[yellowapple]

Right, but this presupposes that the particular tool in question is a "bad tool", and the basis of that presupposition elsewhere in this thread is very strongly implied to be "tool is used by bad guys therefore it's bad unless I specifically benefit from it".

[ShamelessC]

Eh, that wasn’t my read. More that it seems to be exclusively used by bad people.

The lack of people manually verifying the _nature_ of a transaction and not just that someone claimed a transaction occurred means everything you’re doing is, well, pointless. It is (highly optimistically) a libertarian political movement that is deeply misinformed about how free markets and trust actually work.

Cryptocurrency has zero effective solutions for this. If you were to send your money to anyone claiming to be a NK citizen, you still have to personally verify entire transaction occurs, or you’ll get grifted. It’s useless. You’re being grifted. You’re making it worse by continuing to defend it and at some point you’re culpable for not admitting this despite it coming up on literally every hacker news post about cryptocurrency.

[yellowapple]

> More that it seems to be exclusively used by bad people.

So I'm a bad person, then? Are the migrant workers sending money back to their families bad people? Are the refugees using it to bring their life savings with them bad people? Are the people currently subject to those bad regimes and unable to escape bad people?

At best, the belief that "it seems to be exclusively used by bad people" is blatantly ignorant of reality. At worst, it's saying the quiet part out loud: that as far as the legacy financial system (and the supporters thereof) is concerned, these people are just as "bad" (read: worth shunning from the benefits of said system), with the only difference being that said system is able to exploit them and their labor while it pretends they don't exist.

> Cryptocurrency has zero effective solutions for this.

Because there's no problem to be solved in the first place. There are many issues with cryptocurrency, but "wah nation-states can't arbitrarily censor transactions wah" ain't one of 'em.

[ShamelessC]

Can you prove any of those things is actually happening with the sort of regularity you’re implying? Preferably without linking to coinbase articles?

[yellowapple]

https://restofworld.org/2021/crypto-remittances/

https://coinflip.tech/blog/how-cryptocurrency-is-aiding-ukra...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerhuang/2020/10/19/dissident...

Your turn: prove your assertion that cryptocurrencies "seem" to be used exclusively by bad people.

[ShamelessC]

I never said that. I said it was my read of the parent comment. Further, it’s a comment about perceptions (“seems”), not a deliberate statement of fact.

It’s more like saying “I can’t recommend this to anyone because the legitimate use cases (if there are any) dont offset the potential for abuse (particularly in societies with an existing, trusted banking infrastructure).

[yellowapple]

> I never said that. I said it was my read of the parent comment.

Fair enough. Regardless...

> It’s more like saying “I can’t recommend this to anyone because the legitimate use cases (if there are any) dont offset the potential for abuse (particularly in societies with an existing, trusted banking infrastructure).

And in saying that, one betrays either a severe ignorance of reality or a vested interest in the continued marginalization of the very people to whom that "existing, trusted banking infrastructure" currently does more harm than good. There are legitimate use cases and they vastly offset any abuse (potential or otherwise), even in (ostensibly) "developed" economies like here in the US.

Not to mention that said "existing, trusted banking infrastructure" conflates its definition of "abuse" with "whatever the current local regime deems illegal"; as one of many examples, it seems rather plausible (if not probable) for anti-abortion states to start seizing assets from the bank accounts of women who solicit the services of abortion clinics - something which any cryptocurrency worth its salt is explicitly designed to prevent. And don't get me started on the can of worms overturning Roe v. Wade just opened; GSRMs, contraceptive customers/vendors, and other folks previously enjoying that implied right to privacy are now suddenly much more vulnerable to the same economic exile that sex workers and drug users/suppliers have already long faced. Talk about "potential for abuse"!