Comment by carlmr
3 days ago
>It's very different from crypto, the main use case for which appears to be money laundering.
Which has substantial economic value (for certain groups of people).
3 days ago
>It's very different from crypto, the main use case for which appears to be money laundering.
Which has substantial economic value (for certain groups of people).
According to this random estimate, black market economy alone in just the US is worth ~ $2 trillion/yr. [https://www.investopedia.com/terms/u/underground-economy.asp]
Roughly 11-12% of GDP.
In many countries, black+grey market is larger than the ‘white’ market. The US is notoriously ‘clean’ compared to most (probably top 10).
Even in the US, if you suddenly stopped 10-12% of GDP we’re talking ‘great depression’ levels of economic pain.
Honestly, the only reason Crypto isn’t bigger IMO is because there is such a large and established set of folks doing laundering in the ‘normal’ system, and those work well enough there is not nearly as much demand as you’d expect.