It's used a lot in the third world. In Georgia you can buy a burger paying crypto via NFC terminal. I also know people who get their salaries in crypto. And it's used a lot for donating to opposition where it's illegal, like in most dictatorship.
Georgia is/was absolutely mad. I was in Tbilisi for a while and met _a lot_ of crypto bros. Probably highest concentration of crypto bros I've seen in a single city ever, or at least I struggled to find "expats" that weren't into crypto when I was there. This was before the war, I suspect the demographic is different now.
Everyone was openly talking about how they use it to evade tax because Georgia isn't a CRS reporting country (didn't know what that meant before I met them). Or people paying 1% tax "legitimately" (I have no way of verifying their claims) due to some loophole.
So many places advertising cash for crypto and vice versa. There was also something going on near Svaneti where there was free electricity and people were using it to mine crypto and the mafia was involved, I don't know the details. Apparently there is cool snowboarding around there, but I stuck around in Gudauri since it looked like a pain to travel all the way to Svaneti from Tbilisi.
On a side note, I don't think Georgia is classed as third world, right? Technically it's probably "second world" since it's a former soviet country. But even stepping away from the technicalities, the infrastructure there was pretty great. Great 4g coverage for a great price.
I have no estimates, only my experience from visiting these countries, but I found an article regarding Georgia [1].
But it's pretty widespread, Navalny, the main Putin opponent uses crypto as the main source of donations since all his accounts were frozen, Ukrainian army accepts donations in crypto, Belarus opposition uses crypto, hundreds of thousands of Russians used crypto to move their savings out of Russia, Iranians, Chinese and Venezuelans use it a lot too.
I feel bad for them then. I don't know enough about economics or politics, but it would seem preferable if they could be paid in US dollars.
Maybe orthogonal (?) but it sounds a little like an argument in support of lotteries. Though lotteries seem to primarily draw money away from the working class that can least afford it, banning the lottery would seem to take away that sliver of a chance that they can be lifted out of poverty.
> but it would seem preferable if they could be paid in US dollars
There are USD-bound cryptos like USDT, it's all about infrastructure.
The point is that using Visa, Swift and other infra is usually bad option. In the 90s people used cash USD to transfer value, but risks were higher than with crypto, so now crypto is popular as USD cash replacement, a mean to transfer value under the radar or malicious government, bypassing sanctions, avoiding hyperinflation etc etc.
It's used a lot in the third world. In Georgia you can buy a burger paying crypto via NFC terminal. I also know people who get their salaries in crypto. And it's used a lot for donating to opposition where it's illegal, like in most dictatorship.