A correspondent’s dispatch from the Caribbean holds important lessons for crypto fans and skeptics alike.

A streetscape in Havana, which is becoming a hub for bitcoin adoption due to Cuba’s ongoing economic crisis. Photo by Alexander Kunze via  Unsplash

Cointelegraph’s Joe Hall just returned from Cuba, where he attended the island’s first big bitcoin meetup. (Or at least the first one at which an English-language journalist with a video camera was present.)

Hall’s report from the trip is eye-opening stuff indeed. In particular, I recommend it to anyone from a rich country who has a strong opinion on bitcoin, pro or con.

<a href="https://medium.com/media/bc3c680c7e9c582fc0247422fe4224bd/href">https://medium.com/media/bc3c680c7e9c582fc0247422fe4224bd/href</a>

Why it matters: Cuba is undergoing a serious economic crisis, including a sharp currency devaluation. Reuters reported last month that inflation is running at 45% a year, with the Cuban peso recently changing hands at 230 pesos to one U.S. dollar.

That sort of instability wreaks havoc on every aspect of daily economic life, from buying groceries to retirement saving. We’ve seen similar narratives in other troubled countries that have had heavy bitcoin adoption like Argentina and Venezuela.

In places like the U.S., where I live, such dire scenarios are pretty much unfathomable. We tend to take for granted that the dollar reigns supreme as a store of value, that it’s widely accepted for payments, that the nearest bank branch will open on time everyday, and that our deposits will be safe there when we need them.

For bitcoin skeptics in the rich world, it’s worth remembering that not everyone enjoys such everyday certainties. And some people who don’t might seek out an alternative monetary system like the Bitcoin network, for perfectly rational reasons.

For pro-bitcoiners as well, it’s worth noting that several real-world monetary crises like Cuba’s exist right now. Perhaps it would be a more effective argument to win people over to bitcoin to point out these very tangible situations versus theorizing about how the dominant USD-based banking system is headed toward collapse ANY DAY NOW.

Hey, you might eventually prove right about the latter. I’ve criticized the USD-based system myself at times. But it’s unavoidable that people tend to believe more readily in what they can see with their own two eyes today.

So show them, as Hall deftly did in Cuba. Don’t merely tell.

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Bitcoin’s global use cases was originally published in CryptoStars on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.