Cryptocurrency and the unbanked

... mainly things that aren't even fixable by cryptocurrency?

- Wars. Most people in warzones don't want to hold a bank account because it is very unreliable. Cryptocurrency won't solve that problem, in fact it will exacerbate the problem because of your phone or computer is damaged it's game over[1]. Also, how do you even transact when you don't have any form of communication?

- Actually don't have anything to bank on. Their money is just enough to survive, so they can't even bank, regardless of its form. Giving cryptocurrency is often a proposed solution, while forgetting that regular currency works fine too in these situations.

- Cultural differences. Most, to be honest, don't want to depart their money to someone they don't know. They were introduced to money just a generation or two ago, so they are relatively new here. Good luck convincing that cryptocurrency is trustworthy in a way that can be easily understand.

[1] I mean you could write them on paper, but that's really stretching it, mainly because you need a computer to execute transactions.

(I don't feel I'm expressing myself well here, but bear with me:)

Something that tends to be underappreciated is the risk associated with contemporary mobile payments solutions. Both the individual and the local economy become incredibly reliant on a small number of private companies.

For more well-off individuals who can spread their risk ad easily switch providers, this is much less of a practical risk and therefore are likely to shrug off. They also tend to have access to providers with human support and better platforms.

Consider also that for multi-national providers, they become affected in new ways to foreign domestic and international policies and politics.

These are just some ways in which people become serfs, at real mercy of the whims and fate of politics and businesses.

Last week, thousands of people who had Coinbase accounts in Japan are now forced to close them due to them now only being available for Japanese citizens (as opposed to residents).

This is probably not more than an annoyance for most of those affected, but transfer that to migrant populations and mobile banking in Africa and things get dark pretty quickly.

Cryptocurrencies (when done in a way that liberates the user as opposed to being wrapped in centralized fintech) break this dynamic completely.

There's other groups of people who have access to money and tech but lack access to banking: persecuted people, financially ruined people or people with irregular documents.

1) persecuted: For example, a religious cult grew to require power in the government in Turkey, clashed with the official government and even tried a military coup and failed. Following the coup, those with direct involvement to the coup went to jail and anyone known to be associated with the cult lost access everything and even their bank accounts were closed(they had a regular Banking institution that was seized) and other banks often refused to open an account for those who were associated with the cult. As a result, they started using money transfer services that are not banks and keep to money in cash.

2) financially ruined: People who screwed up or got unlucky in something and lost everything. Many would work and do business outside of the official channels and as a result they don't want to keep the money in traditional institutions because the money can be blocked or seized due to their financial situation. Also, they won't be able to get any benefit of a bank, so all they need is a way to keep and transfer money.

3) irregulars: Those are usually immigrants who entered a country trough illegal ways or overstayed their visas. In most places, they wont be able to provide the documents to open a bank account or even get a TV subscription but they will be working and making money for many years until they sort out their situation. They will need ways to get payed and pay bills, rent etc.

Therefore, "unbanked" doesn't really mean too poor, many times it means "unserviceable clients". The "decentralised" aspect can actually mean no one is left out since the usreviceability of those people come from the central government in the region.

As usual, here on HN, any time something is posted that relates to cryptocurrencies the discussion gets filled with negativity and even, seemingly unprovoked, outright hostility toward the idea. Overall HN (in my opinion) has a very good quality of discussion and I often read the comments before opening a link or even just for the sake of it. Nevertheless when it comes to cryptocurrencies that assumption goes out the window and I'm bound to see overly negative attitude to the point of irrationality. It's surprising to me how, out of all the places, HN would be the one where that's the case. I wonder if anyone has any theories on why that is? I dare to assume that it's not just my ignorance of some fundamental, unrecoverable flaw in the concept itself that motivates some to speak against it with such certainty. It might be partly a lack of understanding of the multitude of available options (and even those not yet conceived) and how different - "cryptos" can be from each other but I don't understand how that would translate to people writing unprovoked, unsubstantiated claims or even just unrelated but unhelpful, overly negative remarks. Is it some negative experience someone had that traumatized them? Why HN has this problem?

> Cryptocurrencies (when done in a way that liberates the user as opposed to being wrapped in centralized fintech) break this dynamic completely.

Now, tell me how to do this exactly? (At least a general sketch?) Because I really think that this is really not a problem that can be seen with cryptocurrency, but rather with how societies work, which is hard to solve.

I don't want to favour one or the other, but societal problems are something that require all of the cogs are working. Even if I assume that people are willing to use cryptocurrencies, oppressive governments can seize digital gadgets out of their hands, much as they can block transactions. I also don't have a solution to this unfortunately, and I feel that this is unsolvable.