Add countries with hyperinflation too such as Venezuela and Argentina.

Every cryptocurrency-related post here in HN is flooded with extremely negative comments, even if the post itself does not promote cryptocurrencies. These people have seen countless examples of cryptocurrency scams, but they cannot understand what life under an economically oppressed or unstable country is because they never experienced it.

I'd also add:

- People living abroad who are completely debanked because local banks refuse to open banks accounts for people who are merely suspected of being US citizns, despite them not being US citizns, with no path to resolve their predicament. This is a real problem that is effecting real people right now.

- Any legal activity that the banks and payment processors don't like for one reason or another; onlyfans, "right-wing" websites (whether actual or merely alleged), ...etc.

We no longer live in a world where you can live a dignified life with cash alone. Cryptocurrecy is a net positive to humanity, even if the technologies behind it may currently be more wasteful and make the lives of criminals a bit easier. There is simply no alternative for a lot of honest people in financial dead-ends the government can't or won't help.

Thank you Satoshi and anyone who works to support this technology for making the world a slightly better place.

HN is flooded with overprivileged richkids with no connection to reality

I mean yeah but that describes a vast amount of cryptobros (or at least the more successful ones rather than the ones left holding the bag).

But vast amount cryptobros being idiots doesn't make crypto itself useless. Similar to how there are a vast amount of AI/GPT-bros who are going to annoy us for the next few years, while AI itself is still very cool and beneficial.

And also to support oppressive governments by helping work around sanctions?

You sound propagandized by your government.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how informed do you believe you are to be making these statements and what makes you so convinced working around sanctions is bad? Have you spoken to anyone in the countries negatively impacted by your government's sanctions?

Do you understand the humanitarian disasters and suffering caused by your sanctions and why someone might circumvent them, or are you just a marionette for ultra wealthy bankers and CEOs?

Any way around sanctions that helps me send money to my family in Russia is a way that is exploited by the dictator orders of magnitude more, maintaining the situation where my relatives need financial help in the first place (to say nothing about undermining world peace etc). Yes it is unfortunate.

It does not have the kind of liquidity, nor anonymity, which could be successfully used at any significant scale whatsoever, and there's no point to it given the USD is a convenient, anonymous, trivially falsifiable source of funds which are fully launderable.

From your linked article on Russian opposition:

"We use bitcoin because it’s a good legal means of payment. The fact that we have bitcoin payments as an alternative helps to defend us from the Russian authorities. They see if they close down other more traditional channels, we will still have bitcoin. It’s like insurance."

They even use Paypal and card transfers for donations... Bitcoin is just another payment they accept in the hope it will be hard for the government to block funds... but they don't say it anywhere that's been the only way, or the best way to do that, it's just one of the ways they're looking and so far has not been shown to be more government-resilient as I am sure getting the money out from the blockchain is not going to be easy if the Government doesn't like the idea... you make it look like Bitcoin is their saviour or something which is a gross misrepresentation.

> but they don't say it anywhere that's been the only way

Sure but if it wasn't significant, they wouldn't have mentioned it.

> so far has not been shown to be more government-resilient as I am sure getting the money out from the blockchain is not going to be easy if the Government doesn't like the idea

It seems you have no idea how bitcoin works then. All you have to do is memorize 12 words. You can then take your wealth to many corners of the world, some of which will be free from the tyranny of your government and still have an ecosystem which will let you cash out your bitcoin for the local currency. A good example - Dubai, where a lot of real estate is being purchased in crypto by the Russians fleeing the war.