Now we just need a decentralized currency that is not ridiculously volatile and / or subject to the kind of absurd price increases that bitcoin has, and can be spent easily and without fees, and that isnt a scam. I'm still not convinced that anyone is even working on these requirements
Aren't stablecoins supposed to fix the volatility issue? I don't know how well they work in practice (or how decentralised they are), but people are working on them (and at least some of them aren't scammers).
Even if the stablecoins themselves aren't easily spent with low fees, there are people working on decentralised exchanges and low fee blockchains (and "second layer" solutions), so I'm confident that it's not a lack of intention that is preventing this outcome from being achieved.
Re the second layer, I'll have to learn more, I previously thought it basically implied some kind of centralization. In any event, there is so much corruption and scamming obscured by technical jargon right now that I'd have a hard time feeling as comfortable as with fiat.
Poking fun at the legitimacy of a national currency in the face of a judge paid in said currency.
My (not fully researched) understanding is that there are stablecoins that aren't as dodgy as Tether, and there are scalable blockchains that don't rely on centralising second layers, but it's hard to know which, if any, of these projects have a decent future ahead of them.
Perhaps a few more years of these systems being battle-hardened by use in economically mismanaged countries, with some extra work on the UX/onboarding process, will help separate the viable technologies from the scams.