Written by: Vitto Rivabella, AI Engineer, Ethereum Foundation
Compiled by: Chopper, Foresight News
I've worked in the blockchain industry for many years, and there's something I need to be honest about: whenever someone at a dinner in Milan or Berlin says, "Cryptocurrency is just a casino," I politely nod, change the subject, and continue with my dinner.
I stopped arguing a long time ago.
Not because they are right, but because the arguments I'm about to make require them to imagine a life they've never experienced, which is difficult to do while enjoying wine and appetizers.
But I'm tired of these polite formalities. The gap between what the smartest people I know in Europe say and the reality I've witnessed in Lagos, Buenos Aires, and Nairobi has widened to the point that I feel it would be irresponsible to remain silent.
So this is what I've always kept in my heart. It's not promotional rhetoric, not a white paper summary, but my true thoughts when you tell me, "Blockchain is just a way to find a solution to a problem."
You're right to say you don't need it. But you're wrong to say nobody needs it.
A dinner changed the way I talked about this.
About three years ago, I attended a conference in Lisbon. One of those events where people from forty countries sat in the same room, pretending they were all talking about the same thing. One of my colleagues—let's call him Emeka—worked at a cryptocurrency exchange with operations in twenty African countries. He was Nigerian, based in Lagos, and in this industry full of restless people, he was one of the calmest people I'd ever met.
After a panel discussion, a group of us had dinner together. A fintech founder from Amsterdam made a familiar statement: "I really don't see what problems cryptocurrency can solve that banks can't."
Emeka put down her fork.
He wasn't angry, nor did he roll his eyes; he simply said calmly, "Last year, my cousin in Port Harcourt wanted to transfer money to our aunt in Cameroon. It took six days and incurred nearly 10% in fees. His bank froze the transfer twice due to compliance checks. My aunt is 73 years old, doesn't have a bank account, and has to walk 40 minutes to the Western Union branch near her home. By the time the money arrived, she had already borrowed money from her neighbors to buy medicine."
He paused for a moment.
"She doesn't know what blockchain is, and she doesn't care. But you're telling me about that well-functioning system? It doesn't work for her at all."
The table fell silent. Not because Emeka was being dramatic, but because he wasn't dramatic at all.
This is a point I keep reiterating: those who loudly proclaim cryptocurrency a scam are almost all doing so because the existing system is very friendly to them. Their banks function normally, their currencies are stable, governments don't arbitrarily freeze their accounts, their salaries arrive on time, and the daily necessities they can buy next month are about the same as this month.
But most people on this planet don't live like that. Unless you understand this, you'll never understand the true meaning of blockchain.
The privileges you can't see
There is a number that should completely reshape your understanding of this discussion.
Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest remittance costs in the world. The average cost of sending $200 is close to 8%. This means that a family receiving $200 from relatives overseas loses approximately $16 before the money even arrives. On some remittance channels, the situation is even 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% ending up in the pockets of middlemen. This isn't some minor rounding error; it's a system that extracts billions of dollars annually from some of the poorest families on the planet. And most Europeans believe this system works well only because it benefits them.
When you transfer money from a German bank account to an Italian account, it arrives the same day, costs almost nothing, and you don't even think about it. This experience isn't common; it's merely a byproduct of geography and infrastructure. It's a privilege so subtle that you might mistakenly believe it's how the world works.
But that's not how the world works.
In 2021, the Central Bank of Nigeria banned commercial banks from handling any cryptocurrency transactions. They froze accounts, cut off access to exchanges, and attempted to stifle it.
But it didn't work.
Nigerians didn't stop. They turned to Telegram, conducted peer-to-peer transactions through WhatsApp groups, met offline with local agents, and exchanged cash for USDT, a stablecoin pegged to the US dollar. The demand was so urgent, so vital to their daily lives, that even government bans couldn't slow it down. Students, freelancers, small business owners—they built an underground stablecoin economy because failing to do so meant watching their savings evaporate.
By 2024, Nigeria had become the world's second-largest cryptocurrency economy by trading volume. 85% of these transactions were under $1 million, meaning that ordinary people, rather than Wall Street speculators, were driving cryptocurrency trading.
The government eventually lifted the ban. Not because they changed their ideology, but because they realized they could no longer monitor the permissionless financial system that citizens had chosen to build themselves.
Now I want you to try something: go to a dinner party in Lagos, tell people that cryptocurrency is a casino, and see what happens.
The side you never thought of
When people in Europe or North America hear the word "cryptocurrency," they picture Bitcoin's candlestick chart, someone sending rocket emojis in a Discord group to speculate on Meme Coin, the collapse of FTX, and speculation.
They are not entirely wrong. Speculation does exist, scams do exist, and many people lose money by investing in things they don't understand.
But reducing blockchain to speculation is like reducing the internet to spam. There's some truth to that, but it misses the point.
Here are things that most people in developed countries never need to think about.
What happens when your currency crashes?
When Javier Millais took office as President of Argentina in April 2024, the annual inflation rate was approximately 200%. Imagine your grocery money doubling in a year, and your savings shrinking by half while you sleep.
Argentinians didn't sit down to debate 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 approximately $94 billion. More than half of the purchases made on exchanges using Argentine pesos went to stablecoins. Not Bitcoin, not Ethereum, but stablecoins—digital dollars. Because what they need isn't speculative assets; they need currency that will still be usable as money tomorrow.
Three-quarters of Argentine workers who receive their wages in cryptocurrency choose stablecoins. Not because they're crypto enthusiasts, but because they need to eat next month.
In Venezuela, the situation is even more extreme. The New York Times reported that President Nicolás Maduro has effectively shifted the national economy to stablecoins. Venezuelans have given them a name: "Binance Dollar." When your national currency depreciates by 80% in a year and inflation approaches 500%, you don't need a white paper explaining the usefulness of dollar-pegged digital tokens. You just need a smartphone and five minutes.
Small businesses accept stablecoins to pay for goods and services, freelancers receive payments from international clients via blockchain transfers, and families use stablecoins to receive remittances from relatives overseas. In some communities, stablecoins serve as a parallel financial system—rent, groceries, and transportation are all settled through digital wallets.
This is not adoption driven by trending topics; it is adoption driven by survival.
What happens when the government freezes your funds?
Remember Emeka's story about the bank freezing her cousin's money transfers? This isn't an isolated case. In Nigeria, about one-third of adults have absolutely no access to formal financial services; 33 million people lack bank accounts, credit cards, and savings instruments that preserve their value.
For those with bank accounts, capital controls mean that obtaining US dollars through official channels is virtually impossible. The gap between the official exchange rate and the black market rate can be enormous. In early 2024, when the naira hit a historic low, Nigeria's stablecoin trading volume approached $3 billion in a single quarter. People weren't gambling; they were fleeing a burning building.
Mercy Corps Ventures conducted a simple pilot program in Kenya: sending money to freelancers using stablecoins instead of traditional remittance channels. Transaction fees dropped from 29% to 2%. Freelancers saved more money and received their earnings faster—even without a bank account.
I hope you truly understand this number. From 29% to 2%, this isn't incremental improvement; it's the difference between a system designed to extract value from those least able to afford losses and a truly effective system.
The scene after scaling up
Stablecoins currently account for approximately 43% of all cryptocurrency trading volume in sub-Saharan Africa. Specifically in Nigeria, on Yellow Card, one of Africa's largest crypto exchage, the stablecoin USDT accounts for nearly 89% of trading activity. 70% of users use stablecoins for personal needs: remittances and savings, rather than for trading.
In Latin America, 61% of cryptocurrency users are under 34 years old, and their main uses are the same: protecting funds, cross-border transfers, and survival.
In 2024, the global stablecoin transaction volume reached $27.6 trillion, exceeding the combined transaction volume of Visa and Mastercard. This was not due to speculation, but to practical value.
When someone in Amsterdam told me that blockchain doesn't solve real-world problems, I thought about these numbers and had only one thought: you don't know this because you never need to know it.
Two Worlds
I've seen a pattern time and time again in this industry that, once you notice it, becomes 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 commentaries, debate in seminars, and display a slightly justified skepticism, thus feeling quite profound.
In developing countries, discussions about blockchain are often pragmatic: How can I exchange my peso before it depreciates? Which platform offers the lowest fees for transferring money to my mother? Can I pay suppliers with USDT so I don't lose profits due to exchange rate fluctuations?
Can you see the difference?
In one world, blockchain is a topic; in another, it's a tool.
Those who use it as a tool—Lagos shop owners putting their liquid funds into digital dollars because of the Naira crash; Nairobi freelancers receiving payments in USDC and exchanging them for M-Pesa within minutes; Caracas families receiving remittances that would otherwise be charged a quarter of the fee through traditional channels—have no doubt about the value of blockchain.
They know it's valuable because they use it every day.
Emeka said something during dinner in Lisbon that I've always remembered: "In Nigeria, people don't care about cryptocurrency. People care about what cryptocurrency can do."
This difference is everything.
The people of Lagos, Buenos Aires, and Nairobi are not believers in any particular technology; they don't belong to any particular group or clique. They found something that could solve a problem that governments and banks couldn't or wouldn't solve, and then they used it. Not because anyone persuaded them, but because of the need for survival.
For those in wealthy countries who believe they've seen through the hype, the unsettling truth is: what you dismiss as speculation is actually the most rational economic behavior on the planet. When your currency is collapsing, switching to a dollar-pegged digital asset isn't gambling; quite the opposite, it's the only sensible thing to do.
Your rebuttal
I know what you're thinking, because I've heard it a hundred times.
"Okay, what about scams? What about people running off with the money? What about people losing their life savings because of Meme Coins promoted by influencers?"
That's right, these things exist, they're real, and they're all terrible.
The problem is this: bad actors using a technology cannot be a reason to oppose that technology. It can only be a reason to support better regulation, better education, and better infrastructure. Someone commits email fraud, but no one advocates abolishing email; someone is robbed at an ATM, but no one advocates abolishing banks.
The existence of scams in the crypto space is real and significant, and the industry needs to take it more seriously. However, using scams as a reason to dismiss the entire technology is intellectual laziness. It's a way to feel smart without actually doing the research.
And who pays the highest price for this laziness? Not you, you have a well-functioning bank in a stable country. The ones who pay the price are the people of Lagos, Caracas, and Buenos Aires, who could have benefited from better infrastructure, better regulation, and more institutional support for the tools they are using, but are instead disregarded by those who truly influence global policy.
Your doubts are not without cost; someone is paying the price for them.
What you can really do
I'm not asking you to buy cryptocurrency, become a blockchain evangelist, change your investment strategy, or change your profile picture to one with laser eyes.
I'm asking you to do something simpler, yet more difficult: update your cognitive models.
Stop conflating speculation with practicality. When you hear "cryptocurrency," stop automatically associating it with candlestick charts. The most important thing happening with blockchain right now isn't the price of Bitcoin, but that freelancers in Nairobi receive their wages in seconds instead of weeks; that Nigerian families preserve their savings with digital dollars while the naira depreciates by a third; that Venezuelan shopkeepers can receive stablecoins because their national currency has become ineffective. The speculative layer certainly exists, it's loud, it's making headlines, but beneath it lies an infrastructure layer that is quietly becoming an indispensable financial conduit for billions.
Go talk to people who actually use it. Not crypto traders in New York, not people trying to sell you tokens. Go talk to people from Nigeria, Argentina, Kenya, or Venezuela. Ask them what stablecoins mean to them, ask them how they lived before. You'll hear many stories that will make your "cryptocurrency is a scam" view seem narrow and embarrassing. If you don't know people in these countries, reading Chainalysis's "Crypto Geography Report" will change your perspective.
Be aware of your privilege. The next time you open your banking app and complete a free transfer in three seconds, take a moment to reflect. Realize that you live in a world where all of this is possible, and realize that for a third of humanity, this doesn't exist. Then ask yourself if your understanding of blockchain comes more from a life you've never experienced than from something you truly understand.
Push for better regulation, not dismissive disregard. If you truly care about scams, embezzlement, and the people who suffer, the answer isn't "ban" or "ignore," but rather wise, moderate regulation that makes the technology safer for those who need it most. Europe's MiCA framework is a start, but regulations drawn up 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 chatted for another two hours at the hotel bar. He told me about his mother who lives in Abuja. She's 67 years old, doesn't know anything about blockchain, but can receive money from her son using USDT and exchange it through a mobile app taught to her by someone at church.
She used to receive money through Western Union, which took several days and incurred a nearly 10% fee. Now, it arrives in minutes and costs almost nothing. She had no idea she was using blockchain; she only knew that the money arrived faster and she could receive more.
Then Emeka said something that left a deep impression on me.
"You know what my mom calls it? She calls it 'the new way.' That's all. It's not encryption, it's not blockchain, it's just 'the new way.' Because for her, the old ways that didn't work before, now there's this."
I keep thinking of this phrase: "the new way." No ideology, no clique affiliation, no investment portfolio; it's just something where the old way doesn't work, but the new way does.
What I need you to understand is this: we are in a window of opportunity, and some people still remember what the old ways were like. People like Emeka's mother have lived for decades in an expensive and poorly managed financial system; people in Argentina remember that 200% inflation wasn't just a textbook number, but the reason families couldn't afford tuition; people in Venezuela have watched their life savings become worthless time and time again, generation after generation.
These people have found a useful tool. It's not a perfect tool, nor is it without risk, but it does what other tools have never done for them: it gives them access to stable currencies, borderless transfers, and the ability to participate in the financial system without being exploited.
While they build a complete life around this technology—paying rent, saving money for their children, and transferring money to their elderly parents—you're at a dinner party in Berlin calling it a casino.
I understand, I really understand. From your perspective, it just seems like noise.
But from their perspective, it looks like the first time in their lives they've been treated fairly.
The question has never been whether blockchain will work; billions of people have already provided the answer. The real question is: will the most influential, wealthiest, and loudest voices help it get better, or will they continue to ignore a revolution they don't need because they are born with too many privileges?
