Add countries with hyperinflation too such as Venezuela and Argentina.
Every cryptocurrency-related post here in HN is flooded with extremely negative comments, even if the post itself does not promote cryptocurrencies. These people have seen countless examples of cryptocurrency scams, but they cannot understand what life under an economically oppressed or unstable country is because they never experienced it.
- People living abroad who are completely debanked because local banks refuse to open banks accounts for people who are merely suspected of being US citizns, despite them not being US citizns, with no path to resolve their predicament. This is a real problem that is effecting real people right now.
- Any legal activity that the banks and payment processors don't like for one reason or another; onlyfans, "right-wing" websites (whether actual or merely alleged), ...etc.
We no longer live in a world where you can live a dignified life with cash alone. Cryptocurrecy is a net positive to humanity, even if the technologies behind it may currently be more wasteful and make the lives of criminals a bit easier. There is simply no alternative for a lot of honest people in financial dead-ends the government can't or won't help.
Thank you Satoshi and anyone who works to support this technology for making the world a slightly better place.
But vast amount cryptobros being idiots doesn't make crypto itself useless. Similar to how there are a vast amount of AI/GPT-bros who are going to annoy us for the next few years, while AI itself is still very cool and beneficial.
"We use bitcoin because it’s a good legal means of payment. The fact that we have bitcoin payments as an alternative helps to defend us from the Russian authorities. They see if they close down other more traditional channels, we will still have bitcoin. It’s like insurance."
They even use Paypal and card transfers for donations... Bitcoin is just another payment they accept in the hope it will be hard for the government to block funds... but they don't say it anywhere that's been the only way, or the best way to do that, it's just one of the ways they're looking and so far has not been shown to be more government-resilient as I am sure getting the money out from the blockchain is not going to be easy if the Government doesn't like the idea... you make it look like Bitcoin is their saviour or something which is a gross misrepresentation.
> but they don't say it anywhere that's been the only way
Sure but if it wasn't significant, they wouldn't have mentioned it.
> so far has not been shown to be more government-resilient as I am sure getting the money out from the blockchain is not going to be easy if the Government doesn't like the idea
It seems you have no idea how bitcoin works then. All you have to do is memorize 12 words. You can then take your wealth to many corners of the world, some of which will be free from the tyranny of your government and still have an ecosystem which will let you cash out your bitcoin for the local currency. A good example - Dubai, where a lot of real estate is being purchased in crypto by the Russians fleeing the war.
You may not be aware of how Bitcoin has consistently aided people facing extreme and dire circumstances worldwide, caused by the sanctions you seem to hold in high esteem.
Every time you cheer for sanctions, you're cheering for the suffering and death of the most vulnerable people in the world under the guise that somehow a miracle will arise and the malnourished and starving will topple an already oppressive regime. Bitcoin has saved countless many from ruin from within these totalitarian states, despite their attempts at enforcing bans. It also doesn't help that marionettes echo propaganda created by media organizations, and those companies are owned by billionaire elites that benefit the most from Western sanctions.
Anyone supporting this is the enemy of the people and deserves everything that comes of them.
Any way around sanctions that helps me send money to my family in Russia is a way that is exploited by the dictator orders of magnitude more, maintaining the situation where my relatives need financial help in the first place (to say nothing about undermining world peace etc). Yes it is unfortunate.
It does not have the kind of liquidity, nor anonymity, which could be successfully used at any significant scale whatsoever, and there's no point to it given the USD is a convenient, anonymous, trivially falsifiable source of funds which are fully launderable.
You're missing the point. Cryptocurrencies are specifically designed to evade regulations. Everything else —efficiency, cost, convenience, usability— is sacrificed in order to achieve this goal.
Call me old school but I don’t understand the hype about regulations. The less power the government has, the better. They certainly don’t need to know my spending habits. And a stack of banknotes evade regulations pretty well anyway.
The function of the state is to enforce private property rights. Regulations exist to alleviate the consequences of private property rights by adding various forms of exceptions. Whether you think that's a good thing depends on whether your idea of utopia is a egalitarian commune or a neofeudal federation of corporate city states.
Note that I'm talking about private property not personal property. Variations of the latter exist and have existed in almost every society but the concept of the former has increasingly been maximized to the point that patches of land, ways to do things, ideas in your head and sincere promises are now things you can own and exchange and people refusing to suffer hunger or lack of shelter are seen as unreasonable if they want to use what isn't eaten or isn't lived in.
Abolishing the state as long as other organizations (or individuals) are allowed to hoard resources/wealth/power seems as catastrophic a suggestion as abolishing the police as long as other gangs exist. You're just substituting one evil for another without affecting any material change.
Bitcoin specifically, even at the height of Silk Road, and at Bitcoin's nearly weakest-by-comparison point, has been and is cleaner by proportion when compared with virtually all countries' grey markets in terms of what proportion of its economy is used for crime.
The crime trope is ancient, old, and has been repeatedly debunked. The evidence for its prevalence simply isn't there—because Bitcoin is not anonymous.
Yeah, I wish cryptocurrencies haven't been invented so that human trafficking wouldn't exist at all.
I mean just think about it. A FULL 3%* of all cryptocurrency transactions are related to criminal activities! If we ban those 3% (and the other 97% because why not), we will stop all human trafficking or at least make a noticeable dent in it because most traffickers rely on cryptocurrency and absolutely don't use traditional currency as the main way to transact.
Perhaps if cryptocurrencies do finally get banned, it would at least help certain individuals to think more critically, or perhaps start thinking at all. One can only wish.
[*]: 3% because it's the most extreme reputable statistic out there. Most reputable studies place transactions related to illicit activities well bellow 1%.
Though those governments would love people like you who paint all the use cases as "organized crime, terrorism" etc