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Comment by stult | Hacker News Reader

I think the greatest driver of liquidity in crypto is actually capital flight from countries with restrictive capital controls like China and Russia. So a tool for crime according to those nations but not a criminal use as far as most people would understand the term.

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I've worked quite a bit in crypto but keep it on the low in HN as I end up with very unfavorable responses (the general sentiment can be seen in the comments here). However, I will point out from my experience that this is true and not purely anecdotal.

In particular, my most recent project was geared towards using crypto to finance innovation in particularly hard-to-finance countries (i.e., where interest rates are basically predatory). It's proved a huge success and still continues to this day.

> So a tool for crime according to those nations but not a criminal use as far as most people would understand the term.

The same tech could be used to evade EU/US financial sanctions (or just as well UN sanctions) at which point the sentiments would probably be flipped.

When people would rather use crypto than their national currency, that is an indictment of the currency, not an endorsement of crypto.

At this point that movement of capital in and out of Russia is both a real world crime and an ethical "crime" regardless of what people with libertarian ideological bent think.

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