No one on HN is suggesting that sending money to Boliva, Columbia, Venezuala via Western Union with local currencies is a great solution to your desire to send money to your friend. Most people would say what you re doing is totally reasonable.
We do suggest that 99%+ of crypto value is not being spent like that. Most of crypto valuations is built on a vague promise of some future useful use cases when the underlying technology is just a slow database with no root password.
As mentioned in a previous comment, I believe that crypto has limited utility as a business model, primarily serving as on- and off-ramps and for transaction fee handling.
Right, so you can understand that it seems like a scam when people are saying that investing in something with limited utility is going to be worth 100x what it is today in purchasing power.
Exactly. I'd be happy if the market cap of the entire ecosystem dropped 90% (though it would devalue my own holdings), because it would take the focus off the price. Although I'm sure it would just give more ammunition to the people who call it useless and currently criticize it based on its speculative nature.
I don't think it will drop that much anyway, maybe 60% at most from current prices
Aside: what I really want more than anything else is for bitcoin to just disappear from the whole conversation, because it's been demonstrated to be unsustainable, especially since most other blockchains can be sustained on 0.00001% as much energy.
We do suggest that 99%+ of crypto value is not being spent like that. Most of crypto valuations is built on a vague promise of some future useful use cases when the underlying technology is just a slow database with no root password.