In a practical way, crypto is super useful for extortion schemes, blackmail, money laundering, tax evasion, etc. It is way easier to use than gold.
At the same time, there are very few use cases where crypto is useful for law-abiding citizens. Using a commercial service like wise.com is way safer than using crypto for almost anybody.
So the authorities don't really have an incentive to allow crypto, and I've been wondering for years why nobody has forbidden it yet.
All of this existed before crypto and will not disappear when crypto is banned.
> At the same time, there are very few use cases where crypto is useful for law-abiding citizens. Using a commercial service like wise.com is way safer than using crypto for almost anybody.
It's funny that you mentioned wise. They just kicked me out for no reason. I know they kick you out if you buy crypto through them, but I didn't do that.
So there is absolutely an usecase for a cash like currency for the internet. It's my money and I should be able to spent it however I want, without a private payment processor enforcing their beliefs on me. If I want to donate to WikiLeaks or buy crypto I should be able to do so since it is not illegal.
I just think that on a practical level, the "bad" use cases are 100x more common than the "good" use cases.
I even experimented with selling software licenses via crypto, it seemed like the perfect use case. It just turns out that nobody cared about using crypto for legal purposes.
Almost everyone who uses crypto seems to use it for tax fraud, speculation, fraud, get-rich-quick schemes or similar.
If you actually use crypto to transfer money to a friend or purchase legal things, you are part of a miniscule minority.
That's why I think it's a question of when, not if, it will get banned everywhere.
And the answer is simple: Gold can be controlled less and above 10k the law says you have to declare it.
The EU is unfortunately not the US.
Suing governments there, much less the EU govt itself is not really something that is "done".