Bitcoin's RELEVANCE to "four billion in poverty"?

[kschang777]

Continuing the discussion from Bitcoin is the sewer rat of currencies:

While the guy’s not wrong in explaining that a lot of Bitcoin basically makes it the anti-currency, the question is… are those features REALLY going to the benefit the 4 billion in poverty if push comes to shove?

Sure, 4 billion people are in poverty, but Bitcoin is not going to change ANY of their lives except through trickle-down. People in poverty don’t trade across borders unless they LIVE on the border (in which case, border guard is the barrier, not currency exchange) People in poverty don’t trade far, so they already KNOW their customer / trading partners. And people in poverty don’t have any money to launder.

Bitcoin doesn’t do any of that, sure, but then they are IRRELEVANT to the masses in poverty. The four billion poor are unlikely to ever heard of Bitcoin in their lives (unless it’s some scam that want them to invest purported in in some bogus cryptocurrency that are “just like Bitcoin, but better”)

So while Bitcoin may be the anticurrency that doesn’t do any of the “bourgeois concepts”, it’s not a solution to poverty either. In fact, the only ones CAPABLE of fully exploiting the power of Bitcoin… are the high tech elite… The miners, the darknet, the people who need money moved anonymously…

So perhaps there’s a price tag on the bourgeois concepts that form the current financial system, and Bitcoin is heading away from that, the price tag on Bitcoin’s adoption is financial chaos with no noticeable benefits to the four billion in poverty. And where does that leave us?

[hello_friends]

A currency ought to mobilize wealth exchange.

Bitcoin is mostly a fetishized cipher that seems to compound the least useful features of currency and computerized networks.

A useful medium of exchange helps free people to exchange otherwise trapped “value” and thus receive help from each other in ways they’d normally be restricted from doing.