Is it me or does every crypto zealot sound like the have some kind of persecution complex? They all seem to repeat "Everyone is against us, we will overcome, drink the Kool-Aide and join us". Cults always end the same way.
I only know a few people who dabbled in crypto along with myself in 2016-2017 and never had more than vacation money in this. Everyone I know has made money, but not one believes this will change anything in the future. It's also still not a legitimate trading vehicle for anything otherwise there wouldn't be a 33% discount from BTC to GBTC. One price has to be fake, either one that trades on regulated exchanges or one that trades in 3rd world servers?
That's because cryptocurrencies can help persecuted populations. As a jew I don't want my wealth confiscated like has been historically.
Does cryptocurrency really help with this?
It's hard for someone to kick down your door and just steal your crypto sure, but it's not a currency . . . so a population that wants to persecute you could just camp out at the crypto exchanges for when you want to make the crypto usable, couldn't they?
Then you look at all the neo-nazis who have gained wealth from cryptocurrency . . . https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2021/12/09/how-cryptocurrency-revolutionized-white-supremacist-movement. It seems tricky to say that this is a clear benefit for persecuted populations.
If necessary you could just send the cryptocurrency to a friend/relative/associate to hold so that the persecuting population couldn't access to it. Sure, they could torture you to make you tell them where you sent it, but they can never really get access to the cryptocurrency unless the person sends it back.
With regards to camping out at exchanges, there are so many decentralized exchanges that allow you to swap from one currency to another with no central authority saying who can and can't use the service. Sure, to perform an electronic bank transfer and get local currency in your bank account you would need to go through a centralized exchange at some point though. But you can also just make direct barter for local currency 1 on 1 with a person through localbitcoins or something like that
Let's look at the string of fragile systems and assumptions that must be in place for a person to use cryptocurrency to escape repression:
1) A working, secure, and private internet connection and electricity. This assumption might fail in the event of a solar flare, internet-wide malware vulnerability, local unrest, or authoritarian lockdown. Would you submit your passwords through China's great firewall, where you know for sure someone is watching you? How about through an African internet cafe?
2) Existence of trustworthy exchanges. I.e. in the future, exchanges must not have been banned or compromised to the point they are untrustworthy. They have to be legit businesses, not some bullshit supposedly based on a rogue Caribbean island, but who knows, right? More and more countries are banning cryptocurrencies, so at what point do the exchanges themselves become either underground or sketchy third-world operations? You'd never know until they day you tried to go back to fiat currency, and even then ponzi schemes can make payments to early investors.
3) A device not infected with malware. A significant percentage of the people who lose their entire crypto balances do so because they had spyware on their computer. Tough luck. There's practically no law enforcement, no insurance, and no recourse.
4) Secure password storage. In the event you had to flee unrest or crisis, how will you transport your passwords? Will they be stored on a steal-able laptop? Will it be written in a note folded into your shoe? Or will you make it simple enough to be guessable within the first few million tries of a cracking program?
5) A way to trade your crypto for fiat. So you've escaped persecution with your login information tatooed on your private parts in morse code disguised as moles, and landed in a place where crypto exchanges are legal. You set up a brand new burner phone with your last $30, log into your crypto exchange, and then what? How do you sell your crypto and acquire enough local currency to rent a hotel tonight? You'll need to depend on the banking system (brick and mortar banks, PayPal-like forms, credit card companies, etc.) to receive transfers of local currency from your exchange account in a format the hotel will accept*. But of course, if they are still dependable, what did you need to use crypto for?
*Unless you think the exchanges will set up some parallel economy to serve you, which would somehow not have the same vulnerabilities as the existing banking system, and would thereby be a relevant solution for this "last mile" problem.
The traditional banking system is vulnerable to #1 only. In the event of #3 and #4 your bank will likely work with you to confirm your identity in person and restore access or use insurance to cover the losses. Similarly, if the plan is to entrust your life savings to a friend in a non-persecuted population or in a place without unrest so that the bad guys can't torture the password out of you, you could have just given them a suitcase of cash or done a wire transfer at that point.