Maybe the russian was on OFAC's sanctioned entities list? (only half joking)
That's not possible with a public ledger and current state of analysis - instead of proactive cancellation of the transaction on the legacy banking system, you'll get a delayed reaction from the authorities. When you file your tax return you'll get a notice to explain transaction ID 0x...34 to a certain banned individual. So it will be about as "permissionless" as tax-fraud: you will only be able to get away with it for a while, and I don't doubt there will be future analytical tools (and laws) that will make tracing payments even easier. It is politically untenable for bitcoin payments to be opaque when "Funding Terrorism" is a high-priority security issue.
Although I assure you a normal person can't read bitcoin transactions lists like they can a bank statement, and this goes for people working at the tax office too. And they can't forbid those transactions, either. It raises the bar significantly on Tax offices, and therefore means less enforcement.
And if need be, there are several anonymous cryptocurrencies that would love nothing more than to replace Bitcoin, and of course they will as soon as governments actually start tracing payments.
https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/is-cryptocurren...
We were talking about PayPal banning someone and you equate that to tax authorities banning someone?!
My experience is that bank fees vary greatly.
My (limited) experience with US banks is that they have huge hidden fees and you get really bad currency exchange rates. I'm talking about 8% of funds miraculously disappearing during currency exchange. I don't understand why anybody would bother going via USD.
My Austrian bank on the other hand has much better rates and low fees. I think it was less than 1% for transfers of a few thousand USD last time I checked.
And finally, there are services like Transferwise; I just checked and they show rates of 1.5 - 2% for converting IDR to RUB.
I like how you consider that opening an account on another bank was both cheaper and easier than using Bitcoin.
I don't know what it's like in Indonesia, hence my question.
You need to shop around for a better US bank account. This is not a common thing for us to do so if you pick up a random bank then you’ll be paying close to 10% in various conversion and fx fees. There are definitely US banks that charge 1%, some even 0%.
The crux of the issue. It’s tragic how the new woke fads exaggerate and even imagine plights for minorities near themselves, while completely ignoring big crises further away.
It's a safe bet that it'll continue the trend (with some occasional and not too long lapses of stae slowish decline), and actually bitcoin is a rather safe bet against rouble. After all, it's not backed by Putin's government!
Btw, 'a trillion times' is an understatement. Exact figure in 2014 was... 57 460 000 000 000 000 (fifty seven quadrillion four hundred and sixty trillion) times [1], and just add some more since that time. Still thinking that bitcoin is a risky currency, huh?
Currency isn't an investment. Currency has never been an investment. You're not supposed to hold currency. You're supposed to use currency to buy assets. A spot exchange rate means absolutely nothing. This is ECON-101.
Bitcoin is not a USD replacement. It's more of a gold replacement: finite supply, great malleability, but with modern benefits regarding storage and transfer.
This is an opinion that Bitcoin advocates throw out every time someone criticizes Bitcoin's ability to be a currency. As soon as someone criticizes its ability to be an asset, someone trots out that its actually been a currency this whole time. It's bad at both.
It's bad at both in no small part because it tries to bring back the asset-backed currency approach, which was dreadful last time around, and that's why it was ended.
This 'opinion' comparing Bitcoin properties to Gold appeared before Bitcoin antagonists appeared. It is part of a design.
For this purpose it is abjectly poorly suited.
Neither the word “gold” nor “store of value” nor anything else of the sort appear in the abstract.
I have also read an extremely early mailing lists that appeared long before bitcoin started to get derided by critics like you, and guess what, it was those comparisson I'm referring to. And since you started reciting old texts, i'll go for it too.
Gold and Bitcoin are very similar in all their properties regarding use it as a wealth storage and transfer, with two stark differences: unlike Bitcoin, gold can be used to create physical objects. Like, a ring. Unlike gold, Bitcoin can be near-instantly transferred to another person. Everything else is irrelevant. Gold is valued not because it has some inherent value in it, the price depends only on belief that it has value. Same with bitcoin.
Oh and Bitcoin wastes as much power as the entire country of Chile just sitting there existing and being speculated on at a rate of 7tx/sec, and not solving any real problems. I’d say that’s the only thing that matters.
I suppose time will tell.
This is a disingenuous straw man and a desperate attempt to brush away Bitcoin's failure as currency. The OP explicitly referred to cryptocurrencies' inherent high volatility, and volatility is not a mere transaction risk. Seeing your debt explode, because you either borrowed or deferred payments, due to cryotocurrency volatility is not a transaction risk. It's simply the fact that cryptocurrency fails as being money.
Think of it. Buying bitcoin, sending and selling resulted being cheaper than just buying USD. The spread was that much lower. (It was in a relatively static price period in summer 2016)
And regular banks just didn't do such transactions between Russia and Indonesia, like, nope. And PayPal was somehow banning the client for some reason.