212 sats \ 12 replies \ @elvismercury 16 Sep 2023 \ on: F*ck me the "global south" needs bitcoin bitcoin
I suppose btc is actually no help here bc standard of living is too low for anyone to take btc in a circular-economy manner, and everyone is so poor that if they sold their labor or products for btc, they'd have to cash it out immediately to make ends meet, miring them in all the problems you described.
Stories like this are useful to keep in mind for the "bitcoin fixes this crowd." Yeah, maybe it would fix it if the country could somehow transform, en masse and instantaneously, to a bitcoin standard. Failing that, what, aside from slow, incremental global change?
sorry but I disagree. Plenty of currencies around the world are 10x worse than bitcoin for volatility.
Why are increasing numbers of Cubans using Bitcoin?
With bitcoin you can send it, receive it, save it from the comfort of your bed.
The efficiency gains are ridiculous vs the incumbent system.
It's not about a Bitcoin standard, it's about small changes to make life easier for people so they can focus on the good stuff.
I'm trying to use my work and platform to illustrate
A) just how bad money is in the global south
and
B) How bitcoin is already capable of helping to resolve a lot of these issues.
I've got some work to do.
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No need to be sorry, I welcome disagreement.
I understand that there are worse things than btc for volatility. My point was just: if you're not spending btc directly, and you are so poor that you're not saving anything, and you have to convert whatever btc you do get immediately to your local currency to spend it, but all of the conversions are giant pains in the ass, as you pointed out in your original writeup, then I figured that there wouldn't be much practical way for btc to help.
I understand all the ways it could help in theory, but based on those axioms, unclear to me how it would help in practice. But maybe I've missed something.
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Do you follow the Motiv project in Peru?
I’m investigating it rn.
The idea is to create genuine bitcoin circular economies. I think that’s the best route forward.
But no, btc in the global south is not a silver bullet but it’s a lot better than the existing trap
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Pretty much. Bitcoin is still establishing itself as a SoV asset, and will do for some time. Price volatility will need to cool considerably before normal people start to use BTC as a MoE and UoA.
Until then, I think it's likely USD stablecoins will start to take over in these places. Bitcoiners tend to be dismissive of stablecoins for multiple reasons (shitcoin payment rails, censorship risk, still inflationary, etc.), and I agree. But as OP demonstrates, the incumbent systems are so shockingly bad that USD stablecoins are probably a vast improvement people will gravitate towards anyway.
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Yeah, that's my general take too. The development will probably be: global adoption of USD stables, which is actually great for the US powers-that-be, as it distributes inflationary printing to a wider audience, and kicks the reckoning a little further down the road.
This doesn't directly help btc at all, but my hope is that it might help indirectly: people getting used to the assorted ideas that are foundational to crypto in general, which are necessary to make sense of btc; and also, making btc seem non-threatening to the regime, and therefore, not worth attacking with gusto.
Like I said in response to an earlier post, I think if we can get 5 more years without a major governmental attack, we're probably good. So if widespread stable adoption helps with that, awesome.
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If that happens, then it's paramount that the "stable"coins flow through the Bitcoin/Lightning network rather than through competing networks.
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To realize the benefits I mentioned, I don't think it's necessary. Maybe even bad, as it will be scary to the govt. Btc is already scary enough, and stables are not the endgame.
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Very good points. How do you envision that the bitcoin infrastructure will be developed if normies don't want bitcoin because it's "too volatile/for criminals/whatever" and they use stablecoins over other government-controlled networks or CBDCs or similar?
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Man, that is the right question to ask. My best answer at this point is not very satisfying: I think it will creep forward in much the way it has done.
In the same way that a lot of btc talking heads point out that you can only fake out reality for so long -- e.g., that all the fiat shenanigans will eventually come due -- you can only be an asset of pure speculation for so long. Eventually btc will be priced for how useful it is to its people en masse [0]. The odd story about how someone or other is personally living on a btc standard, and the stories about how useful it is for women in Afghanastan to escape the horrors of the patriarchy are real use cases and it's cool to hear about them, but I haven't been convinced that the magnitude of such activity amounts to much right now.
But the exciting (to me) thing is that the speculation interest has driven real development and innovation. There are so many tools available, the ecosystem is flourishing, and more seems to be on the way. SN is one such -- SN is a quasi-news site, but what is also hiding in plain sight, is a really innovative experiment in media, incentives, and online community that couldn't realistically be done without btc. That is so cool! It is a genuine use case, a real contribution. Imagine more things like that, a flourishing undergrowth of them?
I'm planning to write this up sometime, but I think btc's growth and adoption is well represented as a "garbage can model" of innovation / systemic change. If you're interested, have a look at this paper [1]. Also note that I could be (and would be happy to be) wrong about this, so if this doesn't sound right to you, I'd love to hear about it.
[0] Yeah yeah, I know 'speculation is a use' but it's a fragile and brittle use. See e.g., GME et al.
[1] Cohen, M. D., March, J. G., & Olsen, J. P. (1972). A Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice. Administrative Science Quarterly, 17(1), 1. https://doi.org/10.2307/2392088
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Bitcoin is an SoV in the west for the privileged few who are in a position to save money or speculate. Savings is a rarity nowadays 😔
In the global south there's no storing of value so it's more likely to be used as a means to send and spend money. Maybe stables will come in and fix a lot of these pain points but only if the predatory banks / centralised systems can profit of it.
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Does the price even NEED to be "stable" if they're living paycheck to paycheck as you say?
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Nope. It just makes people’s lives easier. Bitcoin makes
a Hand to mouth existence slightly more manageable… to work towards getting out of that existence
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