Quote:
Originally Posted by Jason14h
Well to start only 70% of Americans own a CC. This number is 95% in Canada.
In Europe this drops significantly
https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/ran...8.02%20percent.
Then we can get into emerging markets with CC penetration is effectively zero.
It probably would be surprising for most people to find out that Canada is actually one of , if not the most advance countries for online payments.
We have amazing credit card penetration, very few banks who are all on the same EFT rails, and even interac for instant P2P between almost all big financial institutions in Canada.
So for Canadians, agreed, it is easy to just use your CC online.
However, heres just one use case as an example of where Crypto can disrupt in Canada - Buying anything P2P online or even in person
Think of how many scams are online when trying to sell anything. Even using a service like Paypal allows the buyer to pull back the funds pretty easy (By design, it is there to protect the buyer)
Even accepting money in person is risky. Selling a car - Counterfeit $$ and fake bank drafts are an issue. What if its the weekend or a holiday and the bank is closed?
You don't have a point of sale machine just ready to accept a credit card in these instances. (The companies who make single person POS systems are all investing heavily in crypto as they know distributing CC POS to every individual is crazy)
NOTE * - Using Phone as POS machines will solve this issue when it happens and is why Apple is investing so heavily in it and announced last week and the fintech stocks all took a hit.
With Crypto I can send you the $$ and you know it is real, and in your position almost instantly.
But what about volatility ? Well you can almost instantly change into a USD backed stablecoin or into a fiat currency of your choice. Sure there is a fee , and the fees are high relatively still compared to other financial methods, but they are coming down and different coins and technology will continue to make transactions faster and cheaper.
Soon (and soon is a relative term) instead of going through swift, ACH, or EFT rails you will be able to do the exact same transaction cheaper, faster, and with 100% uptime by using crypto.
This doesn't even touch on countries that don't trust their own banking or currencies. |
I've dabbled with pre-Bitcoin digital currency and I still don't really get crypto (although it would have been nice to have been able to retire if I had bothered to keep someone on hand). Like, I think I understand it, but I also feel like the vast majority of people understand crypto incorrectly/has consumed some form of misinformation Kool-aid.
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Crypto is essentially something like a token or collectible. I consider it basically no different than a situation in old school arcades where you run a bill through an exchanger and get X amount of tokens back to play the games. Intrinsically, it basically has no value outside of the ecosystem it was created in. Any time anyone tells me it has a storage value, I know they've made a logical leap somewhere. If I run $20 CAD through a token exchanger at an arcade and I receive 10 tokens, and a game costs 1 token to play a game, the cost to obtain a coin and play a game $2 each.
But if I sit on those tokens AND people want to play the game AND the exchanger now only gives 4 tokens per $20 AND it costs 2 tokens to play the games... each token costs $5 to obtain and each game costs $10 to play. It's not a storage of value of $5 per token. It's $5 per token because people like paying stupid money on things like Beanie babies, Pokemon cards, rookie cards etc.
Now people still want to play, the money exchanger is essentially broken and people are trading the damn things at approximately $5,000 a token... but you paid $2 and sat on the 10 of them... The tokens are essentially still worthless IMO. You just have tokens that are desirable in the same way people used to pay a few bucks for holo Pokemon cards and now they're worth stupid more. IMO, the exchange value of crypto is "temporary". Whether that holds for a few hours vs a few years is of debate, because it depends what people will exchange for it. But IMO it's temporary because the intrinsic value of these things is negligible. It does have value in the ledger, but this is a separate piece than the crypto token itself.
This token aspect IMO is more apparent in NFT.
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Digital currency vs crypto currency.
Digital currency is a country's fiat currency that is exchanged digitally. Crypto has many similarities to a digital currency, but it is essentially backed by no country. This is both a pro and con. If you hold CAD$ and something goes funky, you go and figure out what's going on with Canada. Canada legally has ownership of something that will always be valued. Land, law, citizen, infrastructure, resources etc. so in theory is still somewhat backed by something just waiting to be unlocked. Crypto does not have this in the same manner. Most of Crypto's "value" is often explained as past work and the ledger. True. But it's not the Crypto trading price of today's value IMO.
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Crypto's true value... the block chain
IMO the true value is in the block chain. A relatively simple concept of randomizing information in a P2P method to prove ownership. Basically almost like a crowd sourced authenticator or audit trail. That way you can make sure that you don't get scammed by a spoof digital value and others will actually approve and accept of the trading value of of the "token" because others would agree to that value if they traded for it. But that aspect is again, not the Crypto trading price of today's value IMO.
The block chain is useful for a variety of reasons. P2P like raid storage that can also be encrypted. Online NFT/unique weapons in video games that are significantly more difficult to spoof and clone. Honestly, it's IMO a form of digital DRM but without being deployed in the idiotic manner that most DRM have typically been deployed.
Blockchain is great for currency to speed up digital transactions for digital currency, but sooner or later, countries will find a way to implement this and you don't have to specifically rely on crypto currency to do this.
Also, the block chain of a specific coin is useless if everyone migrates away from that coin. This might happen sooner or later if block chains are implemented into fiat digital currencies. This is why I said I think the values are potentially "temporary". Crypto doesn't have the same level backing as other currencies out there. Its only intrinsic values are the tech behind it, but no one really owns that tech either, so it's only a matter of time you get a dead arcade with a bunch of valueless tokens because you cannot really use them.
What you mentioned for currency transfers are current strengths of Crypto as of right now. But sooner or later the tech will be applied towards fiat digital currencies as well. The coins could potentially be as useless as e-gold (which I lost a bit of money on back in the day).
I'd even go as far to thank that maybe we will see blockchain paypal/block chain digital insurance portals that replace crypto itself.
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Crypto is unhackable.
I've heard this. No... that's wrong. It's just that Crypto is unlikely to be hackable because it's not currently worth the effort to hack inherently. But in the same way that sooner or later people figure out how to break encryption or target vulnerable points to bypass it (ie: digital currency exchange hacks etc.) I think there could be a small window one day where crypto's blockchains could fall to a vulnerability.
Eh... but who knows.
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What seems funny is that lots of people think crypto is awesome because it's cryptic. It's only cryptic IMO because many people dive head first and don't bother trying to figure it out.
There are many facets of crypto that will be retained for the next bit and going forward... but I honestly don't understand why the intrinsic value of it cannot be taken away one day when many of those technologies are then integrated into a country's currency. It'd basically go full circle how some people prefer another country's currency to their own (ie: USD in Mexico vs Peso) but digitally. We'd be jumping ship to stockpile more blockchain US if we hated some other blockchain country's currency. That's how I feel about it.
I honestly think Crypto will "die" and people migrate towards into blockchain fiat. I just have no idea how long that might take. I could be wrong though. But that's just my expectation based on my understanding of what is happening and what this stuff is.
I think NFT will continue in some form and block chain tech used to help DRM many facets of previously unpoliceable digital space (ie: special weapons in games, tokens to use websites etc.)
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I don't get Crypto, so I don't really put my money there. I consider it a gamble. Maybe I'm a fool for doing so... but I just don't understand the logic when I run it through, few can explain the logic behind it properly to me, and I don't like the risk.
That's my understanding and subsequent stance. I'm not saying I could be completely wrong. I'd love to further have conversations/discord about it one day, but not right now. I've had enough discord with enough self proclaimed experts on the subject who are people who have a 5+ hour Wikipedia research degree. No thanks.
