Governments can trivially prevent this if they wanted to. Bringing your wallet along will be of no use if nobody dares to transact with you because they themselves will then need to explain the source of their newfound wealth.
The current ability of crypto to (sometimes) escape government oversight is temporary and only exists because it's currently a rounding error in the grand scheme of things, but I can guarantee you it will be cracked down on.
The specific case I read about was someone escaping the Russian occupied areas of Ukraine this way: https://www.forbes.com/sites/tatianakoffman/2020/06/13/why-b...
It’s also more common in countries with bad currencies and limited access to USD (Venezuela).
You’re right it’s not perfect, but it gives more power to individuals than the alternatives. It’s also possible something like Zcash could allow individuals to transact despite an all seeing panopticon, but I don’t know how that works well enough to have a strong opinion.
Or in fact, any financial law by any government. And yet if you say a major application of crypto is crime everyone gets all hurt...
That being said, most studies point to the conclusion that the major application of Bitcoin at least is not crime:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/haileylennon/2021/01/19/the-fal...
https://cryptoforinnovation.org/resources/Analysis_of_Bitcoi... (by Michael Morell, former Acting Director, Deputy Director and Director of Intelligence at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA))
Indeed. By regulating the transparent cryptocurrencies and banning privacy coins from exchanges like Monero and MobileCoin which is how the criminals and scammers cash out their ransomware money into fiat currencies.
Notice that although many points are raised, it doesn’t address the direct objections of the previous post.
Obfuscate, misdirect, and confuse the marks.
But even given those cons we see benefits in things mentioned above. E.g. my colleague can send bitcoin to his brother in russia. Tell me what other options to transfer value there are at the moment between west and russia. Very similar for ukraine.
This is half-true. A wire transfer can't be reversed due to end-user error, which can be abused by fraudsters. However, Incorrect input on the bank's behalf does warrant a reversal.
I'd compare my bank screwing up vs a crypto exchange screwing up (Like getting hacked). I'm still not protected if the exchange gets hacked and my coin is exfiltrated. I am protected if my bank fatfingers a wire transfer.
Also, banks are insured by the FDIC against financial catastrophes. Savings accounts held in FDIC-regulated banks are insured up to $250k if the bank fails for some reason. I get no such protection holding crypto with an exchange. The FDIC turns around an audits banks to make sure they're compliant with liquidity requirements, loan quality measures, etc. Nobody in crypto is watching anyone else in crypto to make sure everything is kosher because that is fundamentally impossible in a system that is meant to be decentralized.
Scammers are everywhere and not nearly enough is being done to address it. It's not even clear whether it's possible or not to even address crypto scams.
Exchange risk is tempered somewhat by Coinbase which is more comparable to a standard bank in terms of risk (imo).
The true value and capability that’s distinct with crypto is self-custody and that is the important part of my comment.
The fine print does not bear this out at all. Coinbase states in their TOS that your funds may not replaced in the case of a breach because they do not insure the entirety of accounts, nor do they stipulate a guaranteed insured amount:[0]
> In case of a covered security event, we will endeavor to make you whole. However, total losses may exceed insurance recoveries so your funds may still be lost.
Comparing the risk profile of Coinbase to a bank is no different than blindly trusting a big bank not to fail. These are not analogous institutions from a risk management standpoint.
0: https://help.coinbase.com/en/coinbase/other-topics/legal-pol...
> “Comparing the risk profile of Coinbase to a bank is no different than blindly trusting a big bank not to fail.”
That’s kind of my point? They share a similar risk.
The most interesting thing with crypto is the new capabilities it enables for self custody of wealth.
There’s also the non-government controlled supply and global store of value which are interesting too, but easier self-custody is the prerequisite differentiator imo. It’s also one of its core advantages over gold (the others being easier to transact with, easier to move/store which is related).
> The most interesting thing with crypto is the new capabilities it enables for self custody of wealth.
Serious question: what are the new capabilities that this opens up? These tokens are really unstable which makes them poor candidates to use as actual currency, research shows that decentralized networks are no less susceptible to market manipulation than traditional financial markets and there's an unbelievable amount of fraud everywhere in this space.
The whole reason the Federal Reserve was created was to weed out endemic fraudulent activity around the country during the era of "Wildcat Banking"[0], when banks were essentially creating their own currencies. Crypto is largely the digital reincarnation of this philosophy, and isn't really doing anything about shitcoins and other scams. Now, we're starting to see the legitimization of shitcoins through sports team fan tokens that provide no tangible value beyond the purely speculative "hodl" mentality.
This argument seems completely non-sensical to me.
Western governments have been arguing for 3+ decades that we do business with countries like China because integrating them into the global economic system will encourage them to change. But now we're making the same argument that we need to expel Russia from the global economic system because it will encourage them to change. What? At least crypto doesn't flip-flop on what it's moral or ethical purpose is. It's just a tool and an exchange of value, not a weapon.
The sanctions mean nothing if you haven't already integrated the countries into the global economic system, because they won't be losing anything.
I'll grant the implementation leaves a lot to be desired, but the principle is quite sound.
No, this is a person sending money to their brother, who is presumably not engaged in "waging war."
Crypto bros telling us how great it is for the poor people in such countries to get money. Now we see the downside of this as well. Oligarchs protecting their assets as well.
Leveled playfield.
No added benefit from crypto anymore.
And yes right now for me, sanctioning is more critical to me to increase the pressure on Russia to stop killing people than Russian people being able to use crypto.
The more that financial repression and "cancellations" become mainstream, the more obvious crypto's use cases become - whether or not you support the individual examples of repression.
How much is a human life worth to you? How much are we all responsible for everything and nothing?
Collective punishment? It's just that there are limitations on tools global politics can use.
Independently of this perhaps my expectations on fellow humans are different than yours.
And at the end of the day crypto can be blocked and will be blocked sooner than later. every event like this which circumvent global mechanism will be worked against
Not all governments are good, not all laws are just. It’s easy to roll eyes at this in the west, but a lot of countries in the world are lead by bad people acting in their own self-interest.
The other bit you get from Bitcoin at least is programmatic guarantees of supply. This protects you from increases in supply inflating your savings away. It makes it a better store of value than fiat.
A standard currency is not always available. The same is true for safe financial systems. This is more relevant for people trying to save in places like Venezuela. Crypto provides new capabilities that may be your best option.
If one potential future is authoritarian governments leveraging total control on their citizens financial transactions via centralized financial systems (what the ccp is trying to build) - crypto is a technology that provides a relief valve from that. It’s a good thing it exists imo.
Limited supply is not irrelevant or “factually wrong” for a long term store of value (like gold) which is more the role BTC plays specifically.
[1] https://static.wixstatic.com/media/e17377_2a348fd21fc543f9a0...
We’re talking about advantages and capabilities - specifically granted by crypto of which self-custody is a prerequisite (yes technically true of stock, but not indexes and not as comparable). Within that context it has advantages over other options and more capabilities.
I’m not pretending it’s better at everything or it should be 100% of your holdings or anything like that, but it is better at some things and the new capabilities it provides are interesting and valuable.
That chart is a limited slice of time. The nice thing about economic bets is it doesn’t really matter what you (or I) think, the market will play it out. I suspect you’re probably wrong, but we’ll see.
Focusing on this despite the rest of what I wrote is still kind of missing my point.
There’s not really much point in further discussion, there’s not much more to say. We just don’t agree.
But feel free to disagree, of course. The evidence doesn't care if you don't agree with it. It's still there, for everyone to see.
You have a clear motivated reasoning bias (crypto = bad and useless) paired without understanding the basics of how crypto works.
You don’t have conversations with people, you just ignore details that disagree with your pre-existing conclusion and focus on digressions you think prove your point (typically against a strawman argument I’m not making).
Your submissions betray this bias too. Crypto (and conversation) is more interesting when considering the nuanced bits even if it may disagree with “your side”.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PeSzc9JTBxhaYRp9b/policy-deb...
You’re right about one thing though, the evidence is there for people to see.
That isn't exactly arguing in good faith, to use your own words.
E.g. you want to support independent reporters in Russia. What can you do? Support your family? Maybe even foreign students there?
Crypto wallet owners can be entirely hidden and impossible to sue.
Have you ever worked a retail/food chain job and gotten to see how many CC transactions are invalid/fraudulent resulting in the business losing money? I worked at a pizza place where 5-10% of CC transactions were bogus (college town). Checks were more like 20%.
All financial transactions are trust relationships. Some are higher trust than others. If you could buy groceries at Wal-Mart or a new iPhone from apple.com with bitcoin you would have no concern about that. If you send money to a rando on the internet, well it doesn't matter all that much whether it's crypto or dollars.
Sometimes you will have third party intermediaries, like VISA, who will offer certain guarantees/insurance for a fee. It's as simple as that.
It's silly to compare transactions with known/trusted entities like a physical business or trusted insurance provider/intermediary like VISA with sending your money to a random anonymous bitcoin address. You would not generally be wiring money to a random anonymous bank account either.
If you could buy stuff with it and it wasn't an absolute headache (install app, pay transaction fees) and it was easier, it would be more popular.
That would also remove the "it's a speculative asset bubble" problem.
For the interim, using it as a private bank, assuming you can cache it out at an exchange for local legal tender, is the next best thing.
The only true way to make it a currency is for it to have its own country - bunch of people somewhere decide to use it for all their stuff, trade goods and services. Problem with that OFC is a lack of free land and energy.
So maybe when we live in space, and need a long term store of value, but don't really want to carry around bars of gold or platinum, it can have some serious uses. Until them it is exactly like buying oil - technically asset trading but really hard to realize the value in any meaningful way.
You can choose to ignore the nuance, but it exists anyway.
I've been doing blockchain on and off since 2008. Recently I lost a few thousand dollars by sending crypto to a L1 address when I was on a L2.
I work on self-soverign identity in my day job. I've written smart contracts. I'm a careful person. Basically I think if I'm dumb enough to do this what chance do most people have of getting this right?
> Nakamoto stated that work on the writing of the code for bitcoin began in 2007. On 18 August 2008, he or a colleague registered the domain name bitcoin.org, and created a web site at that address. On 31 October, Nakamoto published a white paper on the cryptography mailing list at metzdowd.com describing a digital cryptocurrency, titled "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System".
I just re-checked. It was actually 2009 sorry.
My x to doubt is because nobody claims to have “been in blockchain since 2008” it’s a give away that your talking trash. The Genesis block date was Jan 3rd 2009. You were talking to satoshi about Bitcoin pre launch?
I was one of those people (might have been early 2010 for me though, can't quite remember when I first became aware of bitcoin, but it was pretty early). I remember seeing the post about bitcoin first being exchanged for pizza after I had a bitcoin wallet. I read the forums sometimes but never posted (which is odd, because I posted on a bunch of forums back then).
Of course if I had a time machine I would have been mining nonstop back then, instead of just briefly to play around with it, and held on to it until much later. I thought it was cool but at the time I thought if it was successful it just meant it would get up to roughly the same value as a US dollar, i.e. $1 for 1 bitcoin, and wouldn't go up much beyond that.
By the way, I held on to my coins for as long as I did in part because I was super paranoid about fucking up my transactions, so I get where the OP is coming from. For a casual user they probably don't want that stress. Hell, whenever I do a transaction to another wallet now that's more than $50 even today I check the address three or four times and still sweat a bit until I see it go through.
I thought the tech was cool, but never owned any real amount and didn’t really have an understanding of why there might be long term value.
There was Bitcoin faucet which used to give out some free - I think that was how I got some tiny amount in my first wallet that I eventually lost when I wiped the laptop for sale.
I do have this from 2014:
Project Proposal: Data Rental using the Ethereum Blockchain, Spetember 2014
If you know the history of Ethereum you'll know that is pretty early.
I was on the old "decentralization" Yahoo mailing list and the p2p mailing list back in the early 2000's too. If you can find an archive (which I can't!) you can check my background there.
Self custody is a critical part of this ecosystem. It’s been the biggest mantra of the ecosystem, so I really don’t understand how you can think this is for a small segment. A vast majority of BTC and ETH is not on exchanges. It’s the entire point. What you are admitting to is saying “I was there at the start but I still don’t really get why…”
Where do you get that?
I understand the reasoning entirely. I disagree that it is important or that the security trade off is appropriate for almost anyone.
“A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution“
Nah, who needs it???
I'm saying (again!) that I don't think the trade-offs involved with self-custody are worth it.
So far all you've done is (a) attacked me personally, and (b) made some kind of circular argument that either I don't understand what Bitcoin is or restated your argument that it is important.
Ok, I get you think that. Just saying the same thing over and over again isn't actually a convincing argument.
I don't think that trade off is worthwhile because the risks associated with it outweigh the risk associated with it for almost anyone.
Sorry mate. Not high scores for that.
I’d your going to claim to be OG sign a message with the keys…
> I’d your
Let the person who has never made a typo be the first to throw stones.
Wait.. you are being critical of me and you are stuck on BTC? To put it simply, people who BTC Maxis in 2022 are like those people on HN at the Facebook IPO who didn't understand why it was profitable.
Screw Meta.
They will if you didn't initiate the wire. If you typed the wrong account number then you are SOL, but that's true of BTC too.
I've found that when I wire a large amount of money to a new account, humans sanity check the transaction at both banks.
Also, I once did something weird (wire to same escrow firm a few days apart), and got a call of the form "What's going on? Did you buy two houses or something?"
Oh dear.
There are also courts etc to get involved, if someone sends you a million dollar wire and you keep it (for no services rendered), courts generally don't let you just have it (cross border caveats etc).
Frankly banks also rarely help people scammed via other means (Venmo, Apple Pay, Zelle, etc.)
I think this will forever be the sticking point for crypto for a lot of potential users. It boils down to trust. And the relevant question is: for an average person, do they trust FDIC insurance more than they trust their own ability to understand the crypto infrastructure and protect themselves from rogue or compromised transaction facilitators (because for Bitcoin at least, it's fundamentally impractical to transact for most things without a facilitator; the time it takes for the transaction to get buried into the chain alone is enough to take most day-to-day uses off the table).
And personally, I think for most people the risk model is that trusting FDIC insurance is a superior option.
The capability added by crypto doesn’t mean everything else can’t exist or isn’t preferable a lot of the time for most people.
I do think there’s a lot of room for the current tooling to continue to improve though which may make it more of an option for more people.
For the record, The Current Thing at the moment is to recommend citizens hurting from their government's stupidity to overthrow said government (and if you are averse to dying, then it's only fair that you suffer).
I'm being facetious, but there's a grain of truth in that notion.
If your government robs you with its economic policies you could, of course, invest in croins or other hard to sanction assets -- or you could instead take action to make your government better, more transparent and reliable.
It’s harder to control your transactions when you have self-custody. It requires a higher level of coordination.
Bitcoin is of no use if you can't exchange it for anything tangible.
Zoom out to the "all" range on https://www.bitcoinprice.com/ and try to tell me with a straight face that you're looking at a graph that belongs to a stable currency. Heck, even just look at the last two years.
Part of the problem with Bitcoin in specific among all of these cryptocurrencies is that the Bitcoin community in particular is completely divided on whether they want a speculative asset or a functional currency. You can not have both. A currency that is regularly spiking in value to the degree that Bitcoin spikes (even a currency that spikes upwards in value) is not suitable for everyday transactions. A currency that doubles or even triples its value in 2 years is not a good currency.
The bigger thing to understand is that it is impossible to fix this problem with Bitcoin, because a sizable portion of the Bitcoin community doesn't want Bitcoin to be a currency. They want a speculative asset. In my opinion, that portion of the community is significantly larger and has significantly more influence than the portion of the community trying to create a currency.
Bitcoin is more akin to a gold like store of value than a currency.
----
> You just need to control the onramps and offramps.
> Bitcoin is of no use if you can't exchange it for anything tangible.
----
> All that's required for people to exchange it for something tangible, is for people to start.
----
The need to move BTC over to a stable coin before you spend it was part of Nextgrid's criticism to begin with. It requires an off-ramp, a functional exchange that will accept Bitcoin and give you something spendable.
I guess to be charitable, maybe the argument you're making is that the stablecoin is the transactable part of all of this and the stablecoin will be accepted ubiquitously and that it will be harder to regulate those kinds of exchanges. However, it's worth asking in that world why anyone would be using Bitcoin for transactions if they're just going to transfer it over to a better cryptocurrency later to spend it? Why wouldn't they just use the stablecoin?
This is a good question and I think there’s a two part answer.
Part one is stable coins still have smart contract risk in the arbitrage style version, and fraud/authority risk in the custodial version.
Stable coins that peg a government currency are also vulnerable to all the same issues fiat currencies are vulnerable to.
Bitcoin is a better store of value than fiat (which is a bad store of value - we store wealth in assets primarily because of this).
So you’re better off storing value in BTC like gold and then moving pieces of it to transact in small amounts if you must. If you can’t (exchanges are locked) you’ll need to find someone willing to transact in BTC despite volatility (or someone willing to trade you fiat in person).
Is this optimal? No, but it’s about degrees of control. Wealth locked up in banks controlled by authoritarian governments give you fewer options.
This is the part I have an issue with when talking about Bitcoin as a currency. Forgive my oversimplification, but it really sounds like what you're saying to me is that Bitcoin is not a good currency, it's an investment asset, but for the moment it can be converted into other good currencies. However, it turns out that most of these stablecoins and other currencies have very similar properties to traditional government-issued currencies (risks of fraud, inflation through issuance, etc). These are all the things that Bitcoin is supposedly going to fix, but then it turns out that transacting with Bitcoin is largely reliant on keeping those types of currencies around.
The hope is that Bitcoin will continue to be convertible into good currencies, and to a certain extent that's a valid hope. There are scenarios where a government might censor traditional currencies before they regulate exchanges (see Wikileaks, for example). But that's also exactly what people are calling out here; we're questioning how reliable or censorship-resistant those exchanges actually are in the long run. I'm not sure that's a problem that can be glossed over, it's a big fundamental part of the disagreement.
Additionally, I would ask the question, how much of Bitcoin's current value as an asset store is tied up in the fact that exchanges are operational and relatively easy to use? I strongly suspect that if the US government ruled that exchanges were illegal tomorrow, the value of Bitcoin would plummet. And if that's the case, then we have a currency that not only needs some way of exchange with traditional currency in order to be spent, it's also kind of reliant on those exchanges being easy and operational in at least one or two wealthy countries in order for it to be used as an investment vehicle or store of value at all.
If those exchanges get shut down, and Bitcoin is hard to exchange but still valuable, then that's not the worst thing in the world for Bitcoin. It's pretty bad, but it's still a store of value in that scenario. However, if those exchanges get shut down and Bitcoin is both hard to exchange and the value is plummeting because ordinary/rich people aren't using it as an easy investment vehicle anymore, then that's an extremely bad outcome for Bitcoin.
> Wealth locked up in banks controlled by authoritarian governments give you fewer options.
Really, really important to clarify that we're mostly talking about theory here. In practice, wealth locked up in banks controlled even by authoritarian governments like China currently still give me exponentially more options than Bitcoin does for most purchases, with only a few minor exceptions. Could that change? Sure, absolutely. But it's not the current situation.
Even looking at something like Russia; I think depending on how this war continues, it's going to be interesting to see if Bitcoin actually ends up being useful for ordinary people there in the long run. I am fairly skeptical; multiple countries have tried to use Bitcoin in the past during currency disasters and I have not been super-impressed with the average result. And none of those countries were being as aggressively sanctioned as Russia currently is.
Gold has held up as a value store and is the closest analog I think, but it’s not a perfect comparison and there are trade-offs for each.
I mostly think the technology is cool and provides a new capability to individuals. How much this ends up having a lasting effect remains to be seen (though I lean optimistic).
If you think your currency might be worth a lot more if you just hold on to it, you don't want to spend it for FOMO. Stablecoins don't change that.
Thats a nice theory, but in reality it is false/implausible to be able to control every single on and off ramp in the world.
Evidence: Nobody is currently controlling all the on an off ramps, despite the fact that I have heard the same exact argument that you are making right now, for literally over a decade.
I could cut your lawn, sell you an Xbox, or buy an old tractor completely with BTC. The government can cry about it all it wants, it can pass a hundred laws, or issue a thousand court orders. But at the end of the day, it has absolutely zero control if two individuals want to voluntarily exchange crypto with each other. We've already seen this play out with the illegal drugs trade and P2P file sharing. Spoiler alert: The government lost.
So really, in FreedomLand, you can work and get paid in BTC, but if FreedomLand only recognizes FreedomDollar as legal tender, then when you need to pay income tax, the government will charge you in FreedomDollar, and you need to exchange your BTC to FreedomDollar.
If you cannot or don't want to pay tax, then of course police will prosecute you, and courts will also require settlements in FreedomDollar. Nevermind you have millions of BTC or XBoxes.
Now of course, this "problem" would disappear if FreedomLand recognizes BTC as legal tender, but now FreedomLand government loses all monetary control, and then economic activity descends into chaos.
Even so, it’d have to be a global restriction on all exchanges which is more challenging to coordinate.
The thing crypto gives you is the capability to get your wealth out intact (at least whatever you had moved into self-custody). If you have fiat in banks frozen by the Canadian government your wealth is trapped.
You’re right if Canada banned Bitcoin it could influence the value of the coin. Similar to governments refusing transactions in rubles. The difference in capability is in the ability to move your wealth and that short of global coordination a global store of value (controlled supply, non-government etc.) is more resilient. The fiat comparison would be having the entirety of your wealth in cash in your house - obviously not viable (and good luck trying to cross a border with it).
Crypto is also more resilient to government meddling in currency production (this is often over-stressed in US, but is a real problem in developing countries where kleptocrats devalue the currency to steal the wealth).
It’s more similar to buying gold and having it on you, but with crypto you don’t have to keep it on your person to maintain direct control of it. You just need to know the seed words.
The fiat equivalent would be moving money to an overseas account. Before you are sanctioned, doing so is just as easy as buying Bitcoin. After you are sanctioned, both are equally hard. The difference is that your Bitcoins can be demonetized, while your overseas assets can only be seized if the governments cooperate.
Say I'm an American, for example. I'd receive "sanctioned" bitcoins from a Canadian and then send them non-sanctioned bitcoins back to a different wallet address. There is no "exchange" being used in this process. I could then happily spend or transfer said coins in the 99% of the world that isn't Canada.
Your money on that account is still being trusted to some authority and your guarantees on it are limited.
The real fiat equivalent would be moving all your wealth into cash first (literally physical bills in your house), which is obviously worse and harder to move.
Your bitcoins cannot also be demonetized any differently than fiat. It’s similar to sanctions on rubles. Both types of value are vulnerable to government bans affecting the price. The difference is with crypto and self-custody you can transact privately despite that (similarly to if you held cash, but holding lots of cash is again harder and more vulnerable to a single government’s stupidity).
If your dollars in a bank are frozen you can’t transact at all. Your self-custody BTC can’t be frozen on the blockchain, you retain a lot more ability to transact globally.
With fiat in a bank, you don’t have a chance since it just gets frozen and you don’t actually have custody. With crypto it’s more likely you can continue to transact.
It’s a matter of degree.
What I'm arguing is that this impact doesn't cause the price to be zero, requires global coordination to have a big impact, and that even in this case, the self-custody capability of crypto is still something better than the alternative (no access to any funds or any ability to transact). We're also discussing an extreme worst case (and even in that case it's still better than frozen non-custodial fiat funds).
Flagging wallets to exchanges also requires targeting and many people wouldn't get hit by this. There are also a lot of cases that benefit from self-custody in a world that doesn't have this extreme global coordination to sanction crypto.
Imagine the case where you're a random Ukrainian citizen in Russian occupied territory trying to get your wealth out across a hostile border. Your crypto wallet is not likely to be flagged to exchanges (even if it was most exchanges wouldn't care). You can memorize the seed words and get out safely with the ability to recreate your wealth on the other side.
This has already happened at least once: https://www.forbes.com/sites/tatianakoffman/2020/06/13/why-b...
This is probably why Chinese wealth leverages it to get around attempted controls by the ccp despite regulation.
Why? It is just as easy to regulate as any other tracked asset. Physical items are much harder to regulate.
China simply hasn't started enforcement.
Mostly because it’s harder to confiscate (more akin to a physical item in your possession)
I’ve written this elsewhere when this topic routinely comes up and crypto is dismissed, but the capability of self-custody is the thing to pay attention to.
Nothing else has this capability to the same extent.
Today we store most of our wealth in assets (market index funds, stocks, real estate, etc.) and some (typically very little, and rarely outside of a bank account) in cash.
Most of this is not actually controlled by you.
With BTC (and cryptocurrency more generally) you have the capability of having your private key in a hardware wallet under your control and retain the capability to transact independently of other institutions.
If you keep some percentage of your wealth here you retain certain advantages that you can't get elsewhere. The closest alternative would be having cash (in cash form), but it's hard to have that much, hard to travel with it (you can memorize your wallet seed words and recreate your wallet on the other side of a border), and cash is vulnerable to government stupidity (see: Russia).
I'm not sympathetic to the Canadian truck protests, but whether or not you care about what they're protesting - it's the capability wielded by the Canadian government over their private finances that's alarming.
All this is to say the focus on what crypto is worse at is kind of missing the forest for the trees.
The capability of a global self-custody capable store of value that can be trivially moved anywhere is a big deal and puts power back in the hands of individuals.
I don't pretend there are no risks with cryptocurrency. The security requirements are obviously harder, the UX is bad and even technical users fuck it up.
Some of this will be improved by tooling, some of it is just what's required for self-custody.
Still, the capability it provides is new and gives individuals more power even with these tradeoffs. That capability is valuable and shouldn't be dismissed imo. It's a lever against authoritarian control and increasing centralization of power.