There's essentially no legitimate use case for crypto-currency. Cypherpunks have been at it for decades and all they have to show for it is drugs, ponzis, assassination markets, and conspiracy theories.
It would be nice to see some sort of casual hawala-type federated micropayments system based on real national currency, with instant settlement, low fees, and no fake money value store. But, that would be a pre-9/11 idea. Nowadays that's basically illegal and useless.
Paypal is more or less good enough, and hopefully regulators and market forces will control the fees and abuses.
Sorry, but have you looked on the democracy and justice-culture index maps worldwide? The democratic, end-of-history, justice-seperatly-delivered state is currently in full retreat.
I agree, the futurists got it the wrong way around, assuming something cyper-punk-currency enough would blow the state away and allow for crypto-anarchy to rule. Instead, we got states that on slight economic decline implode on themselves (a whole thinker caste in denial about human nature hunting scape goats) and suddenly the crypto-currency nonsense doesent look idiotic, because it can work on, even as the state becomes hostile.
Thats the vision- a somalia like decline, but society moves on, with schools back uped to youtube, with contracts backed up to the block chain, with the currency back uped to bitcoin. I find the ideals of crypto-anarchy laughable (those guys would be gunned down on the first corner, in a real anarchic world), and yet, i can agree to the path we taken. Cellphones and facebook, to have a culture of shame, that fights wild mobs and public hysteria, because the internet does not forget your lowest point. Anyone in power in fear of getting caught in public, for the world to see as just another corrupt, well fed monkey?
When my work introduced me to the guy that explains to us how the retirement fund works, I asked him if the Euro is safe (this was 2011-12), and what the safest investment is. He said "the safest investment is to buy a farm and grow your own food, because you can't eat money or gold.".
And in this Somalia 2.0 future of yours, how will the computers and networks be powered?
It would be nice to see some sort of casual hawala-type federated micropayments system based on real national currency, with instant settlement, low fees, and no fake money value store. But, that would be a pre-9/11 idea. Nowadays that's basically illegal and useless.
Paypal is more or less good enough, and hopefully regulators and market forces will control the fees and abuses.