<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>hn_throwaway_99</author><text>I was having this discussion with a friend recently, arguing over what the actual use cases are for crypto, and I came to a similar conclusion.&lt;p&gt;In terms of &lt;i&gt;facilitating payments&lt;/i&gt;, cryptocurrencies are worse in almost every way I can think of compared to existing systems. They are (currently) slow, have high transaction fees, but most importantly the non-refundability of crypto transactions is a bug, not the feature crypto proponents suggest.&lt;p&gt;However, as a &lt;i&gt;store of value&lt;/i&gt; (e.g. &amp;quot;digital gold&amp;quot;), I think crypto has real potential. There is a reason crypto is very popular in places with hyper-inflationary monetary systems like Venezuela and Iran. And compared to actual, physical gold, crypto is almost &lt;i&gt;better&lt;/i&gt; in every way: it is much more easily transferred and stored, and the ledger means establishing &amp;quot;provenance&amp;quot; is not an issue. Yes, it&amp;#x27;s obviously currently extremely volatile, but it&amp;#x27;s not hard to imagine that volatility lessening over time.</text><parent_chain><item><author>doggosphere</author><text>Fiat currencies will probably always exist.&lt;p&gt;Digital crypto assets like Bitcoin or Ethereum will exist alongside them. Bitcoin can be an asset like gold, of which users keep a portion of their networth to protect from economic uncertainty.&lt;p&gt;Its deflationary policy may make it less usable as a currency, but at least crypto gives people choice.</text></item><item><author>lovetocode</author><text>Cryptocurrency continues to gain more ground but I still have my reservations about it being the currency of the future.&lt;p&gt;If by design, cryptocurrency has a finite volume of transferrable currency, do early adopters have an unfair advantage that could potentially make the currency unusable? I don’t see how it could possibly be fair when earlier mining yielded currency more quickly.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Visa May Add Cryptocurrencies to Its Payments Network, Says CEO</title><url>https://www.coindesk.com/visa-may-add-cryptocurrencies-to-its-payments-network-says-ceo</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>pjc50</author><text>You&amp;#x27;re not protecting from uncertainty with a currency whose value fluctuates against the dollar by 10% daily on a regular basis.</text><parent_chain><item><author>doggosphere</author><text>Fiat currencies will probably always exist.&lt;p&gt;Digital crypto assets like Bitcoin or Ethereum will exist alongside them. Bitcoin can be an asset like gold, of which users keep a portion of their networth to protect from economic uncertainty.&lt;p&gt;Its deflationary policy may make it less usable as a currency, but at least crypto gives people choice.</text></item><item><author>lovetocode</author><text>Cryptocurrency continues to gain more ground but I still have my reservations about it being the currency of the future.&lt;p&gt;If by design, cryptocurrency has a finite volume of transferrable currency, do early adopters have an unfair advantage that could potentially make the currency unusable? I don’t see how it could possibly be fair when earlier mining yielded currency more quickly.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Visa May Add Cryptocurrencies to Its Payments Network, Says CEO</title><url>https://www.coindesk.com/visa-may-add-cryptocurrencies-to-its-payments-network-says-ceo</url></story>