I have no idea why you'd think so, thank you very much.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Socialist_Feder...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_the_Federal_...
You have no idea why Id think the average person living in the west right now is dealing with significantly less problems than people living in a country that is experiencing full scale economic collapse?
Really? I think it is pretty self evident that most people living in the west are dealing with much smaller problems than people living in places like Lebanon right now.
If someone is unable to see this pretty basic fact, that their lives are likely much better than the people experiencing full scale economic collapse, then I guess that privilege is stronger than I expected.
You have now edited it, which fair enough, but therefore I think your "really? You can't imagine why I'd say this [...]" Is unwarranted and I cannot meaningfully address it anymore.
I am not sure why you are speaking in hypotheticals. The economy of lebanon did collapse. And if you were holding bitcoin, you'd be much better off than holding that local currency.
Economies collapse all the time, around the world. And because the coin is a global market, it is insolated from local collapse.
> it really doesn't matter what sort of currency you use
But it did matter! Just look at the current situation, in Lebanon right now. If you were holding the local currency, you'd be screwed. If you were holding a global currency, you'd be much better off.
Good luck finding a way to convert your bitcoin into some sort of locally fungible currency while that economy is in a state of collapse and the crypto brokers are on a similar path.
Think about the existing right now situation. Imagine if someone, in lebanon, had 50k USD equivalent, in a lebanon bank.
Now, imagine the same person, who had 50k equivalent value, in not the lebanon bank.
Who's better off? Clearly the person who had the global currency.
> You can say "buy from the global market" but that requires having money
Oh, you mean like the money that now wasn't confiscated or inflated away to being worthless? That money?
Yes, that is what you would use the money for. The money that now wasn't taken away, or was not made worthless, is what you would use to buy things.
Situation A: you have no money. Or you have 10 thousand percent inflated money.
Situation B: you do have money, in a global currency. And yes that money can be used to buys things from the international market.
Situation B is better. Much better.
Of course there are many reasons, probably the most prominent being that you need to download a 400GB blockchain on your device to actually be secure. No wonder all these Bitcoin people want their technology to have as few transactions as possible, because popularity will ruin it's decentralized nature.
This means you will need a custodial solution like lightning which merely uses game theory to create rewards and incentives for following the rules in a decentralized way but ultimately it is still custodial and knowing and trusting the counterparty is still superior.
This gets to the crux of the problem. Due to the custodial nature of scaling Bitcoin transactions, you will have a centralised organization that can be shut down by the government. The local Bitcoin bank or PayPal equivalent will have the exact same problem as any other bank.
If you argue that this entity can exist outside of the borders of the collapsing country, so do USD banks. Despite its flaws even the USD is a better medium of exchange than Bitcoin.
Farmers do not accept payment in any currency on their farm. They sell futures on the commodity market before the growing season begins to lock in a price and hedge against volatility.
> you need to download a 400GB blockchain on your device
You can use light wallets such as Electrum without trusting a third party, and with no loss of security (though it potentially sacrifices privacy).
Even if that weren't true, a 512GB drive costs $10 these days. That shouldn't be a barrier for anyone.
> This means you will need a custodial solution like lightning
Lightning is not custodial. You do not need to trust any counterparty.
etc.
This entire comment is very misinformed.
Could be the reply added to most of HN comments about Bitcoin/crypto.
Thanks for replying.
Situation 1: Person has no money, or worthless money.
Situation 2: Person has 50k USD worth of global currency.
Situation 2 is obviously better. Massively. It is absurd to pretend like situation 2 isn't clearly, obviously, and massively better.
Yes there are some issue with global trade, or whatever. But it is clearly, and obviously better, to have 50k USD in an offshore account, or 50k worth of currency somewhere else.
Think about this situation, specifically. No, it is not just "you can keep your Netflix subscription".
That is a bad argument. It is worth more than that.
> Various regulations and logistical impediments
No. You would be wrong to just say "regulations" means that having 50k worth of USD money somewhere is now worthless. I can promise you, that anyone at all, living basically anywhere in the world would be better if if they had 50k USD in an offshore account.
You cannot seriously, with a straight face say "yep! Having 50k in an offshore account is worthless!"
Good job I didn't say it seriously then, or at all, for that matter.
I was writing in context of a thread about a guy who "robbed" a bank to get back his own money to pay for essentials. I still don't see how owning crypto or any sort of global currency would have helped him (or the millions of other Lebanese currently in the same boat) very much at all.
Awesome! So then you agree that having 50k$ of equivalent value, outside of the lebanon bank would not be worthless, and would instead be worth a lot! Glad you agree with me.
> I still don't see how owning crypto or any sort of global currency would have helped him
Well, it would be because now they have 50k$ of equivalent value, in a place that is not the Lebanon bank. Therefore the Lebanon bank can't take it from them.
That is how it would have helped. Having that money, outside of a local collapsing banking system, would mean that any of those people would now have 50k$ of value, in a place that the Lebanon bank can't take it.
And you agree with me on this, because you are not saying "yep! Having 50k in an offshore account is worthless!".
You aren't saying that. Which means that you agree with me completely, that it would not be worthless to have that money, or equivalent value of that money, in an offshore account.
You can try to get out of your country with your wealth intact.
It doesn’t magically solve all your issues, but it’s definitely better to have some access to your wealth than having it confiscated.
Sure, but how scalable is that? I'm not really interested in solutions that are only going to work for a tiny % of the population.
People in countries like Venezuela and occupied Ukraine have managed to make it work.
Yeah - my take on this is if the government has failed the people to this extent then the people have the right to exit and the government should not be able to hold them and their wealth hostage. Naturally if the government can, it probably will, which is why the capability of self custody provided by bitcoin (and other cryptocurrency) is such a powerful thing.
Sure you could get this by hoarding cash or gold in theory, but in practice that's way harder and it's way harder to safely move it, especially across a border.
With BTC you memorize 12 seed words and you're good, can go anywhere and recreate access to your wealth on the other side safely.
You're basically making the same argument as 'just swap all your money for a different currency.'
It's interesting, I seem to always see these comments on behalf of people who might find crypto useful to avoid local currency issues, not people actually doing it.
Bitcoin believers always say - "not your keys, not your coins". I am sure you have heard it a million times by now since you also seem to be keeping tabs on which crypto exchanges are collapsing.
You're basically making the same argument as 'just swap all your money for a different currency.'
I can do so. As volatile as crypto is, it is still much less volatile than a national currency in a collapsing country.
People in the west and in 1st world countries are much too privileged to see this though.