[latchkey]

That's why bitcoin and ethereum are so awesome. It gives this power back to the people and there is not a whole lot that governments can do about it except watch the flow of funds. Of course we can argue over finer details, but the overall course has been set. It is just a matter of innovation now.

Having the combination of bitcoin as the single limited entity (simple is valuable) and eth as the programmable, more complex version of that, solves a lot of general needs and provides a good foundation to build on.

Sure the on/off ramps make it easier to trace it to individuals, but what happens when people stop using those and just deal with each other directly? L2's will make the smaller day to day, transactions cheaper and faster and those will just roll up with checkpoints on the L1's.

DeFi is a bottom up step in that direction. To emulate the existing infrastructure, we need programmable money. It stumbled to begin with, but again the foundation has been laid. Cat is out of the bag, so to speak.

[medvezhenok]

I’m not sure that I would want people to hold all of that power - there’a a reason that the state has a monopoly on violence in the first place - turns out that having people roam the streets with guns is a less pleasant reality to be in for most people (look at Russia in the 1990s for what that looks like).

Not to go all black-mirror, but imagine someone anonymously putting up a $X million dollar bounty on someone’s head, backed by a smart contract promise or something (I know that it can’t be guaranteed at present, but imagine). Or other nefarious things that most of the society considers harmful - and having no way to stop those from happening.

Same as the promise of “hard money” - look at the 1930s for what a deflationary bust with “hard money” looks like. There is a reason why we have the current system, and while there are large issues with it, Bitcoin/Crypto solves very few of them

[latchkey]

> imagine someone anonymously putting up a $X million dollar bounty on someone’s head, backed by a smart contract promise or something (I know that it can’t be guaranteed at present, but imagine). Or other nefarious things that most of the society considers harmful - and having no way to stop those from happening.

With or without crypto, nothing prevents that from happening today. Number one currency for nefarious actions is (and likely will always be), USD. Likely perpetuated by the US govt itself.

> There is a reason why we have the current system, and while there are large issues with it, Bitcoin/Crypto solves very few of them

I don't think they are trying to solve for those issues though. I'm more than happy with the issues they do solve, for me, today. Namely, more control and flexibility over my own funds.

I can take any amount of my dollars in my bank, convert them to a decentralized stablecoin (and I'm not talking shit like UST), fly to another country, and then access those funds locally without anyone telling me what I can and cannot do.

If that means that others can do the same and they might use that to do something awful, it doesn't really matter to me because if they really wanted to get away with it in today's standards, they could. Jamal Khashoggi is a prime example of this.

[atmosx]

> I can take any amount of my dollars in my bank, convert them to a decentralized stablecoin (and I'm not talking shit like UST), fly to another country, and then access those funds locally without anyone telling me what I can and cannot do.

That's like: https://xkcd.com/538/

Are we talking about 2k USDs or meaningful sums like 300k or 10 million? Because banks in many countries (e.g. mine) have outright ban transactions with BTC-related websites (e.g. crypto exchanges) using their accounts... So assuming you find someone who'll be able to verse 1 million USD to your account (can/will coinbase do that? not in theory, in practice... or ask you 15 days to put the money together?), you'll have to convince the bank to accept and hand you the money. Then explain where did these came from. Good luck with that.

[latchkey]

If you're carrying cash into a country, it is very easy to lose it at the airport given that they are looking for people carrying a lot of cash and have machines to detect these things.

There are private OTC desks of all sizes, all over the place, if you know where to look.