You think blockchain is a scam, just because your bank card still works

Original Author: Vitto Rivabella, AI Engineer at the Ethereum Foundation

Original Compilation: Chopper, Foresight News

I've been working in the blockchain industry for many years, and there's something I need to confess: every time at a dinner in Milan or Berlin, when someone says "cryptocurrency is just a casino," I politely nod, change the subject, and continue with my meal.

I stopped arguing long ago.

Not because they are right, but because the argument I would need to make requires them to imagine a life they have never experienced, which is difficult to do while enjoying wine and appetizers.

But I'm tired of this polite narrative. Because the gap between the words coming from the smartest people I know in Europe and the reality I see in Lagos, Buenos Aires, and Nairobi has grown so large that I feel it's irresponsible to remain silent.

So this is what I've been holding back. Not marketing talk, not a whitepaper summary, but my genuine thoughts when you tell me "blockchain is just a solution looking for a problem."

You're right that you don't need it. But you're wrong to say no one needs it.

A Dinner That Changed How I Talk About This

About three years ago, I was at a conference in Lisbon. The kind where people from forty countries sit in the same room, pretending to talk about the same thing. A colleague of mine—let's call him Emeka—worked for a cryptocurrency exchange operating in twenty African countries. He's Nigerian, based in Lagos, and one of the calmest people I've met in an industry full of hype.

After a panel, a group of us went for dinner. A fintech founder from Amsterdam made a familiar comment: "I just don't see what problem crypto solves that banks don't."

Emeka put down his fork.

He wasn't angry, didn't roll his eyes, just said calmly: "Last year, my cousin in Port Harcourt wanted to send money to our aunt in Cameroon. It took six days and cost nearly 10% in fees. His bank froze the transfer twice for compliance checks. My aunt is seventy-three, unbanked, and had to walk forty minutes to the nearest Western Union. By the time the money arrived, she had already borrowed from a neighbor to buy medicine."

He paused.

"She doesn't know what blockchain is, and she doesn't care. But that system you say works well? It doesn't work for her."

The table went quiet. Not because Emeka was being dramatic, but because he wasn't being dramatic at all.

This is the point I keep coming back to: those who loudly proclaim crypto is a scam almost always do so because the existing system works very well for them. Their banks function, their currency is stable, their government doesn't arbitrarily freeze accounts, their salary arrives on time, and the groceries they can buy next month cost roughly the same as this month.

But most people on this planet don't live like that. Unless you understand this, you will never understand what blockchain truly means.

The Privilege You Don't See

There's a number that should completely reframe how you think about this discussion.

Sub-Saharan Africa is the most expensive region in the world to send remittances. The average cost to send $200 is nearly 8%. This means a family receiving $200 from a relative abroad loses about $16 before the money even arrives. On some corridors, it's worse—fees over 10%, transfers taking days.

Consider that Nigeria alone received about $19.5 billion in remittances in 2023. 8% of that went to middlemen. This isn't a rounding error; it's a system siphoning billions of dollars annually from some of the planet's poorest families. And most Europeans think this system works well simply because it works for them.

When you transfer from a German bank account to an Italian one, it arrives same-day, costs almost nothing, and you don't even think about it. That experience is not universal; it's an accident of geography and infrastructure. It's a privilege so invisible you mistake it for how the world works.

But that's not how the world works.

In 2021, Nigeria's central bank banned commercial banks from processing any cryptocurrency transactions. They froze accounts, cut off exchange access, tried to kill it.

It didn't work.

Nigerians didn't stop. They moved to Telegram, conducted peer-to-peer trades on WhatsApp groups, met local agents in person, exchanged cash for the dollar-pegged stablecoin USDT. The need was so urgent, so tied to daily survival, that the government ban didn't even slow it down. Students, freelancers, small merchants—they built an underground stablecoin economy because the alternative was watching their savings evaporate.

By 2024, Nigeria had become the world's second-largest cryptocurrency economy by transaction volume. 85% of that volume was in transactions under one million dollars, meaning it was driven by ordinary people, not Wall Street speculators.

The government eventually reversed the ban. Not because they changed their ideology, but because they realized they could no longer monitor the permissionless financial system their citizens had decided to build for themselves.

Now I want you to try something: go to a dinner in Lagos and tell people crypto is a casino. See what happens.

The Side You Never Think About

When someone in Europe or North America hears the word "cryptocurrency," they think of Bitcoin price charts, someone shilling meme coins with rocket emojis in a Discord, the FTX collapse, speculation.

They're not entirely wrong. Speculation exists, scams exist, people have lost money investing in things they don't understand.

But reducing blockchain to speculation is like reducing the internet to spam. It's partially true but misses everything that actually matters.

Here are things most people in developed countries never have to think about.

What Happens When Your Currency Collapses

In April 2024, when Javier Milei became president of Argentina, annual inflation was around 200%. Imagine your grocery bill doubling in a year, imagine your savings halving while you sleep.

Argentinians didn't sit down to debate the philosophical value of decentralization; they bought stablecoins. According to Chainalysis, Argentina is Latin America's second-largest crypto market, with around $94 billion in transaction volume. Over half of all purchases made with Argentine pesos on exchanges went to stablecoins. Not Bitcoin, not Ethereum—stablecoins, digital dollars. Because what they needed wasn't a speculative asset; they needed money that would still be money tomorrow.

Three-quarters of Argentine workers who receive their salary in crypto choose stablecoins. Not because they're crypto enthusiasts, but because they need to eat next month.

In Venezuela, it's even more extreme. The New York Times reported that President Nicolás Maduro has effectively moved the national economy onto stablecoins. Venezuelans have a name for them: "Binance Dollars." When your national currency loses 80% of its value in a year and inflation nears 500%, you don't need a whitepaper to explain the utility of a dollar-pegged digital token. You just need a smartphone and five minutes.

Small merchants accept stablecoins for goods and services, freelancers receive payments from international clients via blockchain transfers, families use stablecoins to receive remittances from relatives abroad. In some communities, stablecoins function as a parallel financial system—rent, groceries, transport, all settled through digital wallets.

This isn't hype-driven adoption; it's survival-driven adoption.

What Happens When Your Government Freezes Your Funds

Remember Emeka's story about his cousin's bank freezing the transfer? That's not an outlier. In Nigeria, about one-third of adults have no access to formal financial services at all. Thirty-three million people, unbanked, no credit, no savings instrument that holds value.

And for those who do have bank accounts, capital controls mean accessing dollars through official channels is nearly impossible. The gap between the official exchange rate and the black-market rate can be massive. In early 2024, when the naira hit historic lows, Nigeria's quarterly stablecoin volume neared $3 billion. People weren't gambling; they were fleeing a burning building.

Mercy Corps Ventures ran a simple pilot in Kenya: paying freelancers with stablecoins instead of traditional remittance channels. Fees dropped from 29% to 2%. Freelancers kept more of their money and got it faster—even without a bank account.

I want that number to sink in. 29% to 2%. That's not an incremental improvement; that's the difference between a system designed to extract value from those who can least afford it and a system that actually works.

The Picture at Scale

Stablecoins now account for about 43% of all cryptocurrency transaction volume in Sub-Saharan Africa. In Nigeria specifically, on Yellow Card, one of Africa's largest crypto exchanges, the stablecoin USDT makes up nearly 89% of trading activity. 70% of users use stablecoins for personal needs: remittances and savings, not trading.

In Latin America, 61% of crypto users are under 34, and the primary uses are the same: protecting funds, moving money across borders, survival.

In 2024, global stablecoin transfer volume reached $27.6 trillion, surpassing the combined transaction volume of Visa and Mastercard. Not because of speculation, but because of utility.

When someone in Amsterdam tells me blockchain doesn't solve real problems, I think of these numbers and have one thought: you don't know because you've never had to know.

Two Worlds

I see a pattern in this industry, over and over, that becomes painfully ironic once you notice it.

In developed countries, the conversation about blockchain is philosophical: Is it decentralized enough? Is the tech elegant? Is it getting regulatory approval? Is it a security or a commodity? People write think pieces, debate on panels, adopt a posture of mildly informed skepticism, and feel smart for it.

In developing countries, the conversation about blockchain is practical: How do I get out of pesos before they devalue? Which platform has the lowest fees to send money to my mom? Can I pay my supplier in USDT so I don't lose my profit to currency swings?

Do you see the difference?

In one world, blockchain is a topic. In the other, blockchain is a tool.

And the people using it as a tool: the shop owner in Lagos keeping working capital in digital dollars as the naira plummets; the freelancer in Nairobi receiving payment in USDC and converting it to M-Pesa in minutes; the family in Caracas receiving remittances without a quarter of it taken by traditional channels. These people have zero doubt about whether blockchain has value.

They know it has value because they use it every day.

Emeka said one more thing at that dinner in Lisbon that has stuck with me. He said: "In Nigeria, people don't care about cryptocurrency. People care about what cryptocurrency can do."

That distinction is everything.

The people in Lagos, Buenos Aires, Nairobi—they aren't believers in a technology. They don't pick sides, they don't belong to a tribe. They found something that solves a problem their government or bank either can't or won't solve, and they used it. Not because someone convinced them, but because survival demanded it.

And the uncomfortable truth for those in wealthy countries who think they've seen through the hype is this: what you dismiss as speculation is, for much of the planet, the most rational economic behavior possible. When your currency is collapsing, swapping it for a dollar-pegged digital asset isn't gambling; it's the opposite. It's the only sane thing to do.

The Objection You're About to Make

I know what you're thinking because I've heard it a hundred times.

"Okay, but what about the scams? The rug pulls? People losing their life savings on influencer-pumped meme coins?"

You're right. They exist, they're real, and they're terrible.

But here's the thing: bad actors using a technology is not an argument against the technology. It's only an argument for better regulation, better education, better infrastructure. People scam via email; no one argues to abolish email. People get robbed at ATMs; no one argues to abolish banks.

The existence of crypto scams is real and important, and the industry needs to take it more seriously. But using scams as a reason to dismiss the entire technology is intellectual laziness. It's a way to feel smart without actually doing the work.

And who pays the highest price for that laziness? Not you, with your functioning bank in a stable country. The price is paid by the people in Lagos, Caracas, Buenos Aires, who could benefit from better infrastructure, better regulation, more institutional support for the tools they're already using, but are dismissed by the people who actually shape global policy.

Your skepticism isn't costless. Someone is paying for it.

What You Can Actually Do

I'm not asking you to buy crypto. I'm not asking you to become a blockchain evangelist. I'm not asking you to change your investment strategy or put laser eyes in your profile picture.

I'm asking you to do something simpler and harder: update your mental model.

Stop conflating speculation with utility. When you hear "cryptocurrency," stop automatically thinking of price charts. The most important thing happening with blockchain right now isn't the price of Bitcoin; it's the freelancer in Nairobi getting paid in seconds instead of weeks; it's the family in Nigeria preserving their savings in digital dollars as the naira loses a third of its value; it's the shop owner in Venezuela able to receive stablecoins because the national currency has failed. The speculation layer exists, it's loud, it grabs headlines, but beneath it is an infrastructure layer quietly becoming an essential financial pipe for billions.

Talk to people who actually use it. Not crypto traders in New York, not people trying to sell you a token. Talk to someone from Nigeria, Argentina, Kenya, or Venezuela. Ask them what stablecoins mean to them, ask them how they lived before. You'll hear stories that make your "crypto is a scam" take feel narrow and embarrassing. If you don't know people from these countries, read Chainalysis's Geography of Crypto report. It will change how you see this.

Recognize your privilege. Next time you open your banking app and transfer money in three seconds for free, notice it. Realize you live in a world where that's possible, realize that for a third of humanity, it isn't. Then ask yourself if your opinion on blockchain comes more from a life you've never had to live than from anything you actually know.

Push for better regulation, not dismissal. If you genuinely care about scams, rug pulls, and hurt people, the answer isn't "ban it" or "ignore it." The answer is smart, proportionate regulation that makes this technology safer for the people who need it most. Europe's MiCA framework is a start, but regulation written by people who think blockchain is a scam will only protect incumbents, not users.

A Window

Let me tell you what happened after that dinner in Lisbon.

Emeka and I