2024-03-17 10:20:00 +07:00 by Mark Smith
So I've been listening to loads of podcasts mentioning Tether and Tron recently. They say these are super popular in places where people just want to do smaller transactions. Very popular in developing countries because fees are low. It's aimed at the unbanked, people that have never had bank accounts.
But what's going on from a technical perspective? First of all it's totally unclear to me how these unbanked people use it because surely at some stage they need to turn these cryptos into a fiat currency in order to actually buy something. Also how do they get crypto in the first place? Don't you need a bank account to make use of crypto eventually?
Are these all just literal seperate apps for your phone? Which are the blockchain, which are the coins? How do you exchange them? Or are you just stuck in the coin that you choose, along with all the other confused souls that somehow ended up with X coin on Y chain with Z wallet...
Here's a tiny fraction of what I was presented with:
- Tron
- Tether
- Etherium
- Bitcoin
- Aqua
- Fedimint
- Lghtning
- Liquid
- Optimism
But wait there's more. There are combinations too. Tether Tron, Liquid Tether, and so many other combinations. You quickly start to wonder whether even those you are listening to talking about this stuff know what they are talking about. It's enfuriating.
It's so unbelievably complicated. Once you do some research you will quickly be lost in a sea of technologies, protocols, stable coins, chains, side chains, rollups etc. How can sending, receiving and storing money be so fucking complicated? It's literally 3 fucking features y'all. WTF crypto?