Why care about crypto?
What can we do with them?
So much fraud & wasted energy: what am I missing?
Crypto-currency is to banking, payments and (soonish with Atomic Swaps) currency exchange – as the internet was to high-street retail, music buying, movie rental and more. It's going to change these industries. It's already beginning to change them
Because conventional currencies are broken, corrupted & a major factor in growing wealth inequality. Crypto-currencies promise to take the decision of how new units of a currency are created out of the hands of those driven by profit & politics.
Most new units of currency are created by private banks with each loan they issue (loans are money created from nothing). About 3% then comes from central banks printing money or Quantitive Easing. Both are the main cause of inflation.
Cashless payments have taken over, the last 3% of conventional currency units circulating in physical form will be gone anyway. They're backed by nothing and are created in virtually unlimited amounts for profit.
The cryptocurrencies that will win, after this exploratory period, will make the creation of new units of a currency uncorruptible by politics and profiteering – the original motivation of Bitcoin.
The poorest unbanked economies can enter the global economy (#litecoin). Your social media posts can be an instant source of income (@steemit). Your data can be a source of income (@iotatoken).
Much like the early days of the internet (1992-2002), once crypto-currency stabilises, it will be more about what they will empower people to do...
Make cross border payments instant and cheap (currently, several intermediary banks are involved and it can take up to a week). Currency exchange will be trivial. You will be your own bank as far as currency is concerned.
Everyday payments will be simplified (again, no intermediary banks needed). You'll get paid for all valuable content you create (rather than centralised social networks). You will sell weather data from sensors on your window-sill...
And then there's all the things we haven't thought of yet. There's already so much being explored. Then there's what we'll discover, serendipitously, through all the innovations that will happen.
Fraud is rife & scams are everywhere with conventional currency. Greed isn't something cryptocurrencies have solved (yet). But, they do provide mechanisms that may limit exploitation one day.
Then, there's the way conventional currencies work today... I encourage you to watch @mike_maloney's Hidden Secrets of Money and @PositiveMoneyUK's Banking 101, both on YouTube.
Lots of energy is wasted on banking with huge data-centres and office buildings. Then there's the printing and transportation of cash. Crypto-currencies are solving this...
Proof of Work mining (as in Bitcoin) is outdated & being replaced: Proof of Stake, SegWit & innovative non-blockchain solutions like Directed Acyclic Graphs e.g. the @iotatoken Tangle.
For now, the upside to mining is that value of otherwise unused renewable energy that exceeds storage capacities can be turned into currency (seen how much China is investing in Solar?)...