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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   32429 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022

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It is however, an extremely effective form of value transfer. And it will contribute to capital flight, remittances, and quite a few other forms of cross border transfers at alarming rates for a while.

Is cryptocurrency a significant contributor to capital flight? It's hard to believe, when it can be legislated out of existence by the whim of the legislature. Is Russia using the technology to bypass western sanctions? Surely, if there is any use case for crypto, we would have seen it boom if it was an effective way to bypass Western capital controls.

In my view, it's a solution in search of a problem: nearly everything its advocates say it can do is already done and on a far more economical scale.

Its scary that you don't know the full extent to which its being used. ransomware, large overseas exchanges that process every individual who is trying to circumvent rules in traditional financial institutions, and quite a bit more. Do you understand why the darknet marketplace Hydra was sanctioned?

With countries like Argentina, you're seeing cryptocurrency kiosks proliferate throughout neighborhoods because that is the best store of value compared to a person's worthless fiat that is constantly being devalued. That is not only capital flight - it even expedites the process of inflation (not like the country doesn't deserve it).

I believe Argentina’s black market banking sector makes heavy use of crypto to bypass capital controls, yes.

Crypto-currencies may have some utility as a medium for transaction, but that is not how it's advocates try to sell it.

Someone in a contested environment is far better off investing in bricks and bullets than they are bitcoin no matter how much "number goes up"

I don't disagree with anything you said in your comment.

With all due respect have you met any? The Bitcoin half of them are all goldbugs on steroids who are explicitly looking for a transaction medium that can't be inflated by fiat or asteroids.

If anything the other half (smart contracts and trust less finance ostensibly) is just as relevant to the issue at hand.

Am I crazy, are most people only talking to dogecoin advocates or something?

In a crackdown i'd much rather hold monero than bars of gold personally. Though as we know, cigarettes and lighters are the real ultimate currency.

The dogecoin idiots are louder, while the defi programmers are actually building something.

for what it's worth my experience mirrors that of @slothlikesamwise, I feel like I run into a dozen of people hawking or investing in "digital gold" and crypto as a hedge against TEOTWAWKI, for each "smart contract" guy.

The congregate in certain coins I find, bitcoin is all in on the digital gold concept while stuff like monero is in on digital cash, ect.

Am I crazy, are most people only talking to dogecoin advocates or something?

Unironically this seems to be true, Digital Gold proponents have a far larger voice than digital cash or the smart contracts people.

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