Monero is.
> They also don't eliminate payment processor risk
Of course they don't magically solve all problems, but that doesn't make them useless.
> I'm skeptical how many people in Venezuela saved their fortunes via Bitcoin et al
I've read some article from people who did it, but I don't think it's common.
The problem with leaving the country is, how do you take your assets with you? You cannot easily move a house, and you will get searched at the border and your gold, dollars, jewelry etc will get confiscated if found. With cryptocurrencies you can theoretically move any amount, by just memorizing 12 or 24 words, by hiding a piece of paper or by encrypting it and placing it online somewhere.
Overall I think that cryptocurrencies (and the internet overall) could use some better privacy strategies. Tor-like routing, no possibility of finger printing, etc.
[0] https://slideslive.com/38911785/satoshi-has-no-clothes-failu...
> Many, including Satoshi, believed cryptocurrencies provided privacy for payments.
(emphasis mine)
Satoshi's writings indicated that he understood the public ledger he was creating was not anonymous. He even talked about ring signatures as a possible method to add obfuscation.
(Ring signatures is one aspect combined with others that Monero uses to achieve financial privacy. Anonymity requires extra steps taken by the user. Financial privacy ≠ anonymity.)
But then again nothing is perfect, neither is Tor.
I'm not sure how many people here use BTC as a means of preserving the value of their money since most people would rather hold USD, but for sending remittances, it cannot be beat.
As another interesting anecdote, my sister is in Argentina and a bunch of friends started asking her how to buy BTC before the election yesterday. Seems that those that managed to move their Argentine pesos to BTC did so just in time: https://www.aljazeera.com/ajimpact/argentina-central-bank-cu...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-29/here-s-ho...
There are also a few shops (even one very large shop) accepting some cryptos now, like BTC and Dash. I'm not sure what volume they are seeing in sales though.
cryptocurrencies are cash, not credit cards or banks. It's a category that is completely missing from the internet. hence all the drawbacks, but they have their also many uses, most of them hitherto unimplemented (because we never had cash on the net)
> why cryptocurrencies were a better means of rescuing your bolívar
I presume because bitcoin was available where all other currencies weren't
I'm skeptical how many people in Venezuela saved their fortunes via Bitcoin et al, but if you have some data on that, I'd be curious to hear about it. In particular I'm curious why cryptocurrencies were a better means of rescuing your bolívar-denominated wealth than any other currency or investment vehicle such as real estate, gold, dollars, etc.