The border was controlled by corrupt Russian guards that would steal things of value. You could pass the border occasionally to visit family on the other side, but it was risky to take anything.
He put all his wealth into bitcoin, memorized his wallet seed words like his life depended on it, crossed the border with nothing, and then regenerated his wallet on the other side.
I thought that was pretty cool.
I.e. to use an exchange like binance or coinbase, I have to link my US ID. So if a government actor were after me, they could easily find out about my cold wallet by viewing my transactions, no?. I guess I could -not- divulge the seed words, but that's assuming I'm not being accosted/tortured either.
I would have to use a btc atm (none near me...), swap a visa gift card for btc (and take a ~10-20% haircut...) or find someone to trade cash for coins, which is its own issue.
You're not always able to do that with the traditional banking system. Scammers were able to steal millions from corporations using wire transfers, and they weren't able to reverse them.
If you have a billion dollars, you have very little incentive to work outside the system. The system will work for you.
Insurance in this example has two functions:
1. Protecting you from losses
2. Applying standards to Bitcoin exchanges etc to help prevent losses. A good example of this is fire insurance. An insurance company will require a potential customer to have fire alarms, use specific materials etc before they decide to cover that company's building.
Then the insurance is really cheap... Either the insurance companies systems stay secure and there are no losses, or the insurance company is breached, and they claim bankruptcy...
