In one world, blockchain is a topic of casual conversation; in another world, blockchain is an essential tool for survival.
Author: Vitto Rivabella, AI Engineer at the Ethereum Foundation
Compiled by: Chopper, Foresight News
I have been working in the blockchain industry for many years, and there is something I need to confess: every time someone at a dinner party in Milan or Berlin says ‘cryptocurrency is just a casino,’ I politely nod, change the subject, and continue with my meal.
I stopped arguing about it a long time ago.
Not because they are right, but because making my case would require them to imagine a life they have never experienced — something that’s hard to do while enjoying wine and appetizers.
But I am tired of this polite pretense. The gap between what the brightest people I know in Europe say and what I see as reality in Lagos, Buenos Aires, and Nairobi has grown so large that remaining silent feels irresponsible.
So here’s what I’ve kept inside. Not promotional rhetoric, not an abstract from a white paper, but my real thoughts when you tell me ‘blockchain is just a solution looking for a problem.’
You say you don’t need it, and that’s correct. But when you say no one needs it, you’re wrong.
A single dinner changed the way I talk about it.
About three years ago, I attended a conference in Lisbon — the kind where people from forty countries sit in the same room pretending we’re all discussing the same thing. One of my colleagues, whom I’ll call Emeka, works at a cryptocurrency exchange operating across twenty African countries. He’s Nigerian, based in Lagos, and one of the calmest individuals I’ve met in this often frenetic industry.
After a panel discussion, a group of us went out for dinner. A fintech founder from Amsterdam made a familiar remark: ‘I really can’t see what problems cryptocurrencies solve that banks can’t.’
Emeka put down his fork.
He wasn’t angry, didn’t roll his eyes, but calmly said, “Last year, my cousin in Port Harcourt wanted to send money to our aunt in Cameroon. It took six days, and the fee was nearly 10%. His bank froze the transfer twice due to compliance checks. My aunt is seventy-three years old, doesn’t have a bank account, and had to walk forty minutes to a nearby Western Union branch. By the time the money arrived, she had already borrowed from her neighbor to buy medicine.”
He paused for a moment.
“She doesn’t know what blockchain is, and she doesn’t care. But that system you say works well? It doesn’t work at all for her.”
The dining table fell silent. Not because Emeka was being dramatic, but precisely because he wasn’t.
This brings me back to a point I often emphasize: those who loudly proclaim that cryptocurrency is a scam almost always do so because the current system treats them kindly. Their banks function properly, their currency is stable, their government doesn’t arbitrarily freeze accounts, their salaries arrive on time, and next month’s cost of living is roughly the same as this month’s.
But the majority of people on this planet don’t live like that. Unless you understand this, you will never grasp the true significance of blockchain.
The Privilege You Don’t See
There is one figure that should fundamentally reshape your understanding of this discussion.
Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest remittance costs globally. The average fee for sending $200 is close to 8%. This means a family receiving $200 from an overseas relative loses approximately $16 before the money even arrives. In some channels, the situation is worse, with fees exceeding 10% and transfers taking several days.
Consider this: Nigeria alone received approximately $19.5 billion in remittances in 2023, with 8% of that amount going directly into the pockets of intermediaries. This is no minor rounding error—it is a system that siphons billions of dollars annually from some of the poorest families on the planet. And most Europeans believe this system works well, simply because it benefits them.
When you transfer money from a German bank account to an Italian one, it arrives the same day, costs almost nothing, and you don’t even give it a second thought. This experience is not universal; it is merely an incidental result of geography and infrastructure. It is an invisible privilege, so subtle that you might mistakenly believe this is how the world operates.
But this is not how the world operates.
In 2021, the Central Bank of Nigeria banned commercial banks from processing any cryptocurrency transactions. They froze accounts, cut off exchange platforms, and attempted to suffocate it entirely.
It didn’t work.
Nigerians did not stop. They turned to Telegram, conducted peer-to-peer transactions through WhatsApp groups, and met local agents offline to exchange cash for USDT, a dollar-pegged stablecoin. The demand was so urgent, tied to people’s daily survival, that government bans could not even slow it down. Students, freelancers, and small merchants— they built an underground stablecoin economy because not doing so would mean watching their savings evaporate.
By 2024, Nigeria had become the second-largest cryptocurrency economy in the world by trading volume. Eighty-five percent of the transaction volumes were below one million dollars, meaning that it was ordinary citizens driving cryptocurrency adoption, not Wall Street speculators.
The government eventually lifted the ban—not because they had a change of ideology, but because they realized they could no longer monitor a permissionless financial system that citizens had built on their own initiative.
Now I want you to try something: go to a dinner party in Lagos and tell someone that cryptocurrency is a casino, then see what happens.
The side you never considered
When people in Europe or North America hear the term “cryptocurrency,” what comes to mind are Bitcoin’s K-line charts, someone spamming rocket emojis in a Discord group to hype meme coins, the collapse of FTX, and speculation.
They are not entirely wrong. Speculation does exist, scams do exist, and many people have lost money by investing in things they do not understand.
But reducing blockchain to speculation is like reducing the internet to spam emails. There is some truth to it, but it misses all the truly important aspects.
Here are things that most people in developed countries never need to think about.
What happens when your currency collapses
In April 2024, when Javier Milei became the President of Argentina, the annual inflation rate was approximately 200%. Imagine your grocery expenses doubling in a year, or your savings losing half their value while you sleep.
Argentinians did not sit around debating the philosophical value of decentralization; they bought stablecoins. According to Chainalysis, Argentina is the second-largest cryptocurrency market in Latin America, with a trading volume of about $940 billion. More than half of purchases made with Argentine pesos on exchanges went into stablecoins—not Bitcoin, not Ethereum, but stablecoins, digital dollars. Because what they needed was not a speculative asset but a currency that would still function as money tomorrow.
Three-quarters of Argentinian workers who receive their salaries in cryptocurrencies opt for stablecoins. Not because they are crypto enthusiasts, but because they still need to eat next month.
In Venezuela, the situation is even more extreme. The New York Times reported that President Nicolas Maduro has effectively shifted the national economy onto stablecoins. Venezuelans have given them a name: “Binance dollars.” When your national currency depreciates by 80% in a year and inflation approaches 500%, you don’t need a white paper to explain the utility of dollar-pegged digital tokens. All you need is a smartphone and five minutes.
Small merchants accept stablecoins as payment for goods and services, freelancers use blockchain transfers to receive payments from international clients, and families rely on stablecoins to receive remittances from relatives abroad. In some communities, stablecoins serve as a parallel financial system—rent, groceries, transportation, all settled through digital wallets.
This is not adoption driven by trends; it is adoption driven by survival.
What happens when the government freezes your funds?
Do you remember the story Emeka told about the bank freezing his cousin’s transfer? This is not an isolated case. In Nigeria, approximately one-third of adults are completely excluded from formal financial services. Thirty-three million people have no bank accounts, no credit cards, and no savings tools to preserve value.
For those who do have bank accounts, capital controls mean that accessing US dollars through official channels is nearly impossible. The gap between the official exchange rate and the black-market rate can be substantial. In early 2024, when the naira fell to a historic low, Nigeria saw stablecoin trading volumes approach $30 billion in a single quarter. People were not speculating; they were fleeing a burning building.
Mercy Corps Ventures conducted a simple pilot in Kenya: paying freelancers in stablecoins instead of using traditional remittance channels. Transaction fees dropped from 29% to 2%. Freelancers saved more money and received their income faster — even without a bank account.
I hope this figure truly resonates with you. From 29% to 2%, this is not an incremental improvement; it is the difference between a system designed to extract value from those least able to afford losses and a system that genuinely works.
The picture at scale
Stablecoins currently account for approximately 43% of all cryptocurrency trading volume in Sub-Saharan Africa. Specifically, in Nigeria, on one of Africa’s largest crypto exchanges, Yellow Card, the stablecoin USDT represents nearly 89% of trading activity. Seventy percent of users utilize stablecoins for personal needs: remittances and savings, rather than trading.
In Latin America, 61% of cryptocurrency users are under the age of 34, with the primary use cases being the same: protecting funds, cross-border transfers, and survival.
In 2024, the global scale of stablecoin transfers reached $27.6 trillion, surpassing the combined transaction volumes of Visa and MasterCard. This was not due to speculation but because of practical utility.
When someone in Amsterdam told me that blockchain doesn’t solve real-world problems, I thought of these numbers and had only one thing in mind: you have no idea, because you’ve never needed to know.
Two Worlds
I keep seeing a pattern in this industry, and once you notice it, it feels quite ironic.
In developed countries, discussions about blockchain are philosophical: is it decentralized enough? Is the technology elegant? Has it received regulatory approval? Is it a security or a commodity? People write in-depth critiques, debate on panels, express slightly informed skepticism, and feel profound as a result.
In developing countries, discussions about blockchain are pragmatic: how do I exchange pesos before they devalue? Which platform charges the lowest fees to send money to my mom? Can I pay suppliers with USDT so I don’t lose profit due to exchange rate fluctuations?
Do you see the difference?
In one world, blockchain is a topic of discussion; in another, it’s a tool.
And for those who use it as a tool: shopkeepers in Lagos park their working capital in digital dollars as the naira crashes; freelancers in Nairobi receive payments in USDC and convert them into M-Pesa within minutes; families in Caracas receive remittances while traditional channels would take a quarter of the amount in fees. These people don’t doubt the value of blockchain at all.
They know it has value because they use it every day.
Emeka said something else during that dinner in Lisbon that has stuck with me. He said: “In Nigeria, people don’t care about cryptocurrencies. They care about what cryptocurrencies can do.”
That difference is everything.
The people in Lagos, Buenos Aires, and Nairobi are not followers of any particular technology, nor do they align themselves with any group or circle. They found something that addresses issues the government and banks either cannot or will not resolve, and they began using it—not because someone convinced them, but out of necessity for survival.
And for those in affluent countries who believe they see through the hype, the unsettling truth is this: what you dismiss as speculative behavior is, in fact, the most rational economic decision on this planet. When your currency is collapsing, switching to a digital asset pegged to the dollar is not gambling; on the contrary, it is the only sensible course of action.
Your impending counterargument
I know what you’re thinking because I’ve heard it a hundred times.
“Okay, but what about the scams? What about exit frauds? Some people lost their life savings due to meme coins promoted by influencers!”
You’re absolutely right—these exist, they are real, and they are all extremely unfortunate.
But here’s the thing: bad actors exploiting a technology should not be a reason to oppose that technology. Instead, it should be a reason to advocate for better regulation, better education, and better infrastructure. Just because people commit fraud via email doesn’t mean we abolish email; just because someone gets robbed at an ATM doesn’t mean we shut down banks.
The existence of scams in the crypto space is undeniable and significant, and the industry needs to take it more seriously. However, dismissing the entire technology based on these scams reflects intellectual laziness—a way to feel clever without truly studying the subject.
And who pays the highest price for such laziness? Not you, with your stable banking system in a developed nation. The ones who bear the cost are the people in Lagos, Caracas, and Buenos Aires, who could benefit from better infrastructure, improved regulation, and greater institutional support for the tools they are already using but who are dismissed by those capable of influencing global policies.
Your skepticism is not without cost; someone is paying the price for it.
What you can truly do
I am not asking you to buy cryptocurrency, nor to become a blockchain evangelist, nor to change your investment strategy, nor to replace your profile picture with laser eyes.
I ask you to do something simpler yet more challenging: update your cognitive model.
Stop conflating speculation with utility. When you hear ‘cryptocurrency,’ don’t automatically associate it with K-line charts. The most significant developments happening in blockchain today are not about the price of Bitcoin but about freelancers in Nairobi receiving their wages within seconds instead of waiting weeks; families in Nigeria preserving their savings in digital dollars while the Naira depreciates by one-third; and shop owners in Venezuela accepting stablecoins because their national currency has failed. A speculative layer does exist, loud and headline-grabbing, but beneath it lies an infrastructure layer quietly becoming an essential financial conduit for billions of people.
Go and talk to those who actually use it—not crypto traders in New York or people trying to sell you tokens. Talk to individuals from Nigeria, Argentina, Kenya, or Venezuela. Ask them what stablecoins mean to them and how they lived before. You will hear stories that make your statement ‘cryptocurrency is a scam’ seem narrow-minded and embarrassing. If you don’t know anyone from these countries, read Chainalysis’s ‘Geography of Cryptocurrency Report’; it will change your perspective on the matter.
Acknowledge your privilege. Next time you open your banking app and complete a free transfer in three seconds, take notice. Realize that you live in a world where this is possible, and recognize that for one-third of humanity, it is not. Then ask yourself whether your view of blockchain stems more from a life you’ve never had to endure than from what you truly understand.
Advocate for better regulation rather than dismissing it altogether. If you genuinely care about scams, rug pulls, and injured parties, the solution is not ‘prohibition’ or ‘ignorance’ but thoughtful, measured regulation that makes this technology safer for those who need it most. Europe’s MiCA framework is a start, but regulations crafted by those who believe blockchain is a scam will only protect vested interests, not users.
A window
Let me tell you what happened after that dinner in Lisbon.
Emeka and I spent another two hours chatting in the hotel bar. He told me about his mother, who lives in Abuja. She is sixty-seven years old and does not know what blockchain is, but she uses USDT to receive money transferred by her son, which she exchanges through a mobile app taught to her by people from her church.
She used to receive money via Western Union, which took several days and incurred fees of nearly 10%. Now, the transfer takes only a few minutes and is virtually free. She has no idea that she is using blockchain; all she knows is that the money arrives faster and she gets more of it.
Then Emeka said something that left a deep impression on me.
“Do you know what my mother calls it? She calls it ‘the new way.’ That’s all—no crypto, no blockchain, just ‘the new way.’ Because for her, the old ways didn’t work, and now this does.”
I keep thinking about this phrase: ‘the new way.’ No ideology, no sense of belonging to a particular circle, no investment portfolio—just an acknowledgment that the old way didn’t work, and this new way does.
What I need you to understand is this: We are in a transitional period where some still remember what the old ways felt like. People like Emeka’s mother have lived for decades in a financial system with high fees and poor service; people in Argentina remember that 200% inflation is not just a number in textbooks—it’s the reason families can’t afford school fees; in Venezuela, people have watched their life savings become worthless time and again, generation after generation.
These individuals have found a useful tool—not a perfect one, not a risk-free one, but a tool that achieves what others never could for them: access to stable currency, borderless transfers, and participation in the financial system without being exploited.
While they build entire lives around this technology—paying rent, saving for their children, transferring money to aging parents—you dismiss it as a casino at dinner parties in Berlin.
I get it, really. From your perspective, it probably looks like nothing more than noise.
But from their perspective, it feels like the first time in their lives they’ve been treated fairly.
The question has never been whether blockchain can work or not; billions of people have already answered that. The real question is: will those with the most influence, the most wealth, and the loudest voices help make it better, or will they continue to ignore a revolution they don’t need because they were born with too many privileges.
