I actually think Bitcoin could help poorer people more than it can the rich.
For example, if you've ever been a poor college student, you know that banking fees can be very onerous. (Buy a $2 coffee with too little in your account; boom $40 overdraft.)
But you're forced to use a bank because it's really hard to get by in the world without one. (It's hard to receive money and impossible to spend it online or send it to a friend without the risk of carrying around cash.) Bitcoin could solve those problems for the poor.
Bitcoin carries all the risk of cash and more; a bitcoin mugger would be able to get your life's savings rather than just what you have in your wallet.
Regulations against predatory lending will be much harder to enforce with bitcoin, which will hurt the poor.
Many people compare bitcoin to gold. Look at who trades/pays/saves in gold today. It's not the poor.
Actually, I read a book a while back by someone who was in Argentina when it crashed. He said people were using small lengths of gold chain as currency.
Regarding bitcoin muggers, that would be quite difficult if you take elementary security measures. Your life savings don't go in your phone wallet, they go in a paper wallet that you keep in a safe deposit box.
Enforcing lending regulations is easy: don't follow the regulations, don't expect any help from the state if the borrower decides not to pay you back.
> Actually, I read a book a while back by someone who was in Argentina when it crashed. He said people were using small lengths of gold chain as currency.
Well sure, when you don't have access to a reliable consumer banking system everyone, including the poor, falls back on gold (or cigarettes or the like). Do you have evidence that the crash hit the rich harder than it hit the poor? Because my expectation would be just the opposite.
> Your life savings don't go in your phone wallet, they go in a paper wallet that you keep in a safe deposit box.
Well, I guess you can make it as safe as cash by giving it all the inconvenience of cash. I doubt people are going to switch to a payment mechanism that's less convenient than today's credit cards though.
> Enforcing lending regulations is easy: don't follow the regulations, don't expect any help from the state if the borrower decides not to pay you back.
Which just means those lenders adopt, uh, extra-legal measures.
Being able to track the movement of money, reverse fraudulent transactions, freeze accounts and so on is a major weapon against organized crime. Bitcoin makes it easier to run such crime, and it's the poor who will suffer the most as a result.
Things like m of n transactions will make this harder than it sounds. Ultimately, bitcoin will end up safer than cash or bank accounts. And there won't be risk of a "bail-in."
I actually think Bitcoin could help poorer people more than it can the rich.
It already is capable of doing that. If cryptocurrencies do nothing but put Western Union out of the foreign remittance business, they will save billions of dollars for people to whom that kind of money still means something.
Yeah, so, a poor college student can't have a bank account but he can have a computer ($200) and internet connection ($10/m) to get started with these coins.
Well, how does a poor college student get his first coin? or a satoshi? Oh right, a computer, a wallet, maybe a bank account and an exchange platform account. No? Go find someone sells coins offline? lol, with what? Cash? Oh, that poor student... He just transfered 10 grands into bitcoins yesterday, today, it worths 12 grands, tomorrow worths 8. No worry, a poor student doesn't care.
Any coin that needs an internet connection means a huge ignorance of 2/3 of world population and infrastructures (which are controlled by the goverments). I don't want to live in that kind of world/system.
The premined coins have already made the bitcoin world unfair, how can any one keep saying bitcoin is the future and doing good things for the poor? I guess because those coins made wealth redistribution much easier than ever.
Cellphones are very common in third-world countries. If a currency works on a cheap smartphone, most of the world's poor will be able to use it before long.
Not to quibble, but 'poor college student' is a statistical oxymoron. I do agree though that cryptocurrencies offer great promise for 3rd-world economies and is a democratizing influence.
If someone has less than $100 in their bank account and they aren't making small purchases in cash, I'm not sure there is any mechanism that is going to help them. They need to do some combination of increasing their income and doing without coffee.
(It is super easy to budget with cash...)
Edit: Just to clarify, in the parenthetical, I mean 'budget' in the sense of 'stick to spending what you have', not 'plan out what to purchase'.
Things online are often much cheaper (not to mention quicker) than buying in person though. Save ~10% and risk overdraft or pay more of your scarce funds is a shitty tradeoff for anyone.
I am not suggesting current monetary system works. I am only saying Bitcoin is not the solution. Digital currencies? Yes. Bitcoin - nope. There is a clear unfair advantage for early adopters - very much like how the English came into the America and laid out property laws and took swarms of land. How is this any different?
