Crypto, Frogs, and Redistribution of Wealth

There will only be 21 million Bitcoin. What happens when 7.6 billion people realize that? (Mr. Dan Held on Twitter)

A full belly doesn't understand the hungry's needs. (A Russian proverb)

These days I came across a bunch of remarkable news!

The first news was about Nigeria. It said people there are buying BTC "at a premium", namely -- for US$70K per BTC. I don't know why the Nigerians do it and how they do it, but I'd gladly sell them a chunk of my BTC stack at that price. Anyway, these statements tell quite a lot about Nigeria:

Cryptocurrencies have served as economic empowerment to millions of Nigerians using trading as a source of income and have become a hedge against a high inflation rate of over 15% in the country. ... There is a minimum of 100 startups in Nigeria that operate in the blockchain industry either as exchanges, educators, digital assets management firms, etc. They have all employed thousands of Nigerians.

A pretty big country with 200M people, a good climate, and a shitload of oil seeks rescue in crypto-trading (and blogging at Leofinance, I suppose?) You might think I'm blaming the Nigerians for something -- but I'm not. Actually, they do the same thing the US and EU have been doing for a long time. In other words, the Nigerians have got an opportunity to bake money pretty much the same way the US and EU are accused of. No wonder that they're so enthusiastic about it, and I can't blame the Nigerians for that.

Every now and when I think that when Grayscale or other "institution" buys some crypto -- there must be someone who sells it to them. Maybe that "someone" is a smart poor guy from Nigeria, Vietnam, the Philippines, etc. who sells the "digital assets" he's mined, traded, or jerked out of faucets to the US and EU folks for cash and then turns this cash into something useful, hopefully. Food, for example.

There will only be 21 million Bitcoin. What happens when 7.6 billion people realize that?

Some Mr. Dan Held said it on Twitter recently (I found it here).

Well, I think I have an answer: most of those 7.6 billion people will not give a fuck about it.

The Russians have a proverb that I can loosely translate like "The full doesn't understand the hungry's needs" (I don't know its equivalent in English).

A long time ago I watched a documentary on TV. It was about a remote village somewhere in the African or South-American jungle. No "teh drama", just a simple documentary about their everyday life. The village was rather "civilized" one, people were dressed "in European" (old t-shirts and torn jeans), they used guns and metal tools, had a school, a doctor, and a church rather nearby. I don't remember if they had TV, but they definitely knew pretty well about the Outside World's existence. They were simply too remote and too poor to take any part in it.

In an episode the narrator said something like that: "Back from school, the children have to go several kilometers through the jungle. Along the way, they caught a giant frog. It will be their dinner for today".

Those kids were not interested if that frog was an ecologically-friendly supply-blockchain-labeled healthy-food green frog. For them, it was just a frog, a piece of meat they can have for dinner without much blood, sweat, and toil. Quite a rare thing in that area, probably. And they would hardly then give a fuck about all the digital shit of the world.

I find it kinda ironic how crypto actually redistributes wealth: from the guys who don't know what to do with excess money they have to the guys who want to have something better than a frog for dinner (provided that the frog-eaters have an internet connection, know English, and are smart enough to realize the opportunity).

Buying crypto is like giving a nice fat frog to the hungry!

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