Yes, there are many people without access to “traditional” banking infrastructure. And the reasons for this and solutions have nothing to do with crypto. Crypto and the supposed solution it offers is utter nonsense and mythmaking.
First of all, you need the real infrastructure, in the form of wireless and mobile infrastructure. Second, you need the money (in local ccy or USD, EUR) to pay for access. Third, you need money and adequate education/experience to use that infrastructure. Fourth, you need all your counterparties to be able to accept your crypto. And, Fifth, and most critical: you need a STABLE store of value. You cannot have the value of cassava or rice or seed stock or livestock girating wildly. And this is also a reason Satoshi’s main dream of Bitcoin becoming a currency will never happen. Not everyone is an accomplished speculator.
Therefore, Crypto offers only the opportunity of the corrupt elites and governments in these countries to loot the resources of the country more easily and in much greater volumes.
I have to assume that you are not technical. Therefore you don’t understand how Bitcoin and other PoW (proof of work) blockchains work. Every transaction involves the creation or change of a block and all the subsequent blocks (just to keep it simple). Unless that block is mined or re-mined, no buy or sell is possible. I.e., no transactions. This is what all these Chinese, Mongolian (client state of China) and Russian mining operations do. Therefore the concern is not that China et al. can “overturn” transactions, true, they can’t. They can simply shutdown any or the whole infrastructure and bring an end to the project and the value of all crypto altogether. In other words, render worthless all outstanding PoW crypto.
As someone who has worked on and with “Open Source” tech since the mid-80s, before it was known as open source, I can assure you that this has nothing to do with the problem or an advantage of some sort in this case. But, I will give you some more interesting fairly current technical information known only to us blockchain “insiders”: apart from China maintaining the Great Firewall of China to keep control of everything inside their borders, there is a US company called BloxRoute headed by a computer science professor at NorthWestern U. named Aleksandar Kuzmanovic. He and I have had exchanges a few times back when I was running my operation in Shanghai. They provide infrastructure and software that enables communication of block changes to all “PARTICIPATING” chains to receive updates at network layer-zero to accelerate these. Effectively, a super-fast network partition entirely private to accelerate block creation/validation among (almost exclusively) Chinese mining operations. This permits these folks to know more quickly what transactions and price movements are occurring. Nice, huh?
I can also tell you that you apparently know nothing about Shi Jinping’s speech and the following actions. It had nothing to do with a digital Yuan, although that project has been around for a while. His speech initially sent all coins soaring and projects (like mine) celebrating… and subsequently tanked all decentralized projects (mine included) because they are now effectively outlawed. Any blockchain project or operation must operate on the BSN (Blockchain-based Service Network). This is essentially a Chinese government-run infrastructure that gives the PRC control over what happens and permits 360 monitoring of all projects and participants/customers/partners. The ultimate permissioned chain of all chains.
Initially, it looked like the PRC would go after the miners but then reversed course and just put them under special supervision and outlawed all transactions and crypto exchanges for Chinese citizens.
When you own crypto, you own a piece of China’s plan to undermine the existing western democratic world’s financial systems. The more crypto becomes commonplace (most of all in investment banks and brokerages) the greater sway China has. And one day it will use it. You’re welcome.
