Crypto has ‘amplified financial risks’ in emerging markets, central banks warn

Crypto never helps the state (in isolaton†); insofar as part of a state's responsibilities include issuing and controlling a fiat currency, setting import/export controls for that currency, etc., then the existence of crypto only serves to interfere with state control.

Crypto helps a criminal gang insofar as it helps it evade state control over e.g. moving large amounts of wealth into/out of the country.

Consider for a moment: when Pablo Escobar was selling billions of dollars of drugs, it was just as much of a logistical challenge to move the money while avoiding state interception, as it was to move the drugs. Crypto completely obviates that logistical challenge.

> How is it possible that these rent-extracting middlemen (whatever it means, mafia?) can _not_ be in control of the state long term?

Because the country as a whole is small, and other nations do not recognize the legitimacy of the criminal-gang-as-state and will continually help the citizens of the country to take down the criminal gangs whenever they rise close to that level of power.

Also because the gangs just don't have popular support. Ruling by fear can work if your economy is based on resource extraction and that resource extraction can be mostly automated; but it doesn't work at all if your economy relies on productive bottom-up trade interactions between citizens. The gang only had something to exploit insofar as there was still a slightly-productive economy for it to parasitize; if it manages to capture the entire economy, then at that exact point, that economy is dead, and there is nothing more to extract.

(But really, you don't need a theory behind it, you can just see that it doesn't happen in practice. Venezuela never became a true kleptocracy; Haiti still isn't a kleptocracy; etc.)

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† Western countries have adopted a policy of not doing much to interfere with the growth of crypto. This is realpolitik. Crypto most interferes with states that try to most-heavily manipulate their financial system. Right now, those states it most interferes with, are states that Western countries want to economically hobble, lest they end up at war with them. The US, for example, is very happy to see Chinese capital flight to US investments, enabled via crypto despite China's best efforts.

Only if you use chains with traceable transactions.

> “Crypto is useless” for example, really means: “crypto is useless to me.”

No. It means "crypto is useless for every single use case it's advertised as a solution for except illegal money transfers, and even then the number of caveats is as long as the equator"

You either never heard arguments or ignore them but there are not just theoretical but also real life shows us that it doesn't work.

Your poor person who needs to save their hard cash in a dictatorship can either buy things, get dollars or euros (like what they do in Iran) or try to find someone to take their risky local currency to exchange it for a better digital one.

One were this poor person needs to understand backup strategy, fraud, computer and smartphones.

This is so naive it's ridiculous.

And continue to ignore EVERYTHING bad which happens to crypto the last 3 years.

Of course Sam and others those are NEVER crypto issues right?

Btw the poor people would benefit more from less CO2 instead of some crypto shit.

And that's just bitcoin, stable coins are more reliable.

And of course inflation only robs holders, at least volatility goes in your favour half the time.

I also would not call it an investment: there is no reason to expect prices to rise. Bitcoin does not grow in the way a company can (making shares an investment) or pay interest like a bond. It's at best a speculative asset, like maybe gold?