[ur-whale]

Bitcoin isn't necessarily well aligned to what people usually think of as a "currency".

It's an entirely new beast in the financial instrument space.

It does bear some characteristics of traditional currencies, but not all of them.

Specifically, as it works today, and until Lightning gets some traction, BTC isn't very convenient for small day to day transactions like buying a cup of coffee.

On the flipside, it does have attributes that traditional currencies strictly do not have.

For cases such as the OP, there is no other financial instrument on the planet that will cut it (other than things like Monero / ZCash / MimbleWimble).

Besides being antifragile and censorship resistant, there is also a very strong case to be made for Bitcoin in the 'preservation of wealth' niche (if you are strongly insensitive to short-term volatility, and capable of playing on a 5 year time horizon, that is).

[EDIT]: To answer your question more precisely, Bitcoin has most definitely been a success story for sites like sci-hub, Wikileak and generally speaking, people who try to speak truth to power.

[mirimir]

> To answer your question more precisely, Bitcoin has most definitely been a success story for sites like sci-hub, Wikileak and generally speaking, people who try to speak truth to power.

Also for VPN providers, and their customers. And generally for people who want to buy stuff and lease online services ~anonymously. If one mixes well enough, that is.

[Nursie]

And avoids using a mixer that decides to screw you over, and avoids using a mixer that gets taken down because hey - guess what? That's basically money laundering and the jail time for that sort of thing can be pretty hefty.

[wbobeirne]

> avoids using a mixer that decides to screw you over

Most mixers use CoinJoin, which gives you trustless assurances that you won't lose your money. The worst thing you'll lose is your time.

[teddyh]

A mixer is not “money laundering”. As I understand it, “money laundering” is when you conceal from somebody, usually the tax authorities, the reason you have the money. If someone has no income to speak of, and still has a lot of cash, that’s suspicious. A “mixer” in this case would be analogous to exchanging the physical bills for bills with different serial numbers. But this does not alleviate suspicion, the problem of the money being unexplained remains. So they can “launder” the money; i.e. pretend that they have a hair salon business or something similar, and then declare that a lot of people are coming to their salon and spending money, even though there aren’t. But this now provides an explanation for the amount of money they have; the money is now “laundered”, even though it’s the same physical cash as before.

[mirimir]

That's true. You never mix any more than you're willing to lose. And sure, it's money laundering. But money laundering in defense of freedom from oppression is OK, as I see it.

[Nursie]

So long as you're ok with your coins getting mixed with (and thus providing cover for) the more criminal stuff, I guess.

[mirimir]

I'm OK with that. And it's impossible to avoid, if you're using systems with any chance of protecting your privacy. Also, criminals tend to attract lots of attention, and they're often careless, so they act as canaries.

There is the concern that you'll end up with Bitcoin that's been tainted in one way or another. However, at least some mixing services get coin from miners, so it's clean. And you can check for that in the blockchain.

That's mostly a concern when you're mixing Bitcoin before converting it to meatspace fiat. If you're anonymizing Bitcoin purchased with meatspace fiat, it doesn't matter so much if some is tainted. Or at least, it won't unless tainted coin gets blacklisted.

[nfin]

Admittedly (!) exaggerated, but are you not also providing cover for criminals by doing not essential things (like playing tennis), because criminals would be catched easily if no law abiding citizen would do that kind of things, right?

Just a thought

[DEADBEEFC0FFEE]

It's not that easy to be anonymous with Bitcoin. Eventually you have to pay for Bitcoin, and that going to involve cash or trust, neither is simple.

[mirimir]

Mirimir earns his Bitcoin, so there's no cash involved.

But no matter how you get the Bitcoin, you can get whatever degree of anonymity you want, by mixing it many times. You mix via Tor and nested VPN chains, with a different Whonix VM and mixing service for each mix.

[lallysingh]

Bounce through monero first.

[RandomBacon]

Might as well just stay in Monero. If you have to pay someplace that doesn't use Monero, just use XMR.to to pay (converts Monero to Bitcoin).

[bitcointruther]

you can buy bitcoin KYC free on bisq.network (but there is a premium). Very low risk of loss of funds. You can even use zelle which is supported by most banks.

From there, send your coins through a samouari whirlpool https://samouraiwallet.com/whirlpool

Then send them wherever you like.

There is still some counterparty risk (what if you're buying coins from the CIA, or whatever), but it's almost minimal.

Buying coins from a Bitcoin ATM is even easier, if there's one near you.

[mirimir]

Bitcoin ATMs probably have surveillance cameras.

[bitxbitxbitcoin]

Bitcoin ATMs definitely have surveillance cameras - if they don't, the area surrounding their location do. As far as I know there are only a handful of older Bitcoin ATM brands that don't have a camera and even the brand I'm thinking of Lamassu has added cameras in their later models.[1]

[1] https://lamassu.is/faq

[Nursie]

> Buying coins from a Bitcoin ATM is even easier, if there's one near you.

Enjoy those massive fees!

[LeoPanthera]

There are forks of Bitcoin that solve (most of) these problems and make it more usable as an actual currency, rather than a gold-like store of value. "Bitcoin Cash" is the most famous, there are others.

Frankly the failure of "original" Bitcoin to adapt to use as a currency seems to me to be a total failure of vision.

[octocop]

With that logic the wright brothers made a shitty airplane. Bitcoin will exist forever, it will be like the Egyptian pyramids for our ancestors.

[ahnick]

My understanding of Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV is that they have just increased the blocksize the clients can handle. Is there something more to them than that?

[zhoujianfu]

Not really, but the result is essentially no fees. And thanks to Moore’s Law there’s no trade-off for it. Bitcoin (Core) is insane for having high fees.

[SnowProblem]

Yes. It's really worth dwelling on the long-term implications of terabyte+ sized blocks and fees of a thousand of a cent. This is where BSV is heading and everything changes at that scale. New use cases are unlocked. Old architectures need to be rethought. It's the most interesting technology I've encountered in a long time and it's a gem of entrepreneurship opportunity for those that can stomach swimming upstream.

[fsckboy]

there's also sidechains, segwit, and lightning network which shrink and consolidate transactions to increase the number of them that can fit in a block

[ur-whale]

> seems to me to be a total failure of vision.

First, the market seems to strongly disagree with you [1]

Second, what seems to me a total failure of vision is trying to shoehorn something as new and disruptive as Bitcoin in the old and worn out yoke of currencies as they used to exist. There's paypal for that.

[1] https://www.tradingview.com/symbols/BCHBTC/?exchange=COINBAS... (choose the 5 yr. view)