It's really interesting that the receptiveness other cultures have toward crypto. In Canada many people are so cynical about BTC, even when I present them the FACTS. "It's not worth anything!" they say...ugh...have you ever made a trade? Garage sale? We've all had those types of convos I'm sure.
It shows who really knows what money is. "Money" is something that solves problems. Money is what makes trading always possible. It's not paper. It's not permission from banks or governments.
Maybe a lot of folks in "the first world" have it too cushy to care to understand.
So many ppl go down to Mexico for the lower cost of medical and dental. That is such a perfect place to show the value of crypto to cynical North Americans. This is really cool news to see steem and crypto in general moving upwords, providing more and more value; life-changing value.
All the best to your current/future project(s) in this direction @williambanks and @alechahn
I follow you for such a nice comment. :)
People in second and third world countries, especially where the grey market is big, are ripe for adoption of cryptocurrency POS systems, especially ones that help both buyers and sellers not be surveiled in their transactions. Steem is not ideal in this respect, however, this is something that I personally will be working on fixing, but really, other cryptos especially ones like zcash, will fill this gap. People who have lived through dictatorships and other kinds of totalitarian governments understand that giving the government access to private data is a tippie toe step towards serious situations involving people dying.
This! Forget exciting abstract concepts like dictatorships for a bit, I could argue you are living under one right now, but I'll not go down that road. ;) :P
Let me give you a real life example. We have been working with an non profit called "Cafe Migrante" who we trained to use crypto because fair trade coffee producers got bullied and extorted by neighboring coffee farmers who didn't get the fair trade deal. ( Remember the hypocrisy of the fair trade logo is that only 20% of the coffee needs to be fair trade to get the certified logo). So how did the neighbor know they got much more for their coffee? Well... This are small communities with big family's, so some cousin works at the bank and has access to look into the bank account... The rest is up to your imagination...
All governments are like dictatorships, and in fact, can be a lot more insidious because the image of egalitarianism presented. Economic oppression kills in different ways, it raises suicide rates, domestic violence, inhibits potential and can kill indirectly through wrong headed health policies created by special interest regulatory capture. And I have neglected also the use of divide and conquer to bring violence without directly implicating legislators and their cronies, think of George Soros, a modern example of a war profiteering who cloaks his actions in philanthropy, in a long tradition of such mischief.