@hypolite @cstanhope @Hyolobrika@mstdn.io Personally, I am against what the protest became. They hurt the wrong people and a large enough subset were terrible to the local residents and unrelated institutions that it diluted any point that they may have had.
That doesn't change my assertion that there's a place for digital equivalent to cash, and bitcoin is provably not it. I used bitcoin from when there were no exchanges. It's possible, and worked.
@cstanhope @keverets @Hyolobrika I know it’s possible and that it works, but as Dan Olson pointed out in his video about cryptocurrency, the legitimately decentralized uses are contingent on the technology remaining niche. In other words, as soon as it started gaining prominence, these uses became endangered. More public scrutiny also means less anonymity using cryptocurrencies.
So “widespread digital cash” is an oxymoron by definition.
So “widespread digital cash” is an oxymoron by definition.
Technicality aside, the trucker's protest isn't the best hill to stake a cryptocurrency flag on. Explicit motivations were sketchy (protesting public health protection measures that were largely lifted by the time the convoy moved), means were dubious (using cumbersome commercial vehicles to block public areas), and actual demands were inexistent that I know of.
It was a white entrepreneur grievance convoy, to which the police responded with the most caution I've ever seen in recent history when handling any kind of large scale protests in Western countries. Cryptocurrency wouldn't have improved the situation in any way since it was, by and large, the best possible outcome the protesters could have hoped to achieve.
Whether anyone likes it or not, we must be held accountable for our actions, or else we aren't an organized society. There's a cruel inequality in how this accountability is enforced at the moment, but the cryptocurrency goal of removing all accountability for everyone isn't the right way to go. In practice it wouldn't even work, but even if it succeeded in theory the results would be worse.