Cash is becoming a stigma and I consider private cryptocurrencies as the best alternative. There is a massive industry that is dedicated to analyzing on chain transactions making the pseudonymous cryptocurrencies less useful as an alternative for cash. In some extreme cases, using cryptocurrency could be worse than using banks. At least your neighbor or personal enemies wouldn't have much luck in figuring out your bank balances or spending habits.

Civil Asset Forfeiture Brings Out The Mafia Side of Governments and Cops

The Police Will Try to Force Consent

That is exactly what happened with this gentlemen. His vehicle was turned into a mess. At least he was lucky enough to not have "too much cash" or else it would have been taken over by the cops.

There is a GoFundMe campaign to help with the lawsuit. Even these centalzied fund raising platforms are not to be looked at through a positive light. We have seen how they censor or straight up steal people's money:

Banks Don't Respect Their Customers

My experiences with banks have not been great. I don't even feel like my money belongs to me with transactions getting blocked and services being delayed. If restaurants acted like banks, they would be out of business in a matter of months.

A friend of got scammed using a check and the bank took the scammers side and my friend had to pay almost a month's earnings to the bank. No wonder there are many scammers using the banking sector.

Ryan Coogler Was Detained for Trying to Withdraw $12,000 of His Own Money

If this is how Bank of America treats a millionaire movie director with multiple movies starring Hollywood super stars, don't expect anything better as an ordinary person.

The Crime of "Structuring"

“Every Soviet citizen committed at least three felonies a day, because the criminal statutes were written so broadly as to cover ordinary day-to-day activities. The Communist Party decided whom to prosecute from among the millions of possible criminals. They picked dissidents, refuseniks, and others who posed political dangers to the system. This began under Stalin when his KGB head, Lavrenti Beria, infamously said, “Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime.”

“we are in danger of becoming a society in which prosecutors alone become judges, juries and executioners because the threat of high sentences makes it too costly for even innocent people to resist the prosecutorial pressure. That is why nearly all criminal defendants today plead guilty to “reduced” charges rather than risk a trial with draconian sentences in the event of a conviction.”

Both quotes are from the book Three Felonies a Day. I highly recommend to at least watch some interviews of Harvey Silverglate (the author of the book). The systems the government have been using against cash for over a decade are not specific to cash and these systems are new. Those of us in the cryptosphere simply notice the thefts and disgusting limitations made on the financial freedom of the individuals because it is one of the things we are focused on.

The nature of crimes such as “Structuring” is that most people are completely unaware of them and they could easily end up breaking them without intending. This opens up the opportunities for the mafia to target individuals they deem "trouble" or treat certain businesses or people's life savings as a piggy bank through Civil Asset Forfeiture!

Cryptocurrency Can Be Better Than Cash*

That "*" at the end is very important. I am not a privacy expert. I care about privacy and consider it to be absolutely necessary for a good civilization. Using cryptocurrency require an individual to be tech savvy and use more of their brain power for things such as memorizing seed phrases figuring out the best ways to manage privacy with convenience. Anyone willing to go through this extra effort could be rewarded with the ability to move their life savings privately and securely at a cost of few dollars.

These are simply a few examples and I did not mention some of the biggest names in the privacy space such as Monero or ZCash. Any researcher will easily come across them while looking into privacy and cryptocurrency. The bigger problem is in building adoption.

We may have to deal with having to switch to less private cryptocurrency or even stablecoins which can freeze assets when making purchases. We may even have to exchange crypto for fiat. The world is not going to change over a weekend.

We Have Come A Long Way

For the first few years of cryptocurrency, there was no real privacy. Blockchains were unheard of all over the world. In 2023, most people in the developed world know about cryptocurrency and a significant amount of them have used and understand the basics about cryptocurrency. We can surely get more individuals to learn about privacy. I'm not envisioning some Utopian best case scenario. I'm merely suggesting that with enough education, we can convince hundreds of millions of people into regular users of privacy coins and have them take control over their finances.

Millions are a minority compared to the billions of population. At least it is large enough to have our voices heard.

The best example I know that gives insights into the functioning of a complex system is with the following situation. It suffices for an intransigent minority –a certain type of intransigent minorities –to reach a minutely small level, say three or four percent of the total population, for the entire population to have to submit to their preferences.

Now consider markets. We can say that markets aren’t the sum of market participants, but price changes reflect the activities of the most motivated buyer and seller. Yes, the most motivated rules. Indeed this is something that only traders seem to understand: why a price can drop by ten percent because of a single seller. All you need is a stubborn seller.

Both of these are quotes from Nassim Taleb's Skin in the Game. He has shared a part of it on Medium under the title The Most Intolerant Wins. It is a very interesting read if you have time to go through it.

Don't Yield to Oppression

Posted Using LeoFinance ^Beta