matter since it will never become ubiquitous without compelling use cases. And given the illegal activity it enables, even if it did have compelling use cases, it would probably be made illegal if it was on its way to becoming ubiquitous (which would instantly marginalize it in a way it could never overcome).
For me, my one and only use of crypto (back in the day) was to put it through a mixer and then use it to pay for hosting for some TOR exit nodes in Iceland that I didn't want tied to me personally.
> For me, my one and only use of crypto (back in the day) was to put it through a mixer and then use it to pay for hosting for some TOR exit nodes in Iceland that I didn't want tied to me personally.
That use case at least makes some sense and isn't illegal, but there are probably only dozens of users who'd ever want to do something like that, which isn't enough to support a payment ecosystem.
There are also probably conventional alternatives that probably work for that. I'm somewhat paranoid about getting doxxed based on some teenage internet experiences. There are a couple of forums out there with paywalls that exist mainly to reduce moderator workload, and (10-15) years ago I was able to subscribe with a combination of Visa gift cards and PayPal. The gift cards let you enter (un-validated) identity information so they could be used like credit cards online, and PayPal didn't seem to like them but there was a long delay before they were detected. So I created a throwaway PayPal account with a small-denomination gift card as a payment source, paid for the membership, and abandoned the PayPal account (which would eventually get locked).
> Kinda sorta. Wasn't that back when people assumed cryptocurrency provided the same kind of privacy that cryptography does, which was (in retrospect), pretty dumb?
Well, there are currencies that do provide strong anonymity, so no?
But yeah agreed that cryptocurrency doesn't have that many use cases, just as cash has a declining number of them. I hope someone makes an Amazon-like platform for it.
Yes, yes we can.
The only things that ever justified the use of cryptocurrency were ideological fantasies and speculative gambling. Every other justification is just hype created as a post-hoc rationalization for one of those two things. If you look at any of them closely, they completely fall apart when compared with competitor technologies (such as fiat paper money esp. the US dollar, conventional banking, and even gold).
I look forward to a future where "crypto" again unambiguously means cryptography.