Crypto is an unproductive bubble

Personally speaking, I think Bitcoin won't get 'mass adoption' in the developed World until they are using it without actually realizing: think a GUI and UX similar to that of online banking, and unfortunately, custodial services and wallets.

The idealist crypto-nerd in me wished everyone would be running their own mainchain and LN node and would be securing their funds on hardware wallets, and only communicated over End to End or PgP encrypted platforms with keys they swapped in person: but after over 10 years in this space I have come to realize that the average person will gravitate towards convince in orders of magnitude much more than security.

It's a harsh reality that I have long accepted when it comes to the 'average user' and it helps explain the prevalence of why the leaks, hacks and data breaches using these leaky services continues.

Personally speaking, this isn't 2011, you don't need to learn how to use Linux to download the blockchain and synch up to the network using QT and create wallets in the terminal, thus the IQ factor isn't relevant anymore... all you need is a relatively modern smart phone and an internet connection (and when that is down a Blockstream satellite or access to Starlink as has been proven to be the case in Tonga and Ukraine this year) to plug into this inclusive financial system: it's very telling that 3G/4G availability is more prevalent in the developed World than running water is.

Yes, I live there as a US citizen without access to EU banking, do you? It also worth noting that it is utilized by non EU member-nations, too. (See link below.)

I also happen to live in a country that hasn't adopted the Euro, it will soon but hasn't yet. I also pay my rent to somoene who lives and works in a Euro based country.

Thus direct transfer with Euro to non-Euro accounts (and vice-versa) requires fees, transfers, and conversion costs. And it doesn't operate 24/7, and they never have; weekends always have delays--I paid a friend from Switzerland in BTC to pay someone in a SEPA non-euro EU member nation for a deposit on an apartment before a flight on US time on a weekday (weekend in their time zone) and the funds arrived in less than 10 mins for 17 cents via BTC, the payment to arrive to from a Swiss bank account to a non-euro bank account took 3 days to arrive and clear. SEPA is what Switzerland uses, even though its not a EU nation [0]. And I used to live there when the CHF was pegged to the EUR and was accepted just like the CHF: there are payment rails that never changed as a result.

What I'm saying is things are more complex tan you are making it out to be when it comes to fintech and unless you work in it you will never truly understand that--what some deem edge cases are quite typical if you work in this Industry.

I think your POV is still based on the idea that things are working under ideal conditions (or near them), where as the Bitcoin network was designed to bypass and rout around all those inconsistencies and all the constraints when it doesn't operate as it should. Which is typical for the vast majority of the World's population.

I'm sure your measure of 'functional' vastly differs to someone who operates a legal and legitimate business, but because they are deemed someone who is either high risk or simply persona non-grata for working in an Industry the State doesn't like they cannot gain access to a bank account.

I think this is really the best 'check your privilege' moment we will ever have in the tech space, and most people on HN (mainly affluent tech workers) have as you expected failed in remarkable manner; instead of the woke BS that it's often used to explain people's insulated existence, this usecase clearly exposes how naive and coddled citizens of the developed World are to what are common and typical issues in the rest of the World, but since it has had almost no impact on their own day to day they not only ignore it but will go out of there way to criticize they have a glib understanding of at best.

I can make more sweeping generalizations, but I'm not sure it will be of any use.

0: https://gocardless.com/guides/sepa/countries-sepa-zone/

How much is a human life worth to you? How much are we all responsible for everything and nothing?

Collective punishment? It's just that there are limitations on tools global politics can use.

Independently of this perhaps my expectations on fellow humans are different than yours.

And at the end of the day crypto can be blocked and will be blocked sooner than later. every event like this which circumvent global mechanism will be worked against

The first operating system for real work is arguably in 1956 [1]. 13 years later we still didn't have the personal computer.

The internet was born in 1983. 13 years later it was around 36M users (1% global population) [2]

With "general purpose" crypto/decentralized apps really only getting going in 2015 w/ ethereum, it does seem like early days. The UX and infrastructure/tooling are still a ways away from being consumer ready.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_operating_systems [2] https://www.internetworldstats.com/emarketing.htm