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This is nonsense. Canada is starting to classify cryptos as assets [1], and they already are looking into some accounts related to the protests [2]. It's true t

• dylkil 5y ago
  Your comment is nonsense. They can seize your gold in a bank vault. They cannot forge a signature transferring your crypto held on your metamask. They would need first physical access to your computer and secondly your metamask password. They can classify it all they want, but it is completely outside of the control of their legacy systems.
  • spupe 5y ago
    They can seize the gold only if they know where it is. And to convert crypto back into Canadian dollars, you will need to go through the "legacy" banking system at any substantial amount, where it can be flagged with standard tools and you would be arrested.
    • dylkil 5y ago
      >And to convert crypto back into Canadian dollars the ultimate goal is to never convert back
      • medvezhenok 5y ago
        They can also criminalize accepting Bitcoin for payment for goods, in which case you would have no choice but to convert back to dollars (and taxes will likely always be paid in dollars anyway)
        • erulabs 5y ago
          And then there would be a black market, immediately. Prohibition tends to be exceptionally violent. The point being: using a decentralized currency makes authoritarianism harder. This is not exactly a radical idea: foreign currencies have very often been banned from use in dictatorships. Why people kick back on "internet money" being a tool to use against abusive governments is strange: It's more or less it's only real feature, and the feature that makes it's enormous computational cost worthwhile. I'm aware this is a wildly radical set of statements, and I'm not a bitcoin-carrying-anarchist, but you can't really deny that this is the real application of "internet money", and thus the original point of the article stands.
          • ryan_lane 5y ago
            Regular people in dictatorships aren't hiding money in cryptocurrency, because they don't have money to stash away, usually. The rich in those societies may be, and they're likely rich through being affiliated with the dictator. You aren't helping liberate the poor and desperate. You're helping oligarchs hide their money from domestic or international seizure after the dictator falls, and a new government steps in.
            • erulabs 5y ago
              I don't follow the argument: the oligarchs aren't using crypto, so using crypto helps oligarchs? If the average person, wealthy or affiliated or not, has a way of avoiding the mandated use of a fiat currency, and that pressure creates an upper and lower bound for how badly the leaders of their country can manipulate the currency supply, yes I believe that helps the poor and desperate. If part of liberty is ownership, then yes, it even helps liberate them too.
          • imtringued 5y ago
            Black market? I thought Bitcoin is a "store of value" for investors? Those investors want legitimacy so grandmas buy Bitcoin.
            • 5y ago