Hi,
I came across this video recently in a search for a simple explanation of the basis of cryptography as applied to crypto currencies for my wife and sons.
I think it is a good short introduction to what it is and what can be done with it. Though I have been invested in cryptos for 18 months I had not ventured beyond the typical investor’s use case of having a personal digital wallet, but keeping most of the currencies on a live exchange, where it is relatively simple to buy, sell and trade crypto currencies.
My recent interest in DeFi, providing Liquidity Pairs to earn interest, and buying and trading NFTs has caused me to step out a little. My son has initiated his metamask account on his computer, and I have just sent him the equivalent of $25 in tokens he has added to his metamask. This was a private wallet to private wallet exchange of currency, with no involvement of an exchange.
Cost of transaction was the equivalent of $0.006c for a transfer of nominal value $25. That is 0.023%. Anyone who knows foreign workers who remit their funds to their home countries will know that these are some of the poorest people in the world, and it can cost them up to 10% of their remitted funds to transfer that money back home.
It should disgust the majority of people in the world (forum members included) that the poorest people have to pay the highest price for intermediation services. I cannot wait until the poorest people in the world can all have access to a crypto currency account, and pay less than a thousandth of the fees they currently pay via foreign exchange sevices today. It is likely to be done via mobile phones, and once it is available via Elon Musk’s low earth orbit satellite, or via Helium network using Lorawan technology. The application layer is there. There are 5 billion second hand mobile phones on earth. Now we await the transport mechanism that can be used at a similarly very low fee per transaction cost.