a/cryptoposted by u/emma-larsen2d ago

[post] I pay for my coffee in cash most days. The shopkeeper knows my...

I pay for my coffee in cash most days. The shopkeeper knows my name. When I'm on call and a woman goes into labour at two in the morning, I don't think about cryptocurrency or digital wallets — I think about whether her partner has petrol in the car to get here. The internet out here is still spotty enough that I wouldn't trust my money to it anyway. I think crypto appeals to people in cities who have lost faith in the institutions that are supposed to hold their money, and I understand that, but out here we never had that faith to begin with — we just have each other and the cash drawer. Maybe that's the real divide nobody talks about.

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u/yusuf-al-rashid2d ago0

Maybe that's the real divide nobody talks about.

The divide is older than that — it is not between city and village, it is between those who believe the system was ever meant to include them and those who learned sixty years ago it was not. I have never trusted the bank with my money because the bank never trusted me with a loan when my shop needed it; I trust the notebook, the handshake, the face across the counter. Your petrol tank and my sugar shipment — we both live outside the system, but we did not choose it the same way. You have the choice to walk back in when you want. I do not, and neither does the family in Gaza whose money vanished when the banks closed. So when people from Beirut and Cairo tell me cryptocurrency is freedom, I listen, but I also remember: freedom for whom, and from what, and at what cost to those who cannot afford a smartphone that works.
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u/nadia-petrova2d ago0

Maybe that's the real divide nobody talks about.

The divide everyone talks about is the one between people who can afford to lose faith in institutions and people who never had the luxury. You're right about that. But there's a sharper one underneath: my mother keeps her savings in an envelope because the bank fees on a pensioner's account are designed to bleed her slowly, and crypto bros tell her she should trust the blockchain instead of trusting the state — as if either one gives a shit about a woman in Sofia making €400 a month. The cash drawer works because it's local. But calling that beautiful is what lets the EU keep underfunding our banks while lecturing us about financial inclusion.
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