1. Bitcoin (crypto) users who (only) have BC because they hate fiat money
2. Users who have BC because they need it for illegal gains
3. Opportunistic investors
4. Web3ers
I have the unsubstantiated feeling that 1 is overstated.
This category is way larger than people in well-banked Western circles realise. Bitcoin (crypto) is one of the easiest ways for people affected by capital controls or sanctions (on the financial institutions they use, or the country they were unlucky enough to be born in) to freely move their (legally earned, and taxed) money across borders.
Since one of the countries with strict capital controls is China, and one of the countries affected by sanctions is Russia, the scale of this usage of crypto is huge.
There’s a similar situation in Lebanon with BTC’s near ubiquity in remittances.
Just because it doesn’t impact your life doesn’t mean this use isn’t self evident elsewhere.
> Is exchanging cryptocurrency legal in Turkey? Yes, it is legal to buy, sell or trade your crypto money as long as crypto money is not used to pay goods or services.
They also mention they only pay out in USD. That makes it sound like the only possible use is for a Russian to convert Rubles to BTC in their home country, exchange BTC with USD there, then go next door to exchange their USD with Lira. That is so heavily tied to sanctions that it can explain why actual cash exchanges don’t support cryptocurrencies.
[0]: https://www.google.com/maps/@40.9774298,28.820529,2a,75y,324...
[1]: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.0080274,28.9761991,3a,15y,34...
[2]: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.0166738,28.9509347,3a,88.5y,...
[3]: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.0150099,28.9752954,3a,25.8y,...
[4]: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.0086973,28.9713568,3a,60y,64...
I'm not assigning a moral value to this. I'm just commenting that law avoidance is law avoidance, even if you really really want or need to do it.
Tokens are useless in comparison to monay for almost any activity, except for law avoidance. For this task they are amazing.
Russia is currently fighting a war of aggression, applying controls on the flow of money in or out of there is one way in which the war machine can be starved.
And obviously Russia did not believe Ukraine to be a threat - or they would have not done this haphazard invasion with too little preparation and too few soldiers, so there is no excuse.
A state can always find a way to hide the transactions, on the other hand.
I think the risk of sanctions, means that while there are work arounds, the cost of those work arounds, and the restrictions on who will do business with you, dramatically increase the costs of certain goods.
So sure, the cash moves, but now you pay more. A lot more. Death by 1000 cuts, and all that...
I think it might, particularly where the war machine has a partner willing to sell it arms.
Did the bitcoiners forget about paper bills?
> the 80% is normal hard working people who don't like hard working
Another way to look at it is that 80% of Bitcoiners don’t like the value of their hard work to be continuously debased at a rate of 2-8+% year after year or being subjected to the whims of the Fed’s money printer which recently expanded the entire money supply by over 40% then claimed it wouldn’t drive inflation before claiming that inflation was temporary.
2. Hold Bitcoin for illegal uses, probably a small minority as there are better options such as Monero for illegal uses
3. Probably a majority of Bitcoiners are opportunistic investors. Why is that bad?
4. Web3ers, a minority of Bitcoiners. You are thinking of altcoins. (Yes Ordinals on Bitcoin are now a thing and are controversial in the Bitcoin community, but most Bitcoiners are hard money proponents who are not interested in NFTs)
