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The money quote for me is: > “You get on an exchange for as long as you can, until they shut your ass down,” says Knox (an independent sex-worker). “You quickl

The money quote for me is: > “You get on an exchange for as long as you can, until they shut your ass down,” says Knox (an independent sex-worker). “You quickly [run out of exchanges], so you sit on a lot of useless money. The whole ‘crypto is permissionless and censorship-resistant’ thing is a bunch of bullshit.” (Knox suspects she has ended up on a blacklist at Plaid, a provider of technology plumbing to large crypto exchanges like Gemini, Kraken, and Robinhood, leading to the repeated bans. Freya Petersen, spokesperson for Plaid, says no such list exists, but that all firms that wish to use its services are subject to a standard risk assessment process, factoring in the industry in which they operate.) The only way around this would seem for sex workers to have their own wallet with keys that they control, but that still leaves them with no way to cash out, and landlords, car loans, and grocery stores do not accept crypto.

User23 3y ago
> but that still leaves them with no way to cash out Which has always been the primary criticism of cryptocurrency as, well, currency. It's not currency by definition if you have to "cash out" to spend.
- Expurple 3y ago
  Well, if you have some zimbabwean dollars, in most parts of the world you pretty much have to "cash out" and convert to a different currency, if you want to spend these. If you have a "respectable" currency like EUR and, say, you need to pay taxes in the US, you still have to convert to USD, because the IRS only accepts USD. Are ZWL and EUR "real" currencies? It all comes down to the list of currencies that the other party accepts. Your bank can probably auto-convert EUR in your account to USD and make the payment seemless. But there are cards issued by crypto exchanges that can auto-convert your crypto for fiat payments as well
  - User23 3y ago
    Conversion (swapping actually) is a real operation and can’t just be abstracted away. It matters considerably.
  - acdha 3y ago
    That’s like saying Esperanto is the same as English because both are languages, ignoring scale. Outside of a handful failed countries, most people can use their local currency for almost all of their needs. The problem for cryptocurrencies has been this is not true because they don’t offer enough of an advantage to shift that local currency usage and thus very few businesses accept them.
  - phone8675309 3y ago
    > there are cards issued by crypto exchanges that can auto-convert your crypto for fiat payments as well The whole point of the article is that these are not universally available and that exchanges can and will shut you down. How does having a magic card that turns crypto in to fiat work if the exchange has banned you?
    - Expurple 3y ago
      > How does having a magic card that turns crypto in to fiat work if the exchange has banned you? It doesn't. That's the point of the article. However, this problem is not exclusive to crypto cards. The person in question turned to crypto in the first place because her bank/Paypal/etc blocked her. With crypto, at least there are non-magic alternatives: p2p, crypto ATMs, etc
m00x 3y ago
The only real use-case for crypto was doing crime. Criminals flocked to use it, but obviously the government was going to be shortly behind. I'm surprised it took this long to close down the exit nodes. She could still use it to pay people that accept crypto, but most cryptocurrencies aren't great currencies since they fluctuate in value a lot. Our current financial system has issues, but the best system for 99%+ of people.
- askinionio 3y ago
  >The only real use-case for crypto was doing crime. It was never any good at that, either. Cryptocurrency is somewhat hard to censor but easy to track. And in practice, people go through centralized exchanges because blockchains work so badly.
  - m00x 3y ago
    It isn't, but it's still much better than traditional banks.
  - phone8675309 3y ago
    I don't know, people seem to have gotten good at buying drugs with it
    - ramranch 3y ago
      People are pretty damn good at buying drugs with fiat, too.
- x-complexity 3y ago
  > Our current financial system has issues, but the best system for 99%+ of people. I have to violently disagree with that statement. For a good chunk of people (> 10%), the current system is a vampire on the efforts of people, draining them via transfer fees, account fees, overdraft fees & whatever new fee they can come up with today. Their failures are bailed out because "tHeY'rE tOo BiG tO fAiL", influencing politicians into using the funds of the State to give themselves a pillow to land on. They deem themselves to be above the effects of "the hand of the market" that everyone else has to go through. Screw that: They must be able to fail like the rest of us, with no soft landing given to them when they do so.
bdcravens 3y ago
If they own the keys, they could at least find someone to do P2P transfers with (presumably at a lower rates than market) Some crypto ATMs allow cash withdrawals (again, at a rate favorable to the ATM)
- phone8675309 3y ago
  Running an all-cash business because you need to cash out your coins so the volatility doesn't kill you is really tough, especially when banks then won't deal with you depositing that cash into a bank account because they discriminate against your LEGAL business. It just seems like cryptocurrencies are re-inventing the banking system without all of the pesky safeguards against fraud and abuse that hurts the first movers (not the actual plebs) while encoding their cultural biases into the tech that is supposed to be unencumbered by laws or cultural moires.

User23 3y ago

> but that still leaves them with no way to cash out Which has always been the primary criticism of cryptocurrency as, well, currency. It's not currency by definition if you have to "cash out" to spend.

Expurple 3y ago
Well, if you have some zimbabwean dollars, in most parts of the world you pretty much have to "cash out" and convert to a different currency, if you want to spend these. If you have a "respectable" currency like EUR and, say, you need to pay taxes in the US, you still have to convert to USD, because the IRS only accepts USD. Are ZWL and EUR "real" currencies? It all comes down to the list of currencies that the other party accepts. Your bank can probably auto-convert EUR in your account to USD and make the payment seemless. But there are cards issued by crypto exchanges that can auto-convert your crypto for fiat payments as well
- User23 3y ago
  Conversion (swapping actually) is a real operation and can’t just be abstracted away. It matters considerably.
- acdha 3y ago
  That’s like saying Esperanto is the same as English because both are languages, ignoring scale. Outside of a handful failed countries, most people can use their local currency for almost all of their needs. The problem for cryptocurrencies has been this is not true because they don’t offer enough of an advantage to shift that local currency usage and thus very few businesses accept them.
- phone8675309 3y ago
  > there are cards issued by crypto exchanges that can auto-convert your crypto for fiat payments as well The whole point of the article is that these are not universally available and that exchanges can and will shut you down. How does having a magic card that turns crypto in to fiat work if the exchange has banned you?
  - Expurple 3y ago
    > How does having a magic card that turns crypto in to fiat work if the exchange has banned you? It doesn't. That's the point of the article. However, this problem is not exclusive to crypto cards. The person in question turned to crypto in the first place because her bank/Paypal/etc blocked her. With crypto, at least there are non-magic alternatives: p2p, crypto ATMs, etc

m00x 3y ago

The only real use-case for crypto was doing crime. Criminals flocked to use it, but obviously the government was going to be shortly behind. I'm surprised it took this long to close down the exit nodes. She could still use it to pay people that accept crypto, but most cryptocurrencies aren't great currencies since they fluctuate in value a lot. Our current financial system has issues, but the best system for 99%+ of people.

askinionio 3y ago
>The only real use-case for crypto was doing crime. It was never any good at that, either. Cryptocurrency is somewhat hard to censor but easy to track. And in practice, people go through centralized exchanges because blockchains work so badly.
- m00x 3y ago
  It isn't, but it's still much better than traditional banks.
- phone8675309 3y ago
  I don't know, people seem to have gotten good at buying drugs with it
  - ramranch 3y ago
    People are pretty damn good at buying drugs with fiat, too.
x-complexity 3y ago
> Our current financial system has issues, but the best system for 99%+ of people. I have to violently disagree with that statement. For a good chunk of people (> 10%), the current system is a vampire on the efforts of people, draining them via transfer fees, account fees, overdraft fees & whatever new fee they can come up with today. Their failures are bailed out because "tHeY'rE tOo BiG tO fAiL", influencing politicians into using the funds of the State to give themselves a pillow to land on. They deem themselves to be above the effects of "the hand of the market" that everyone else has to go through. Screw that: They must be able to fail like the rest of us, with no soft landing given to them when they do so.

bdcravens 3y ago

If they own the keys, they could at least find someone to do P2P transfers with (presumably at a lower rates than market) Some crypto ATMs allow cash withdrawals (again, at a rate favorable to the ATM)

phone8675309 3y ago
Running an all-cash business because you need to cash out your coins so the volatility doesn't kill you is really tough, especially when banks then won't deal with you depositing that cash into a bank account because they discriminate against your LEGAL business. It just seems like cryptocurrencies are re-inventing the banking system without all of the pesky safeguards against fraud and abuse that hurts the first movers (not the actual plebs) while encoding their cultural biases into the tech that is supposed to be unencumbered by laws or cultural moires.