[anonym29]

>How will Bitcoin fix it?

The problem is theft of your funds without your consent over your unpopular political speech. Bitcoin cannot be taken from you by any third party, provided you self-custody and adequately protect your keys.

>If I buy a video card with bitcoin, but get sent a brick instead, how does "Blockchain as Arbiter" get my bitcoins back?

Unrelated to the problem being discussed, but still a problem. Unfortunately, this is not a problem unique to Bitcoin, nor a problem adequately solved by PayPal, as explained in other comments, so it's hardly a robust criticism against BTC.

Full dislcosure: I own BTC, but less than 0.5% of my net worth, I do not own it for speculative reasons, and I do not view it as an investment or store of value, only as an alternative payment network.

[WWLink]

> The problem is theft of your funds without your consent over your unpopular political speech.

As much as I want to roll my eyes at this, it's important no matter what your political opinion is! For now we might be talking "unpopular" but what if you have political speech that is popular but opposes what the people in charge at the time think?

[hiq]

BTC doesn't help with transactions, you still end up trusting a 3rd-party (or the party you're transacting with, in which case a bank transfer would also work fine). There will be no censorship to send your BTC, but you can't give guarantees about what will happen for the other part of the transaction without this trust.

The use-case you mentioned is just that of a bank account. The right to have such a bank account should be enforced by regulation where it's not the case yet, as storing your wealth in an asset with such high volatility is not an actual solution.

[8note]

Is it theft if you've agreed to a contract stating those as penalties?

[anonym29]

Legally, no, which is why I don't use PayPal and never will again, but to the layperson, who almost invariably does not read those contracts, and might be incapable of understanding the contract even if they chose to read it, I suspect it would look, sound, and feel a lot like theft.

But again, that's the beauty of Bitcoin. There is no dense legalese with sneaky technicalities that allow other parties to seize your funds over the contents of your speech, so long as you self-custody and adequately protect your keys. I understand that's also not something all laypeople can be expected to do, but I prefer to have the option than to not have the option.

[8note]

Isn't that the beauty of PayPal too? As long as I follow certain tricky practices including self censorship, my money is safe.

Swapping out dense legalese with sneaky technicalities for dense technical requirements with sneaky technicalities isn't particularly different.

Even then, you still aren't protected from signing bad contracts, either smart or regular

[anonym29]

Smart contracts for bitcoin? Can you provide some documentation on that?