Yes. I think there's value in reducing the politically privileged's means to dominate their power over the general populace. It is my personal belief that people are in poverty because they are politically disposessed, as opposed to the opposite causality arrow (ok obviously it goes both ways but my belief is that it's mostly the other direction).
The simple fact that you ask this question tells me you don't live in india, where a few years ago the government straight up deleted quite a lot of personal wealth by declaring the two largest notes worthless with mere hours of warning:
> I think there's value in reducing the politically privileged's means to dominate their power over the general populaced
We can argue whether there's value in that. But if you're asking /how/ bitcoin et al can do that, the answer is that it removes direct control over the currency from nations and parliaments.
They may still be able to wield indirect control through a variety of other means, but that /is/ less control than simply being able to declare 500 and 1000 rupee notes valueless.
As long as you can't buy food or pay your electricity bill with any cryptocurrency, you haven't achieved any of these things.
So the question becomes, why should the supermarket or the utility company accept crypto payments instead of dollars, when they know the former can lose 20%-99% of its value overnight, while the value of the latter is guaranteed to be kept stable by the government?
Ah, but you don't need crypto to have that potential. Anyone could issue their own currency, and try to convince people to use it for actually buying and selling stuff. But that convincing part is really the key, and crypto very explicitly doesn't solve the problem that businesses will need to trust the issuing entity before they switch to using a new currency.
People and companies want to have a central, stable issuing authority they can trust.
>Anyone could issue their own currency, and try to convince people to use it for actually buying and selling stuff. But that convincing part is really the key
Absolutely true, see EcoCash. It's a fascinating case study.
>and crypto very explicitly doesn't solve the problem that businesses will need to trust the issuing entity before they switch to using a new currency.
Trust is a relative thing. EcoCash is issued by a mobile phone provider. That should be crazy (who would trust verizon to issue currency?) except that _literally no one_ trusts the Zimbabwean government to issue currency any more, so the phone provider won by dint of a) being in the right place at the right time and b) being relatively more trustworthy.
Actively building trust is something you need to do if you've got a pile of venture capital burning down that you need to pay back before you go broke. However, cryptocurrencies are usually not VC-backed products, and therefore don't have time-bombs strapped to them. Bitcoin is doing extremely well in Venezuela right now as faith in the bolivar drops through the floor. Cryptocurrencies are at this point extremely well position to be conveniently accessible any time people's faith in their national currency drops enough for them to start looking elsewhere. This is a slow burn situation.
>People and companies want to have a central, stable issuing authority they can trust.
I'd love to see a citation on that. People trust a wide array of deities and insist that the deities other people trust don't exist. This is a Homo economicus argument, it seems unlikely that we can quantify what people want and how they trust so easily. My anecdotal observation is that people want to have something that sounds plausible enough that they feel comfortable not researching the details. If people wanted a central stable issuing authority they wouldn't accept fractional reserve banking.
> > People and companies want to have a central, stable issuing authority they can trust.
> I'd love to see a citation on that.
Didn't you just provide two examples yourself (Zimbabwe and Venezuela) that alternative currencies are being adopted precisely due to the lack of a stable central issuing authority?
Typically, states control the money supply, and typically in the direction of impoverishing laborers to fill the pockets of privileged interests. Diminishing this power alone could be transformative.
It doesn't, but it does bring competition to the government controlled money monopoly. Competition is generally seen as a good thing for the majority of people
I guess it technically qualifies as competition because it exists, but in reality it isn't at all competitive. If it were, and the government cared to stop it, it could just make its use illegal. That wouldn't kill it, but most people wouldn't use it because there's nothing to gain using it and only to lose (unless you were doing something illegal already).
