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Re:Sex Worker-Led Payment Platform Shuts Down After Being Cu... by mrguyorama on Thursday March 23, 2023 @04:27PM (#35280869)
There's no difference between someone like visa shutting down processing for porn sites and your bitcoin exchange of choice refusing to pay out cash to porn stars. Porn models gotta eat, and last time I checked Costco doesn't accept bitcoin. Bitcoin can never be "truly free" from US control until it has it's own parallel economy, and that turned out to be a non-starter. And no, "local-bitcoins" is not a solution to that, because the last thing an online personality wants to do is meet up with a stranger who could plausibly discover who they are.
Re:Sex Worker-Led Payment Platform Shuts Down After Being Cu... by soerxpso on Thursday March 23, 2023 @05:38PM (#35281655)
The difference is the step at which that shutdown takes place. When visa shuts down processing for your business, they're taking away your ability to conduct transactions at all. When a bitcoin exchange refuses to do business with you, they're only taking away your ability to convert your BTC to USD (at that particular exchange). You can still conduct transactions directly in BTC (or ETH or what have you). The "cash out to USD" step is much less frequent, and usually less ingrained into the way you conduct business.

A closer comparison would be to a bank that doesn't let a you deposit the cash your business earned at the end of the week. It would be an annoyance, but it doesn't actually prevent you from conducting your business.