this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2024
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There's a case to be made for a currency that facilitates illegal transactions, or transactions that corporations object to. Just because something is legal in your country doesn't mean it might not be unjustly restricted. Or could just be unjustly illegal in your country or another country. The problem of course is that distributed currency also facilitates things that should be illegal.
But WikiLeaks is a good example - their legacy is a little mixed now, but when they first came on the scene they were doing work which was a valuable service to the public. If you wanted to donate money to support wikileaks you couldn't because the credit card processors shut them off. Blockchain lets you get around that.
Likewise it's the combination of distance and direct - I can give $5 in cash to my local leaking consortium, but I can't give $5 to the leaking consortium on the other side of the world without relying on the knowledge and consent of third parties.
I agree there's something to be said for this — If you have a above-board business that credit card companies don't want to service because they think it makes them look bad, that should not shut you out of electronic payments yet that's basically where we are at least in the US.
This is a little hard to balance with the fact that the same things that let you circumvent gatekeepers like credit card companies also make it attractive for genuinely immoral things, but that's a trade-off. Every currency can be used for immoral things and just because cryptocurrency might make it a little easier doesn't mean it's inherently immoral.
You totally can give cash anywhere in the world. You post it as a letter
This was common before electronic transfer
Mailing someone cash means you need to know their address, you have to wait however long for the mail to arrive, you can't prove they received the cash, it's possible the cash was stolen en route and anyone who might wish you harm like an adversary government can observe the transaction.
With crypto you face similar problems. You need an address, waiting is shortr, rugpulls and other scams are one of the biggest use cases so getting crypto stolen seems common. You might be able to verify that crypto was revceved but as with any trustless paymet solutions the issue is that getting the item you ordered is the part where trust is needed the most. Good luck asking back money when you get an empty box.
You're right about ordering goods and not having a recourse if they're not delivered. Of course in the case of supporting an organization that will be less of a consideration.
In the case of needing to know an address it's much different to give out an arbitrary string of numbers as an address than information which represents your physical location.
No disagreement that there are myriad examples of problematic uses for crypto. My first comment was in response to the question about what are valid use cases. It seems clear there are some, even if it's not as universal as some true believers claim.
It will also get there faster.
It is illegal to send cash by letter.
Maybe in your country
It is in most countries
On account of it being so in yours?
Australia Post says they reject any liability if you do
The UK says you should use their premium service to do so
India says you can't. It at least quora says you can't in India
Quora says you can in Canada
I wonder why the UK and Australian searches landed on the national postal carriers and the others landed on fora
You can cross over Finland from that list. Maybe more as that was only i checed and you were wrong.
If we're playing by area, I seem to have won. But also, when was the last prosecution for mailing cash (where it wasn't part of a more significant crime?
Unenforced law isn't very powerful