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> Dorsey is a big Bitcoin fan, so that’s the kind of utility he appreciates. This sounds disingenuous. Not every fan of Bitcoin supports fraud, drug traffickin
by Bilal_io 4y ago
> Dorsey is a big Bitcoin fan, so that’s the kind of utility he appreciates.
This sounds disingenuous. Not every fan of Bitcoin supports fraud, drug trafficking.. etc. The dollar is used for such bad activities, should we label everyone that loves the dollar as a supporter of fraud and drugs?
- KingOfCoders 4y agoI would be interested in the percentage of 1. Bitcoin (crypto) users who (only) have BC because they hate fiat money 2. Users who have BC because they need it for illegal gains 3. Opportunistic investors 4. Web3ers I have the unsubstantiated feeling that 1 is overstated.
- dragonelite 4y agopoint 4 is pretty much 3.1
- throw239849234 4y ago5. People for whom fiat money is impractical for one or more reasons This category is way larger than people in well-banked Western circles realise. Bitcoin (crypto) is one of the easiest ways for people affected by capital controls or sanctions (on the financial institutions they use, or the country they were unlucky enough to be born in) to freely move their (legally earned, and taxed) money across borders. Since one of the countries with strict capital controls is China, and one of the countries affected by sanctions is Russia, the scale of this usage of crypto is huge.
- apetrovic 4y ago[citation needed]
- Nursie 4y agoIs sanctions-evasion a good thing? Russia is currently fighting a war of aggression, applying controls on the flow of money in or out of there is one way in which the war machine can be starved.
- Kinrany 4y agoI'm no expert, but restricting the flow of goods seems both necessary and sufficient. The war machine doesn't run on money. A state can always find a way to hide the transactions, on the other hand.
- Nursie 4y ago> The war machine doesn't run on money. I think it might, particularly where the war machine has a partner willing to sell it arms.
- b112 4y agoA state can always find a way to hide the transactions, on the other hand I think the risk of sanctions, means that while there are work arounds, the cost of those work arounds, and the restrictions on who will do business with you, dramatically increase the costs of certain goods. So sure, the cash moves, but now you pay more. A lot more. Death by 1000 cuts, and all that...
- sokoloff 4y agoWhether sanctions evasion is good depends principally on which side of the sanction line you fall.
- nosianu 4y ago"Aggression" is an objective measure. There is no subjectivity who starts a war and wo is in another country's territory. Those are observable facts. And obviously Russia did not believe Ukraine to be a threat - or they would have not done this haphazard invasion with too little preparation and too few soldiers, so there is no excuse.
- raverbashing 4y ago> 5. People for whom fiat money is impractical for one or more reasons Did the bitcoiners forget about paper bills?
- jhugo 4y agoBoth China and Russia have restrictions on taking paper money out of the country, which are much easier to enforce since there's a physical aspect.
- Kbelicius 4y agoThe idea that some cryptocoin is used by some large but unseen group of people is often talked about but nobody presents the data that show that this group really exists. Is there some real data that shows that this large group actually exists or is it all speculation?
- atdrummond 4y agoThe vast majority of the cash changers in Istanbul have tether and BTC logos. There’s a similar situation in Lebanon with BTC’s near ubiquity in remittances. Just because it doesn’t impact your life doesn’t mean this use isn’t self evident elsewhere.
- polygamous_bat 4y agoAnd a large number of cigarette shops and bodegas in the US have lottery tickets. Is there a clear reason why we assume it's for remittances and not for gambling? I know in South Asia for example most of it is indeed for degenerate gambling/"get rich overnight" schemes.
- espadrine 4y agoThis ought to be a verifiable claim, thanks to Street View. I looked around the airport[0] and in[1] various[2] streets[3]. The images are from last year, but they don’t show cash changers with either tether or BTC logos. I did end up finding one[4] after searching through seven, although it is dedicated to cryptocurrencies (it was next to a cash exchange, it isn't one), and its website states this[5]: > Is exchanging cryptocurrency legal in Turkey? Yes, it is legal to buy, sell or trade your crypto money as long as crypto money is not used to pay goods or services. They also mention they only pay out in USD. That makes it sound like the only possible use is for a Russian to convert Rubles to BTC in their home country, exchange BTC with USD there, then go next door to exchange their USD with Lira. That is so heavily tied to sanctions that it can explain why actual cash exchanges don’t support cryptocurrencies. [0]: https://www.google.com/maps/@40.9774298,28.820529,2a,75y,324.84h,93.32t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s4r-fkwgLByvJVNPh8HhKFw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.com/maps/@40.9774298,28.820529,2a,75y,324... [1]: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.0080274,28.9761991,3a,15y,347.79h,87.86t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sfDNXihn3RTiVSMX4g7My1A!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DfDNXihn3RTiVSMX4g7My1A%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D60.385715%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@41.0080274,28.9761991,3a,15y,34... [2]: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.0166738,28.9509347,3a,88.5y,55.93h,87.57t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sK-21gY2naC209MU9h6u5cg!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DK-21gY2naC209MU9h6u5cg%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D63.314533%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@41.0166738,28.9509347,3a,88.5y,... [3]: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.0150099,28.9752954,3a,25.8y,52.2h,88.8t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1shFm9pMwP4hs-IzDNrh4DEw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@41.0150099,28.9752954,3a,25.8y,... [4]: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.0086973,28.9713568,3a,60y,64.67h,88.3t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sm30kpT5WfruQxBW4ClpgFg!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3Dm30kpT5WfruQxBW4ClpgFg%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D142.76474%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@41.0086973,28.9713568,3a,60y,64... [5]: https://nakitcoins.com/en https://nakitcoins.com/en
- Yizahi 4y agoSo these people want to avoid law, by avoiding paying taxes or fees of their capital. Which is precisely #2 from the parent poster - "Users who have BC because they need it for illegal gains". I'm not assigning a moral value to this. I'm just commenting that law avoidance is law avoidance, even if you really really want or need to do it. Tokens are useless in comparison to monay for almost any activity, except for law avoidance. For this task they are amazing.
- ano88888 4y agointernationally, 2 using cypto for illegal or unofficial means to transfer money is definitely more than 90%. The rest can share the remaining 10%.
- lowkey 4y agoDo you have a source for this figure? It doesn’t align with my experience.
- cinntaile 4y agoThis is a false dichotomy with 4 choices instead.
- Hamuko 4y agoCategory 1 was probably predominant during the early days of Bitcoin, so the old hands probably still hold onto to that notion.
- meltedcapacitor 4y agoAll these categories are like about 5% each, the 80% is normal hard working people who don't like hard working — it is literally hard work! — and to whom crypto gives hope as a magic box in which one throws pennies and dollars come back. It's a bit creepy (the game is in fact zero/negative sum) but then gambling is not generally illegal.
- lowkey 4y agoNotably Block, the company in the article enables Bitcoin only, not crypto in general. > the 80% is normal hard working people who don't like hard working Another way to look at it is that 80% of Bitcoiners don’t like the value of their hard work to be continuously debased at a rate of 2-8+% year after year or being subjected to the whims of the Fed’s money printer which recently expanded the entire money supply by over 40% then claimed it wouldn’t drive inflation before claiming that inflation was temporary.
- lowkey 4y ago1. Bitcoin users who hate the fractional reserve model of banking with fiat or the ability for the Fed to print fiat arbitrarily is probably a majority 2. Hold Bitcoin for illegal uses, probably a small minority as there are better options such as Monero for illegal uses 3. Probably a majority of Bitcoiners are opportunistic investors. Why is that bad? 4. Web3ers, a minority of Bitcoiners. You are thinking of altcoins. (Yes Ordinals on Bitcoin are now a thing and are controversial in the Bitcoin community, but most Bitcoiners are hard money proponents who are not interested in NFTs)
- qeternity 4y agoI find these takes to be so disingenuous. The dollar is used in this manner in spite of legal and regulatory efforts. Bitcoin is used in this manner bc it was designed explicitly to be immune to these efforts. I respect people who believe money should be uncensorable. But at least own that view and the implications, instead of all of this fiat whataboutism.
- malermeister 4y ago> I respect people who believe money should be uncensorable. Why? That is just another way of saying moneyed interests should be above the rule of law. What could possibly be respectable about a view this odious?
- junofan 4y agoI don’t think Chase freezing your account and refusing to tell you why counts as rule of law. I don’t see what’s so odious about coming up with a solution to move money that doesn’t involve financial institutions.
- pavlov 4y agoI agree. It's an extremist position to say that money should be outside the rules of society. Let's take an experiment. Instead of "I should be free to send money to anyone anywhere", we'll replace money with a car. "I should be free to drive my car anywhere, anytime". Sounds superficially like a reasonable proposition even? But in fact we have lots of rules that control who can drive a car, where, under what intoxication. There are driver's licenses, traffic signs, road police... Ultimately a judge will put you in jail if you exercise your freedom to drive outside of society's rules. Now imagine someone using the pseudonym Suzuki Toyotamoto invents a car made out of floating jello with an engine that runs on nuclear waste. Many engineers will marvel at the ingenuity of the design. Some people start building their own jello blobs and driving them off-road without a license. The law says nothing explicitly about transportation inside floating jello. Eventually people take their floating jello vehicles to roads and get fined. (The jello moves barely at walking speed and drips radioactive sludge.) Outrage blows up in the floating jello community. Do the old rules apply to them? Will the whole world switch over to floating jello? (These questions may seem very important to those versed in the world of Suzuki Toyotamoto's floating jello, but most people just don't care and will happily keep using their regular cars instead of sitting in slime powered by radioactive waste.)