Bitcoin is a non-solution for a non-problem… according to bankers, regulators, and legacy operators. But reality paints a very different picture.

The current financial system is full of flaws: Inflation, bubbles, bailouts, questionable regulations, unfair policies, inequality, lack of transparency, poverty, the unbanked, and more. It’s a broken system for many with unfair advantages for a few. Coincidentally, these few are the ones opposed to change. What a surprise.

One of the reasons Bitcoin was created is to provide a fairer system that does not depend on corrupt politicians, greedy bankers, or obsolete financial institutions. When money and power get concentrated in a few hands, bad things are bound to happen.

Satoshi Nakamoto saw this during the 2008 crisis and decided to do something about it. The rest is history.

This is what Bitcoin fixes

2 billion people don’t have access to a bank account. In this day and age, one should think this should be a thing of the past but no, it is not.

Being unbanked is discriminatory. Everything has to be done in cash and even that’s difficult to manage in remote places. This is one of the reasons why in countries like Kenya, people have been using N-Pesa — a phone payment system — since cash is not widely available.

M-Pesa is better than nothing but it can’t be compared to having a crypto wallet. With this, you can save, transfer, pay, send, borrow and lend money in a fast, secure and inexpensive way.

This is a great opportunity for many developing countries that finally have a chance to function normally with services we take for granted.

With crypto, you become your own bank and gain access to all the opportunities provided by banking minus the gatekeepers.

A $50 phone is all that is needed to enter the financial opportunities provided by the crypto ecosystem. This is already changing the lives of many in places like Nigeria, Venezuela, El Salvador, or India.

The market for remittance will reach $1 trillion in the near future. About 20% of it gets lost in fees and commissions by intermediaries and middlemen and never gets to the people most in need.

This is easily fixed by Bitcoin. On a peer-to-peer network, transactions are permissionless, instantaneous, and virtually free.

But it’s not just the fees, having to deal with Western Union and similar intermediaries is slow, bureaucratic, and cumbersome at both ends. Doing the same transaction from wallet to wallet is seamless once the system is properly set up and running.

Anyone living in one of the countries listed above will have a hard time trying to save money for a rainy day. It’s like trying to hold water in a leaky bucket.

If you are an entrepreneur in Argentina, Zimbabwe, or Venezuela, it doesn’t matter how well you do or how hard you work, all the value goes to zero almost instantly.

These countries have traditionally resorted to investing in proper stores of value in order to retain some purchasing power. The dollar and other assets have been used as a safe haven to escape from devaluation and inflation.

But now there is something much better. Why depend on a third country with questionable economic policies, endless money printing, and interruptible supply when you can go straight to the source?

Bitcoin is deflationary, censorship-resistant, safe to store, send, and hide. It doesn’t inflate 3000% like the Venezuelan Bolivar or 15% like the US dollar lately.

Gold is also a good store of value but Bitcoin is much easier to buy, carry, send or transact. All these countries are embracing the Bitcoin revolution with open arms and who can blame them. It is the panacea they’ve been waiting for.

Bitcoin goes up 200% a year on average. Nothing can compare to it as an investment. Not gold, not real estate, not stocks, nothing.

It’s also liquid, easy to buy and sell and secure to store. It’s gold 2.0. No wonder it’s taking over the world as the best value asset.

Traders are very excited about this new platform called Defi. They can do just about any operation brokers, banks and financial centers provide but in a fast, cheap, efficient, and automatic way.

Not only can you trade Bitcoin against Ethereum, you can also speculate with thousands of small coins and tokens, join liquidity pools, and mine yield farming as well as buying and selling futures, options, and the rest.

This is an extremely risky business, just like traditional trading, but the option is there for those who get educated, understand the risks, and wish to make a living this way.

Expensive assets, like real estate, could be divided into smaller units with each getting an assigned value. This is a process called tokenization.

Currently, this is being done with gold, houses, and even cars.

A company could tokenize a $500,000 house for example and assign 250 tokens at $2000 each and put them up for sale. The tokens grant partial ownership of the asset which could be used as an investment, as a letting property, or as shared property.

This provides new opportunities to have some exposure to assets that are not otherwise affordable.

When those tokens go up in value they can be sold for a profit.

This could also be done in dollars but the system is more reliable when done in crypto. By using the blockchain public ledger these transactions can be stored publicly in a transparent way thus avoiding any foul play.

Tokenization has many use cases like providing an entry point in the property ladder, buying artwork, or facilitating the sharing economy. There is a world of possibilities provided by this new ecosystem.

Contrary to popular belief, Bitcoin could solve many of the environmental problems we have around the usage of energy.

Energy can’t be easily stored so a big percentage of it gets inevitably wasted at power stations. One way to deal with this would be to mine Bitcoin during off-peak periods and then use some of those coins to pay for electricity when it gets more expensive. This not only avoids waste but also makes Bitcoin function as a giant battery.

Bitcoin has been criticized for its intense energy consumption but in reality, it consumes far less than banks, credit cards, payment rails, or gold mining. Besides, since miners need cheap energy, and solar, wind, and hydro are among the cheapest sources, Bitcoin is effectively promoting the use of renewables driving prices even lower.

The concept of blockchain was developed by Satoshi Nakamoto as an immutable public ledger where all transactions get recorded in an immutable, permanent and transparent way.

But it has many uses beyond cryptocurrencies. Some of its applications are:

• Securing medical data
• Music royalties
• Preventing identity fraud
• Supply chain traceability
• Voting mechanism
• NFTs for creators

The only limit is the imagination. Think of any transaction where there is a need to trust a third party — bank, credit card company, government, vendors, notaries, insurance, etc — and you get a use case for the blockchain. The need for trust is eliminated, solving the old-age Byzantine generals’ problem.

The blockchain along with smart contracts will bring a transparent, reliable, secure, and immutable system from which we can all benefit and will eliminate unwanted middlemen that provide no value.

One of the problems NGOs face is making sure donations get to the people who need them most. Inevitably, some of the money gets lost in the way. Thanks to the traceability of Bitcoin, this could be mostly eliminated.

Every transaction, expenditure, and remittance can be easily tracked, making it difficult for middlemen and corrupt officials to keep a big chunk of it. Also, the money can be transferred directly into the recipient’s crypto wallets to avoid tampering.

Someone once said that charity is about poor people in rich countries sending money to rich people in poor countries. Well, with Bitcoin this will no longer be the case, the money will be for the kids, the mothers, and the people for whom it was intended.

Yes, Bitcoin fixes a lot of things. It fixes corruption, theft, inflation, incompetence, inefficiencies, speed, privacy, intermediaries, energy, and trust.

It’s a lot to take on but the process should be easy since the bar was quite low, to begin with. The systems we’ve been using for decades are obsolete, inefficient, and corrupt and these are the reasons why Nakamoto decided to do something about it.

He or she should be given the Nobel prize for peace, engineering, IT, and economics. The Guy is a genius and it’s already made a big impact in the lives of millions.

The world, as we know it, will be transformed in the next few years and this is partly due to this amazing technology known as Bitcoin.

Yes, Bitcoin fixes everything…almost.

Coinsmart. Beste Bitcoin-Börse in Europa
Source: https://medium.com/geekculture/9-problems-solved-by-crypto-b885a9016ec5?source=rss——-8—————–cryptocurrency