“OIG Investigators found that the DEA paid one airline employee tens of thousands of dollars over the past several years in proceeds from cash seized as a result of their tips. However, the vast majority of those airport seizures aren’t accompanied by criminal prosecutions. This has led to years of complaints from civil liberties groups that the DEA is abusing civil asset forfeiture—a practice that allows police to seize cash and other property suspected of being connected to criminal activity such as drug trafficking, even if the owner is never arrested or charged with a crime.”
Yeah, most people aren’t going to figure it out until they’ve been really hurt, and then they’ll be looking for something else. Pain is the only thing that makes habits change quickly. Otherwise, they either will not change or will only change extremely slowly.
And maybe, just maybe this is a solution in search of a problem for 99% of people and you crypto bros are grossly overestimating how useful this stuff really is. When the world runs on the dollar (or whatever your local currency is), you either need to convert to/from your so-called money to what the rest of the world is using, or you can bet that they’re immediately doing it for you on the other side.
Not everywhere will. Those businesses and individuals who believe in the philosophy of why crypto was needed to begin with either won’t convert anything at all or will convert as little as they need in order to survive and keep the rest. We also seek out individuals and businesses who agree with our philosophy and do business with them in order to help build a circular economy whenever possible. Thankfully, that is getting easier and easier as time goes on.
I think you’re severely overestimating how many people match that description.
I also noticed you never said anything about my point that early adopters stand to benefit by quite a lot if the world were to move to some kind of crypto. Do you agree that would be the case?
We have our own platforms where we can easily find each other in order to connect for circular economy purposes. And yes, somebody in crypto would easily benefit if people moved to a crypto standard because they took the risk early. I’ve recently been seeing chatter about governments around the world trying to tax people on their crypto holdings because they got in early and it’s not fair to everybody else. Well, everybody else didn’t take the risk.
Right, just like any stock, futures, or other assets it’s generally subject to capital gains tax if it appreciates. Nothing new there, except a new thing understandably falls under that umbrella.
So, you’ve got people who decided to spend real money on this thing that they hope could turn into its own real money. And they have a lot to gain if it does. So they push for it. Problem is fiat currency isn’t a problem for the overwhelming majority of people, myself included. There may be problems with how much of that currency they get and what they can buy with it, but the basis of that currency (crypto vs fiat vs gold standard vs whatever) doesn’t really change anything for people like me. But we still have to deal with people like you trying to convince everyone else that we should use your crypto, effectively giving you our wealth for no tangible reason that we can see.
So yeah, when you would only stand to gain from this revolution you’re proposing, and everyone else only stands to lose depending on when they catch the boat, you can see where it’s hard to take this seriously.
Fiat currency only really works well for those of us blessed enough to be born in the Western world, United States, Canada, England, Europe, etc. For a lot of people in the world, fiat currency is an absolute plague. Have a look at places like Venezuela where inflation is so high that people have to kill each other for basic necessities to survive or Argentina that is just now managing to pull itself out of years of crazy inflation levels. For those types of people, a crypto that we in the West would consider to be highly unstable is actually extremely stable as compared to their local currency. Plus, all you need to access crypto is any sort of internet connection and an electronic device such as a laptop or smartphone. Those people do not have access to the banking system either because of physical distance or governmental issues.
And yet, here I am in the western world still hearing about how I need crypto.
I understand Internet access is way more prevalent in poorer places now than it was, but it’s still not something to take for granted in places that largely work with physical cash. Certainly not if you’re going to base your economy on such a thing.
While internet access is undoubtedly helpful, it is not totally required. I have seen people create physical bills and coins that have those scratch off things like you might find on an Amazon gift card you buy from the store. So you know as long as it has not been scratched off that the money is actually on the card itself.