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Nigeria banned banks from trading in crypto, killing off the fiat. Nigerians just started making telegram and whatsapp groups, made codenames for different coi

Nigeria banned banks from trading in crypto, killing off the fiat. Nigerians just started making telegram and whatsapp groups, made codenames for different coins and traded them for cash or bank transfers. Unless you decide to bank commerce and phones and the internet and talking to your neighbor and running a computer, you can't ban crypto.

kec 6y ago
What you're describing is laundering, so now you're committing two crimes. I wouldn't bet against the government taking an interest once values being exchanged are large enough.
- puranjay 6y ago
  What I'm describing is free trade.
  - throwaway22211 6y ago
    The slavish devotion to the state that permeates HN is physically nauseating. You are throwing pearls before Nazis.
  - WorshipTheState 6y ago
    The slavish devotion to the state that permeates HN is physically nauseating. You are throwing pearls before Nazis.
acdha 6y ago
This only protects you if the government is powerless or chooses not to target you. In the other cases, what happens is that banks and other businesses are required to report transactions and, since a blockchain helpfully gives the police a full signed transaction log, anyone who is arrested is going to in turn give the police leads on everyone they've ever exchanged money with. In that world, using cryptocurrencies has a high risk factor: do you trust the other party to go to jail rather than identify you, or that they have personal security good enough to even be able to prevent that? Simply using an unapproved payment mechanism, much less one of the ones which tries to provide some anonymity (fewer will deliver in practice), will likely be seen as proof of intention to commit financial crimes and … I sincerely hope you can convince them that you aren't hiding something they haven't yet scared you into confessing. This is not a recipe for a functioning economy. Technology can't fix social problems like that and the vast majority of people making claims otherwise won't personally be affected but are recklessly endangering anyone who makes the mistake of trusting them.

kec 6y ago

What you're describing is laundering, so now you're committing two crimes. I wouldn't bet against the government taking an interest once values being exchanged are large enough.

puranjay 6y ago
What I'm describing is free trade.
- throwaway22211 6y ago
  The slavish devotion to the state that permeates HN is physically nauseating. You are throwing pearls before Nazis.
- WorshipTheState 6y ago
  The slavish devotion to the state that permeates HN is physically nauseating. You are throwing pearls before Nazis.

acdha 6y ago

This only protects you if the government is powerless or chooses not to target you. In the other cases, what happens is that banks and other businesses are required to report transactions and, since a blockchain helpfully gives the police a full signed transaction log, anyone who is arrested is going to in turn give the police leads on everyone they've ever exchanged money with. In that world, using cryptocurrencies has a high risk factor: do you trust the other party to go to jail rather than identify you, or that they have personal security good enough to even be able to prevent that? Simply using an unapproved payment mechanism, much less one of the ones which tries to provide some anonymity (fewer will deliver in practice), will likely be seen as proof of intention to commit financial crimes and … I sincerely hope you can convince them that you aren't hiding something they haven't yet scared you into confessing. This is not a recipe for a functioning economy. Technology can't fix social problems like that and the vast majority of people making claims otherwise won't personally be affected but are recklessly endangering anyone who makes the mistake of trusting them.