Thread

1. pj_mukh · 1790970483 · focus · HN ↗

   I know nothing about crypto, but wasn't one if its selling points that its "digital gold" for people without stable fiat currencies?

   You send aid to a drought-stricken farmer to some sub-saharan region with ample cheap data but no (stable) banks, how...are they supposed to store the money?

   1. satya71 · 1790970644 · focus · HN ↗

      World Bank doesn’t typically give money to people. They fund development projects.

      1. cucumber3732842 · 1790971366 · focus · HN ↗

         This. All the perverted incentives and money wasting inefficiency of federal grant funded local projects but for poor brown people half a world away.

         1. yutter4 · 1791000095 · focus · HN ↗

            That's very naive of you to think most of it isn't ending up in Israel one way or another.
      2. r721 · 1790972311 · focus · HN ↗

         >They fund development projects.

         So they fund wages among other things?

   2. rfghy · 1790970933 · focus · HN ↗

      Crypto was DoA as the architect had a delulu view of humanity.

      1. mt_ · 1790972181 · focus · HN ↗

         So the best realistic alternative is what, AWS IAM for autonomous economic actors?

         1. boc · 1790972880 · focus · HN ↗

            May I present to you the humble briefcase full of cash?
         2. zbentley · 1790994431 · focus · HN ↗

            I think “autonomous economic actors” is similarly, to quote GP, delulu.

            Currency as a tool is inextricable from currency as a representation of interconnected states and state coercive power about what can be done with it. The maximum-autonomy other end of the spectrum leads to feudalism—not equivalent to feudalism but actual feudalism.

            Low-currency-autonomy systems like we have can also produce bad outcomes. But sprinting for the other end of the spectrum guarantees them.

            1. rfghy · 1791038373 · focus · HN ↗

               Spot on
   3. phlakaton · 1790972524 · focus · HN ↗

      Crypto has been sold many many ways, but most of it is not a stable store of value.

      Stablecoins are what are supposed to be stable sources of value, but Zeke Faux's book Number Go Up points out how opaque and unaccountable the companies managing these currencies are. From his reporting, their "tractor app" appears to be not so much farmers in sub-saharan Africa receiving aid payments but criminals looking for anonymous ways to transfer lots of money.

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