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by stale2002 2762 days ago
> which can be made illegal very easily.

And yet here we are, living in a world where this isn't happening.

People are using cryptocurrencies, today, in regimes such as Venezuela, and yet your prediction of it being successfully banned, has yet to come to pass.
2 comments
arcticbull 2762 days ago
Really, nobody's using it anywhere, which is why governments haven't tried to stop it. The Venezuela case is the only currency less stable than BTC, but that aside, as a thought experiment consider: where did the BTC in question come from?

(1) If you can't move currency out of the country the whole thing is zero-sum. You're just buying bolivars from one guy and taking his BTC. You're leaving others within the country holding more bags of bolivars. The problem hasn't been solved at all just redistributed.

(2) If you can move money out of the country, you'd have done much better just buying USD and holding onto it, or using it there.

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stale2002 2762 days ago
> You're leaving others within the country holding more bags of bolivars. The problem hasn't been solved at all just redistributed.

The success of one's investment has nothing to do with censorship resistant financial transactions. It is irrelevant.

> If you can move money out of the country

You can move crypto of the country with the clip of a button.

Also, you can move it to the other side of the same country, quickly as well.

A financial transaction is an exchange of money, for a good or service. You send money to someone, and they give you a good. Crypto makes the money half of the transaction censorship resistant.

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arcticbull 2762 days ago
You have to move money to someone else via an exchange locally to buy that can be shutdown on a whim, or you have to move money out of the country to buy, and if you can do that there are myriad better options. Mining is not an option due to cost, and the successful ones get nationalized. I could see the argument in a world where everyone magically got preallocated some amount of Monero but that’s definitely not the world today. Obtaining the bitcoin in the first place is the blocker, not to mention it’s awful “store of value” problem.
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Qworg 2762 days ago
People are also using USD, today, in regimes such as Venezuela. Enforcement is terrible and members of the government's inner circle are facilitating USD/Bolivar exchanges outside of the law already.

Why would they care about crypto?

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