Bitcoin has become a lifeline for sex workers

I know little about virtual currency but I assume it would also need to be one of the currencies that does not have public ledgers. If an escort were busted they would face not only the criminal aspect but also tax evasion with a detailed record of transactions they would owe back taxes on. I also assume this would provide a list of what wallets paid the escort and given the immutable aspect of ledgers this could impact people far down the road if wallets could eventually be tied to real identities.

People use bitcoin because it is the one coin most understand/know. The transaction fees to move money belong to the John initially.

Regular people are not going to use a different coin that would require the John and worker to have a deeper understanding of cryto.

> It is hard to imagine that Bitcoin would be useful to sex workers with it's transaction fees and speed

Transaction fees are around $2, transactions are instant and permanently settled in around 10 minutes.

Transaction fees are remarkably low (< 1$ even at 10 sats /vbyte); they were extremely high for a period of time in 2017-2018 (IIRC) , which some believe was Roger Ver spamming the mempool during the block size wars.

As for speed, the lightning network (which is an L2 overlay using the same opcodes and enforceable on the main chain) completes payments in seconds (or less). I was shocked to discover in late 2021 how far LN has advanced since I first became aware of it a few years ago.

I won’t extensively address “The drawback of no regulation” right now, but suffice it to say that I see the potential benefits of transacting free from dystopian corporatist-government oversight outweighing the potential drawbacks, not only for disaffected groups, but for everyone.

I don't understand what you mean about lack of sources, are you being sarcastic?

Two sex workers who use crypto are interviewed and quoted by name in the article. They had their traditional bank accounts shut down. Crypto fees are discussed and solutions are proposed right in the article. It is well researched with expert interviews and sources.

One of the better researched crypto articles I've read.