Has crypto delivered on any of its promises?: Pragmatists

Eleven cents. That is what it costs to send $200 from Manila to Leyte province on a stablecoin wallet. Western Union charges $14. The math is the argument.

The people who can’t wait

Marco Reyes — twenty-six, construction worker — sent that $200 to his mother in March 2023. Ninety seconds. Cash in hand before he finished his lunch break. The cypherpunks promise a new monetary system. The regulators demand submission to the last framework. Both are arguing about the future of money. We are interested in whether the thing works today, right now, for people who cannot afford to wait.

The remittance market moves $650 billion a year. Global average cost: 6.2 percent. The poorest workers on earth pay roughly $40 billion annually in fees to move their own earnings. In Argentina, savers converted to USDC because they were watching their money shrink. In Lebanon, where banks froze dollar withdrawals and never reopened them, stablecoins became the parallel banking system. The people in Beirut call it a way to pay rent.

The fraud concentrates in speculative trading and opaque platforms — furthest from the utility we describe. Nobody lost their retirement using a stablecoin wallet for remittances. They lost it trading leveraged perpetual futures on an exchange run by a kid in shorts. Regulate the casino. Leave the wire transfer alone.

Where we concede ground: The utility reaches a fraction of the people who need it. Last-mile conversion depends on informal networks that are inconsistent.

What would change our mind: If five years from now global remittance costs have not dropped despite stablecoin availability.

Read the full synthesis: Has crypto delivered on any of its promises?