Hello Steemit, It has been a while.
For my first post in over a year I wanted to talk to the community about the real life uses for crypto, especially in the high inflation areas of South America. For several years, I have have been touting the power of DLT and it's ability to alter the way we pay, but I hadn't seen the first hand impact it could have, until I took a vacation with my family, to the beautiful country of Ecuador.
The Teleférico in Quito
A Little Background on Ecuador:
Ecuador's fiat currency (the Sucre) failed in the late 90's due to incredibly high inflation rates and poor monetary policy by the central bank. In order to save their struggling economy, Ecuador decided to forgo their local fiat in lieu of the US dollar, and they have been using USD since. All stores and kiosks in Ecuador and the Galapagos used USD cash as their main transaction means. While some of the more "westernized" locations, such as the Hyatt, takes credit cards, the fee for merchants is ridiculous. I interviewed several of the store owners while visiting and found the average fee charged to merchants to be betweent 14-22%.
Additionally, it is a very difficult and arduous process to bring money into the country (from foreign sales, money transfer, etc.). One of our local guides had a beautiful trail book he had written, but was struggling with bringing in cash from online sales, as the banks would take a large cut, undermining his profitability. Even then, traditional banking that we take for granted in the US and EU, is not available to everyone in Ecuador. There are higher minimum balance requirements as well as other restrictions making it difficult for the average citizen to easily access banking services.
I was born and raised in the US and even I am wary of the purchasing power of the dollar. Especially in such a, lets just say, interesting, political climate. Imagine being from another country that uses the US currency and has to worry about volatility caused by a foreign government's trade war thousands of miles away. These people have no control, no vote over the monetary policy in the US, and are subject to the consequences of any US actions, whether good or bad.
Even the Galapagos Giant Tortoises Know Something is Wrong
The value of using a decentralized, autonomous currency in Ecuador, and other countries lacking a strong local fiat, is unmeasurable. While Bitcoin or Ethereum would be an excellent solution, unfortunately in 2018 the crypto-to-fiat infrastructure just isn't there. Buying crypto has become exponentially easier in the last 12 months, but exchanging back to fiat is still much more difficult and costly then it should be.
That is where I discovered a project called Crypterium. Feel free to check out their whitepaper but TL;DR Crypterium is a system allowing people to spend any crypto in stores and the merchant receives their fiat of choice. Crypterium and projects like it would be an AMAZING addition to the economy of countries like Ecuador, Argentina and Venezuela. Vendors would save money from the CC companies, paying a .5% settling fee instead of 20+% and cryptocurrency would be better to hedge against political and trade war related volatility.
The US dollar has been the world reserve currency for many years. We have to consider the very real possibility, that one day, it will change. The question remains, could it be replaced by BTC or some other crypto? Please comment below and let me know what you think. And as always, thanks for reading.
Best,
Spins
Playing with the Sea Turtles