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Comment by fakedang | Hacker News Reader

Will that be enough? AFAIK, every country's government (or some warlord) has a monopoly on violence and the law. If they wanted to, they could easily just draft a law mandating crypto to be stored in particular forms else can't be used/traded. Or they could simply invade your home on some bullshit pretext and seize all of your crypto. Both instances have happened before (and have been posted on HN too) and I've seen both of them in both autocracies and Western democracies.

Imo, there's nothing better to secure your assets better than some form of monopoly on the law, or a monopoly on violence, or even better a combination of the two. This is also why billionaire classes simply consider crypto a wealth store asset and not a secure store of assets.

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In theory, there is nothing an autocratic government can't do to you.

But leaders pay a political price for instituting draconian enforcement measures, while their country pays an economic price, which makes them less likely. It's one thing to send armed agents to storm the homes of executives of a large private bank to shake down the bank. It's another to do it against end-users at a scale where it becomes effective.

You may be right about the most secure form of property. Many don't have access to jurisdictions that can offer people in their income class that kind of security of property. For them, I think in some situations cryptocurrency can be a very secure form of property comparatively speaking. Cryptocurrency can be thought of as a poor man's offshore bank account, literally speaking.

> But leaders pay a political price for instituting draconian enforcement measures, while their country pays an economic price, which makes them less likely. It's one thing to send armed agents to storm the homes of executives of a large private bank to shake down the bank. It's another to do it against end-users at a scale where it becomes effective.

I don't think the political price is as high as you think, and armed agents don't have to storm the homes of end-users at scale. All they have to do is storm enough homes discourage people by making it clear the risk is real, and everyone internalizes the rules.

If cryptocurrency is contraband, it's the worse kind of contraband because it advertises that you use it to the authorities through easily monitored channels (since you have to connect to identifiable internet services to use it).

>>All they have to do is storm enough homes discourage people by making it clear the risk is real, and everyone internalizes the rules.

I suspect the scale of enforcement needed to discourage widespread usage would be very large, and incur political and economic costs that are prohibitive. That's corroborated by the fact that the USD circulates widely in countries suffering high inflation, despite it being in the best interest of the elite of these countries for people to only use the national currency.

>>If cryptocurrency is contraband, it's the worse kind of contraband because it advertises that you use it to the authorities through easily monitored channels (since you have to connect to identifiable internet services to use it).

Only if public access to strong encryption is prohibited, and there are economic costs associated with a country doing that.

> Many don't have access to jurisdictions that can offer people in their income class that kind of security of property. For them, I think in some situations cryptocurrency can be a very secure form of property comparatively speaking. Cryptocurrency can be thought of as a poor man's offshore bank account, literally speaking.

Actually I didn't mean monopoly on the law and monopoly of violence that way. I meant that billionaires invest a lot of cash into politics and personal security (legal and otherwise) for good reason. It would be very hard for a politician to go head to head against a billionaire donor, since he would just donate to the other guy the next time. Similarly, they get to influence a lot of things including who might head the city's police force or what policies to implement on a regional or national level. It's the same thing everywhere, whether you're in the Indian or Pakistani badlands, the heart of the EU or smack in the middle of NYC or SF.

I agree with crypto being the poor man's offshore, but a poor man wouldn't need an offshore. Not to mention, the barrier to open an offshore account is much less than the cost of BTC right now.

>>It would be very hard for a politician to go head to head against a billionaire donor, since he would just donate to the other guy the next time.

Yes true.

>>I agree with crypto being the poor man's offshore, but a poor man wouldn't need an offshore. Not to mention, the barrier to open an offshore account is much less than the cost of BTC right now.

Offshore bank accounts are very costly and difficult to get. They are also not that secure, considering how many have given up on financial privacy in the face of the warrantless-financial-mass-surveillance aka AML push by the dominant political powers, and leaks like the Panama Papers.

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