I totally agree to your views. The thing I am thinking about, is that the $ and (also the €) has also value, because the governments are able to enforce its use, or ban the alternatives. I know that cryptocurrency is designed in a way that it is not possible to shut them down easily, as long as some are running a node. However, we all depend on an internet connection (or a device) that can be monitored easily and is hard to anonymize for the average Joe. Given the helicopter money we are seeing to get distributed, we might see the discussion turning against crypto. The campaign might be like „Where was crypto when fiat saved your live in the corona time.“ That, together with the more conservative leaders we are going to face during a crisis like this, might lead to the criminalization of crypto as well as the legal enforcements to restrict their use. I hope I am wrong and I hope the industry is mature enough to fight for its existence. 

I agree that ultimately what will drive value is utility. Far to much energy has been invested on price speculation and far too little on just making things that people find useful. Distributed ledger technology should never be anything more than a tool that you use to do something and should only be used when it actually adds value.

I recently came across a project where they are using the trust less nature of an immutable smart contract to handle the distribution of value through a Matrix Program.  Say what you will about the ponzi like nature of Matrix Programs but this is at least a practical application of decentralised trust  and far more valuable than simple price speculation on the future price of cryptocurrencies on centralised exchanges.

Utility is *hugely* important **@taskmaster4450**, which is why we need to work to *shed* this image of cryptocurrencies as a super high risk exotic investing derivative that ambitious young developers use as a gateway to a lambo.

To be honest, that has ZERO appeal outside a very small and narrow niche of the population.

One of our greatest challenges — as I see it — comes from *inside* the crypto ecosystem, itself: In order for cryptos to gain traction as actual *currencies* they have to become *utilitarian and stable,* which is the exact *opposite* of what those harboring *"Lambo dreams"* would want. A token that doesn't swing more than possible +/-50% in a year is BORING to a large core segment of the crypotosphere whose lives revolve around the question *"when Moon?"*

So we need to move towards a place where the mindset shifts from the idea that you profit from the actual *coins,* and instead you profit from what you DO with the coins... the coins themselves stop being the income source; innovation in Dapps becomes the income source.

Hive as a *"multi-faceted content platform where people get rewarded"* is certainly a good start, but it has the fundamental weakness that that a great many of the market participants view it as simply a way to get some tokens they then *exchange for fiat.* And that doesn't add *value,* in terms of building the spread of cryptos.

For more than three years, I've been floating the idea that someone needs to create a peer-to-peer ecommerce front end here, in the style of eBay/Etsy/Craigslist in their earliest incarnations, before they *"went corporate."* We have a high speed blockchain with lots of capacity, virtually feeless secure instant transfers, an existing active community to jump start *usage.* It would be a great way to start people down the road of thinking in terms of *"Here's my box of old Lego; I'm selling it for 50 Hive!"* rather than *"This is US $25, which translates to about 50 Hive."*

And yes, I realize it's going to be a slow gradual process, but it strikes me such a Dapp is a ripe cherry ready for the picking, from *someone* with a bit of ambition and vision. And let's be patient... it has taken eBay almost *25 years* to reach *"cultural icon"* status... 

A sort of *"template"* has already been started in the form of the **[LeoShop](https://shop.steemleo.com/)** which — however — is only *electronic* goods, so far. It wouldn't be a stretch to develop it further to include *physical goods* as well. Not sure if **@khaleelkazi** and crew are up for the challenge, but *somebody* ought to take this one on!

Sorry about the *"blog length"* post, but this is an important discussion! 

What a great post, especially for a new HIVER like me! 

A couple of things i noted so far:

1. Would it not be much easier to pull in new people if there was some sort of referral program awarding the spread of HIVE? 

2. I myself find it very confusing that i read a lot of content all days but i can't vote or comment on much before my power goes below a certain % and i have to wait many hours before being active again 🧐

Don't forget that the US dollar is legal tender the United States. That means three things: 
* Taxes and fines must be paid in it.
* Those with an accounting obligation must hold accounts as the dollar as the unit.
* You must accept it as repayment of a debt if you want the government to enforce the repayment of that debt.

Using the US dollar in the US is overwhelmingly the path of least resistance for businesses and individuals. And because of that everyone else uses it which only reinforces it being the path of least resistance. 

Each nation or currency areas has an official currency as its legal tender. In each country, legal tender is the de facto means of payment and unit of account unless that currency has been debased as a result of mismanagement.

Dislodging the US dollar from its dominant position in the US is pretty hopeless unless the government and the Fed mismanage the monetary system so badly that the nation loses trust in the dollar. In the world, however, it makes sense for central banks to not only keep US dollars in their currency reserves but other major currencies as well. The Japanese yen or the euro are also held by many countries to some extent. 

Network effect + trust = money.

USD is the enforced currency for international trade of oil, backed up by a huge army situated around the world. Now when it costs more to suck oil than to sell it, actually getting paid 0 for crude. 

That does not seem to matter, since the whole scam has crashed, perhaps that guides thoughts from numbers to resources. Both virtual and real, like for example a Hive community sharing information on growing food etc. 

The value is not equal as the price tag, like how can one count the cost of a human life, a beetle etc? 

Utility must increase, yes, but we also need to pay attention to value capture. For instance, if my goal here on HIVE is to get paid for blogging, and that is a perfectly legitimate use case that we want to support mind you, but every time I transfer my HIVE to an exchange I am extracting value out of the HIVE ecosystem without attracting a commensurate influx of value into the ecosystem. That, in my opinion, is a slippery slope to the erosion of HIVE token value. So I think we should start thinking about how to counteract that export of value to the exchanges by monetizing some of the traffic here and using those monies to buy HIVE tokens off the exchange.

In this way, we can balance the selling pressure brought by full-time bloggers with some buying pressure supported by their activity. LEO does this quite elegantly in my opinion, but it doesn't have to be the exact same mechanism.

What do you think?

Deep capture here. Utility is indeed the "BIG" advantage of crypotocurrency over fiat. I was discussing with a friend few days ago on how worthless our currencies are - ordinary printed paper. Whereas, while we were trading on coins, the gold weight on each had some value.

> For example, there was a video put up that shows the proof of concept for @threespeak's Android app.

Is @Threespeak going for an Android dapp soon? That would be a great advantage.