2 ms·

Actually I do. I edited my comment though to reflect that, yes they are oppressive as they do shadowy things with the police and kill people. There is probably

Actually I do. I edited my comment though to reflect that, yes they are oppressive as they do shadowy things with the police and kill people. There is probably a mix of maybe-unregrettable (killing dangerous religious extremists political opponents) and regrettable (killing anti-islam feminists) events. Nigeria is an extremely violent society. Think Mexico. So police violence, if regrettable, is pretty much a corollary. Sorry but it does not seem weird to you, that among all the dictatorships on Earth, only the scammers' paradise Nigeria has adopted cryptocurrencies at a large scale? Why not Cuba? About feminist activism: okay but then what about in other muslim countries, where the problem is similar? Why is it in Nigeria that the adoption is so big? My point is that these citizen organizations could have just used VPN+PayPal very easily for their activism, but it's because BTC was already mainstream among the omnipresent scam businesses, that they had the idea to try.

nprz 5y ago
Cubans do use bitcoin: https://www.coindesk.com/cuba-protests-bitcoin-donations https://www.coindesk.com/cuba-protests-bitcoin-donations It doesn't matter if you use VPN with your paypal account, you can still be locked out of your account and your funds frozen. This is not true of bitcoin. No one can freeze your bitcoin, no one can prevent transfer.
- henearkr 5y ago
  The usage by Cubans is completely dwarfed by the one by Nigerians. The population size can probably explain it partly, but I don't think it's sufficient. But most people depend on platforms to use BTC, so it's the same problem as with PayPal. Also when I say PayPal, think "all PayPal-like services", including all the competitors. In the cases where users were banned, PayPal did not prevent them from migrating their funds to others forms, so it's not really freezing. Let's take China instead of Cuba because there are more data. In January 2021, Nigeria made 32% of BTC exchanges, whereas China only 7%. That shows you there is really some effect independent from the population size and from the nature of the political regime.

nprz 5y ago

Cubans do use bitcoin: https://www.coindesk.com/cuba-protests-bitcoin-donations https://www.coindesk.com/cuba-protests-bitcoin-donations It doesn't matter if you use VPN with your paypal account, you can still be locked out of your account and your funds frozen. This is not true of bitcoin. No one can freeze your bitcoin, no one can prevent transfer.

henearkr 5y ago
The usage by Cubans is completely dwarfed by the one by Nigerians. The population size can probably explain it partly, but I don't think it's sufficient. But most people depend on platforms to use BTC, so it's the same problem as with PayPal. Also when I say PayPal, think "all PayPal-like services", including all the competitors. In the cases where users were banned, PayPal did not prevent them from migrating their funds to others forms, so it's not really freezing. Let's take China instead of Cuba because there are more data. In January 2021, Nigeria made 32% of BTC exchanges, whereas China only 7%. That shows you there is really some effect independent from the population size and from the nature of the political regime.