A country with repressive or non-functional capital/monetary controls will just jail people using cryptocurrencies unless they turn over their wallets. They can also use an accusation of having a wallet as pretext for indefinite detainment or punishment. Such countries aren't likely to have functional governments or even free access to the Internet. Even TV and radio are tightly controlled in such places.
whose laws?
- Sex workers from countries where prostitution is absolutely legal are affected by, e.g, Mastercard pushing for blocking transactions and almost forcing OnlyFans to drop all their adult content. All because of extended overreach from American politicians.
- A lot of these countries with strong capital controls have a lot of loopholes in the legislation by design, so that the elites can find a way to move their capital while the middle-class is forced to carry all the burden. There is a saying from a Peruvian politician: "For my friends, everything. For my enemies, the law", which perfectly illustrates the situation.
Crypto is not illegal, it just democratizes these loopholes. If History can teach any lesson, whenever the middle-class finds a way to enjoy the same privileges as the elites, it does not end up in a repressive reaction from the government, but in the normalization and formalization of the "informal" behavior.
- Same thing for holding stabletokens. In Brazil there is no regulation against holding crypto. The problem is that Forex is not something for retail. Too many fees, taxes on fiat and the impossibility of making deposits in foreign currency make it difficult for "retail investors", but a lot of elites have access to external markets where they can hold USD/EUR/GBP to protect themselves.
I could go on... but the point I am trying to make is that in the places it doesn't take an extreme case of Authoritarianism or Poor Economic Development to face a situation where the institutions fail.
What do we have to show for it? I'm asking for concrete data, or even just some anecdotes. You list some projects and how these projects could, in principle, help people. How many people are helped by them (even indirectly by improving access to traditional services)? Is this number proportional to the cost of running these systems?
Do me a favor: go check my project (https://hub20.io/about). If minimally supported, it could very well become THE system to "bank the unbanked". Afterwards go check the "Contribute" link. See how many people are supporting my work.
This is the falling for the same all-or-nothing trap that I pointed out in the very first comment. We are never going to go from "unbanked" to "banked exclusively thanks to the blockchain". What is going to happen (and is happening) is that these projects will bring "people who don't have access to service X" to "blockchain project that creates an alternative to service X".
Examples:
- People in countries with strong capital controls can now participate in a global economy through blockchain transactions.
- People living in countries with poor monetary policies and weak currencies can protect some of their wealth by buying stabletokens backed by stronger currency.
- Communities without access to money markets can now issue their own local currencies and create their own credit cooperatives.
- Sex workers and "sin businesses" who are denied access to payment processors (no matter if political or economic reasons) can use web3 to not only accept payments, but also as a way to distribute their content without intermediaries.
In all of the examples above, it might happen that the situation in the "traditional" system changes and the groups start getting access. But until they don't have it, it's nice to know that they have an alternative.