[willeh]

A bank by any other name is still a bank. Sure there is definitely a legal difference such as deposit insurance and access to their lender of last resort. For the customer however it doesn't matter they still need KYC, the cops can still see their transactions, they still have to ask where the money is from, they can still knock on your door and put your hands in handcuffs. Many of the advantages to people in El Salvador with BTC is avoiding extreme inflation in the national currency. However one does well to note that inflation woes in the Atlantic world actually correlated with a partial deflation of the Bitcoin bubble, so if you're in the EU/US bitcoin is an investment when money is cheap, not a hedge for your money becoming cheap.

[el-salvador]

Our currency is the USD since 2001. The SVC our former local currency has been pegged for 20+ years to the usd [1].

The SVC is no longer used day to day and is usually kept as a collectible item, it can still be exchanged at banks at 8.75 SVC per 1 USD.

[1] https://www.xe.com/currencyconverter/convert/?Amount=1&From=...