[yes_man]

The cross border not about technical capacity but legal control. For example if you are a refugee you might not be able to pull your bank savings and liquid stock with you from your home country to another without it being seized or taxed, but your crypto is always yours as long as you are the only holder of the keys. This scenario is one of the rare real world utilities I see with crypto.

[dist-epoch]

Your crypto still needs to be declared, even if you hold the keys. Not doing that breaks all kinds of laws and makes you jail-able.

Sure, you can hope the state won't find out about your crypto, but then how do you enjoy it?

[yes_man]

Specifically for a refugee, at least with crypto you have the possibility to declare your assets in your destination, since you actually still hold on to them. Which is unlikely if it is tied to banks or investment platforms of an authoritarian country trying to genocide you. I understand this sounds like a fringe example but there are over 100 million forcibly displaced people globally.

[hvb2]

Yes, there are rare use cases where this is useful. The high inflation case is one as well.

So stop talking about a parallel system and start talking about what it is, a niche product.

[torginus]

A lot of countries cracked down on merchants accepting bitcoin, and in a lot of places it's illegal to offer BTC->cash conversions without KYC.

I suspect authoritarian regimes would be the first to close this loophole. This is not theoretical - Russia did this in 2022 to stop people from offloading their rubles and/or fleeing the country with their money.

[kikimora]

As a Russian I can attest - you can do crypto in Russia and it is one of a very few ways many friends of mine support their families from abroad.

[torginus]

And what's the legal status of crypto nowadays for individuals?

[kikimora]

Crypto is qualified as property and regulated in a very similar way. There is a market for borrowing using tokens regulated by digital assets act (цифровые финансовые активы).

[mizzao]

Yep, it's highly illegal to use crypto in China