If you're interested in actually using your currency for anything in the real world other than swapping it for other cryptocurrency you'll always need permission.
If I want to go to the supermarket and pay with Monero that will require that legislators deem Monero a legitimate currency.
As long as governments begin to accept Bitcoin, it becomes trivial to accept altcoins because they're often easily exchanged for Bitcoin.
Governments of small countries, maybe... but Bitcoin is already banned in China.
There are talks about a ban in Russia (Putin seems to be satisfied with taxing mining more harshly, though):
https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/russian-cbank-propo...
It's not a case that it was first China, and now Russia (which is in the top 3 for mining).
In the top 3 for mining there's also Kazakhstan, and their recent crisis was also caused by energy prices, so I can see them tolerating bitcoin only in the short term.
That leaves the US, but that country is too corrupt... And it has too many bitcoin billionaires to allow the value of bitcoin to tank. But no one knows how long this will all last.
Bitcoin continues to thrive despite their bans.
A huge portion of many countries' economic activity happens outside the reach of their governments. This is the present reality, not some anarchist dream.
In this context, people are free to use the currency they prefer.
A US controlled internet currency is going to do better than any of the cryptos
A lot of people use giftcards. That's what people do with bitcoin too.
Completely irrelevant to this conversation.
It's just a risk of self-custody of keys and it's a good reason for the industry to push forward better key management solutions (multi-sig + shamir secret sharing, etc)
You're still a single point of failure, aren't you? Apply wrench until you've given up all the privacy coins you have access to
Until wallets gets smarter and safer, and these smart/safe features are so mainstream that even muggers understand it, this will always be a risk
The problem with cryptos with public balances is that attackers can know your net worth in advance, and thus know whether you're a valuable target, and exactly how much they can ask of you. And this is the reason why privacy technology likely won't be outlawed: high networth individuals use them constantly.
Not really... a mugger can read people well enough to know that they have more than $100. More than $1000, etc. A random person older than 30 can likely give you a lot more than $2000 even.
So this goes back to wallets needing to be smarter all around. I expect there to be companies/services that spring up specifically around this need.
However, one thing that I predict in the next 5 years is that people will simply stop having crypto wallets on their phones. They will either not have mobile access to their savings accounts at all or they will use something like a SatsCard that only has like $100 on it https://getsatscard.com/
In many countries, kidnapping and torturing someone for $2000 is not worth the risk for anyone. But for amounts 6 figure and up, it makes good risk-adjusted sense to many people.
Given how few people have a proper security setup, cryptocurrencies with KYC'd accounts and public balances are lists of juicy extortion targets.
I've heard about XHV and Monero being added to Thorchain a year ago, described as coming soon. Somehow it feels more like marketing than a real thing.
Monero is getting to the point where it will not need permission.
It will soon be added to the decentralized exchange Thorchain. On top of that, the Haveno project is making great progress and will be a Monero version of Bisq.
Thorchain will be swaps that don’t require specific orders, much higher liquidity. Haveno is the traditional platform where someone puts out an order and someone buys that exact amount.
Oh and I almost forgot about regular atomic swaps which also exist today.