The most interesting bitcoin story I read somewhere was about a Ukrainian living in the Russian controlled portion of the country getting out with his wealth intact.

The border was controlled by corrupt Russian guards that would steal things of value. You could pass the border occasionally to visit family on the other side, but it was risky to take anything.

He put all his wealth into bitcoin, memorized his wallet seed words like his life depended on it, crossed the border with nothing, and then regenerated his wallet on the other side.

I thought that was pretty cool.

That's one use for btc that I hadn't thought of. Neat! However one still has to be careful to somehow fund a cold wallet without linking your ID via the transactions.

I.e. to use an exchange like binance or coinbase, I have to link my US ID. So if a government actor were after me, they could easily find out about my cold wallet by viewing my transactions, no?. I guess I could -not- divulge the seed words, but that's assuming I'm not being accosted/tortured either.

I would have to use a btc atm (none near me...), swap a visa gift card for btc (and take a ~10-20% haircut...) or find someone to trade cash for coins, which is its own issue.

Government/warlord-avoiding money transfer like this is the core use case for Bitcoin outside of speculating on its future value. It's not for casual shopping transactions.

localbitcoins. It's like craigslist: you find people you meet up with, give them cash, they transfer you the BTC (through escrow). No KYC, no shenanigans, you just need to be willing to pay their few-percentage-point fees.

Correction: Localbitcoins does require KYC.

You're right, they do, once you're over 1000€ per year: https://localbitcoins.com/blog/id-verification-update/

Incorrect, localbitcoins only requires KYC for their escrow feature. Most people do not use the useless escrow feature.

I've read similar stories of people escaping Venezuela with their wealth.

To me that's the main use for bitcoin. Moving money if you're worried about it getting ripped off in transit, not as a permanent store of wealth.

>Nor can you reverse a transaction when someone steals your Bitcoins.

You're not always able to do that with the traditional banking system. Scammers were able to steal millions from corporations using wire transfers, and they weren't able to reverse them.

Exactly, you can't officially reverse wires. You can ask your bank nicely, and they can ask the receiving bank nicely, and if the money's still there, it may or may not be transferred back. But there is no official mechanism for reversing wires, and if the other side withdraws/spends the money before you start the process you're SOL.

Some is still better than none, no?

But reversibility is provided by the intermediary, and isn't a property of the currency itself. For instance, if you're dealing in cash, there's zero reversibility. Likewise, I don't see the difference between a bank reversing a transaction for you, and the marketplace platform reversing the transaction for you.

But at least there is hope.

Yep... and the more money you have, the more the traditional financial system caters to you.

If you have a billion dollars, you have very little incentive to work outside the system. The system will work for you.

Libertarians would argue that this is where insurance comes in.

Insurance in this example has two functions:

1. Protecting you from losses

2. Applying standards to Bitcoin exchanges etc to help prevent losses. A good example of this is fire insurance. An insurance company will require a potential customer to have fire alarms, use specific materials etc before they decide to cover that company's building.

Insurance on BTC... I wonder how much would that cost... It would dwarf any transfer fees for sure.

"You must keep at least one part of a multi-signature key with us for the insurance to be valid".

Then the insurance is really cheap... Either the insurance companies systems stay secure and there are no losses, or the insurance company is breached, and they claim bankruptcy...