I suspect if Bitcoin is helping people in these countries evade currency controls it’s helping the rich not the poor and rather enabling capital flight than adding stability.
The risk of capital flight puts a limit on how bad the local regime can screw up the economy and still squeeze money out of it.
(And calling it capital flight is just a mean way of saying 'people want to invest elsewhere'.)
Basically the money and the wealthy can get out leaving the rest of the country floundering in an even worse situation. Which doesn't sound all that "good" to me.
And why we are at it, we should also ban people from drawing down their capital and consuming it. The effect is the same as capital flight, after all.
No more drawing down your retirement savings!
In any case, if you are powerful enough to rob a poor country, do you think you would be subject to any laws preventing capital flight?
Basically, anyone powerful enough to rob a country wouldn't really be subject to captial controls anyway.
Unless of course you want to blame the kulaks, and not the people with connections to government of robbing the country.
That would be a good thing.
(I don't think Bitcoin is actually all that impactful in the real world one way or another.)
Let's look at some real world countries. Places like Venezuela and Syria used to have reasonable approximations of middle classes before they turned into hell holes. Middle classes that lived off honest work.
> Where should they go? A first world country where their 2 cents aint worth shit?
First, the price level differences between poor and rich countries aren't that large.
Second, even if they were, you could still go to another country with a low price level that was better run. Eg moving from Venezuela to Bangladesh would be an improvement.
Third, if you come from a poor country and manage to first world country, the real price is that your labour will be much more productive there.
To illustrate the first and third point, just look at all the people who come from poor countries and move to the US illegally.
The jump in earnings is so large, that they even endure illegality and working menial jobs.
See eg Jho Low.
(If you look at the rest of the comments, I am basically arguing your point. But let's not trivialise the other side in this debate.)
Maybe we shouldn't ignore that mobile banking in Africa still doesn't allow easy access to US dollars? Maybe we shouldn't ignore that a transfer from the currency in Ethipoia to the currency in Nigeria requires routing through the European banking system?
Don't act as if the traditional financial system has greatly supported the emerging market world. Let's not lie to ourselves.