The issue that I have with this perspective is that it doesn't actually solve the underlying problem - it just kicks it down the road. As soon as crypto becomes big in a country with failed governments and banks, it's going to become the primary target of those same governments and banks.
>Governments can take lots of actions against crypto. They can ban it. They can prevent banks from accepting it. They can search the blockchain to hunt down users. But governments take lots of actions against protests, tax evasion, and drugs, and those things still often succeed. The point isn’t that governments can’t ban a thing and send police after anyone who does it. The point is that there are only so many officers and detectives. If you make something too annoying to crush, the government will put in a half-hearted effort but mostly redirect resources elsewhere.
Editorialized: https://cointelegraph.com/news/china-returns-as-2nd-top-bitc...
Even a fairly authoritarian society with strong incentives to crush cryptocurrencies (https://www.marketplace.org/2021/05/20/chinas-crackdown-on-c...) wasn't able to get hashrate, much less usage, to anywhere close to zero.
I guess I'm curious: what levers do you figure Western societies could deploy that'd be more effective than the Chinese approach? From my perspective, this state of affairs is a decent existence proof that fully eliminating cryptocurrency use is difficult even with access to authoritarian methods.
nb: above links don't include 2022 data and I couldn't quickly find that, so if that data affects the quality of the above argument I'd appreciate the correction
You can't have it both ways: if cryptocurrency is the be all and end all of avoiding government censure of other activities, why would it not be a high priority to crush it compared to those other things? If it is not, then is it all that useful?
Cash and banks are easier for the government to control than crypto
That is all that there is to the argument!
Maybe the difference won't be significant, but I see no reason to think (nor to think the opposite) as of now. Do you have one?
I am saying you don't get to hedge your argument like this: crypto cannot be both an important part of evading government censure, and too small to be worth government effort to censure.
If someone wants to make the middle ground argument, make it, but you're starting from the position of government already engaging in significant regulatory interest in the use of cryptocurrencies.
as for hypothetical crypto underground economy, nobody has really explained how exactly you are supposed to convert those liberating coins into physical goods (that makes all retail illegal?). Which makes it not an argument but a very fuzzy dream.
Mesh and satellites might reduce this. Maybe even ham radio. You don’t need to send much data to send a crypto transaction so sending it using an audio modem on a low frequency is probably fine.
There are also crypto notes being developed which is an interesting development.