Please stop using us non americans as your justification for bitcoin.

I live in Pakistan, and happily and easily use a visa debit card for buying steam games.

Somehow it seems you are offended. Why?

You may even use Visa, still doesn't mean that you are dealing with US dollars. Why do you think is it completely normal to have Visa as being a global country dealing with the cross-country transactions, but not Bitpay?

If you have access to the international banking system, great. It is not a bad thing. Just like it is not a bad thing to have bitcoin as an alternative.

The one thing that I don't get, anytime that Bitcoin comes here, is that people seem to think that it is an either/or proposition. That for Bitcoin to be usable it needs to completely replace the Almighty US Dollar or any other sovereign currency.

Cryptocurrencies and the blockchain are just tools that are being explored and developed as a way to bring trust to transactions and accounting without a central authority. What is bad about that?

We don't need to have Central Banks. "Us non-Americans" don't need to use American Institutions to participate in a global economy.

This idea of "I can pay with Visa, therefore Bitcoin is useless" is short-sighted.

I saw this a little differently. Not so much that bit coin is useless. He seemed to argue against using his country as an argument.

You framed it as "I can pay with Visa..."

I think you may have projected your argument onto his statement with no real correlation.

"argue against using his country as an argument"

First, it's not the country that is being used as an argument. So the point is moot.

Second, this is not about "Developed/Underdeveloped Countries". That would be incredibly backwards. It was to show that not everywhere has unrestricted access to international trade, and that cryptocurrencies can help with that.

Just as an example: despite the crisis, Greece is a developed country, yet (because of the crisis) they are also applying very strict capital controls.

So, despite being "able to pay with Visa in his/her country", a Greek could also benefit from something like Bitpay.

You can buy as many dollars as you want in Argentina since December.

Yeah, I know.

The point still stands. The point is that by accepting bitcoin, even if through a broker, Steam (an American company) now can reach a good number of people who are have nothing to do with the American Financial system.

The US may be the center of the world, but it is not the whole world. Bitcoin (or any thing that can be fungible and free of control by one central institution) can be used by anyone outside of this.