• cheddar@programming.dev
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    4 months ago

    Or they didn’t and social media are overreacting as usual, because hating AI and blockchain is trendy. Bitcoin is super helpful for those who are under the scrutiny of authoritarian regimes. These people are part of their user base. Not everything is about tech bros and buzzwords.

    • TheAgeOfSuperboredom
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      4 months ago

      If that’s the case then perhaps they should have implemented Monero (or something similar), which was designed for, and as far as I know, still provides both anonymity and privacy. Neither of those are properties of BTC.

      Or they could have not done this since there are many other wallets that can be used without a paid account that can easily be blocked by such a regime.

      Seriously, if you live under the scrutiny of an authoritarian regime, please do not use Bitcoin for anything that might get you into trouble. It is neither anonymous nor private.

      • retro@infosec.pub
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        4 months ago

        Bitcoin has much wider adopt which is most likely why it is first. BTC has an average of 600k transactions per day vs XMR which averages about 30k per day. I’d probably make the one that would actually be used the most first as well.

        • azalty@jlai.lu
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          4 months ago

          Except they only support the main blockchain for BTC which is really pricey

          They could add support for LTC, DOGE, Lightning for BTC, and XMR and they would get a lot more customers

          And you’re also forgetting that XMR is a really good choice to support for a pro privacy / anonymity company. Having crypto support without XMR for that kind of products makes little sense

      • cheddar@programming.dev
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        4 months ago

        People use BTC everywhere in the world, for example the anti-Putin opposition. Proton is implementing what people need, that’s fairly simple.

        • azalty@jlai.lu
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          4 months ago

          BTC is okay, but XMR is a lot better

          We need XMR support. Right now we’re just swapping XMR for BTC to pay anonymously

    • Alphane Moon@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Bitcoin and blockchain have only two use cases:

      1. Financial speculation
      2. Fraud and criminal activities
      • azalty@jlai.lu
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        4 months ago

        Or maybe just privacy and anonymity, low fees, not being controlled by external entities? You know, the thing it was built for.

        • Alphane Moon@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          Privacy and anonymity with Bitcoin? Are you serious?

          Not being controlled by external entities? Bitcoin is controlled by a bunch of whales and various insiders such as Tether, the client development goons and random scammers.

          All of them are looking to get some money off the marks. Nothing more, nothing less.

          • azalty@jlai.lu
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            4 months ago

            I was talking about crypto and blockchain in general

            You can achieve relative anonymity by getting BTC by swapping with a better crypto like Monero

            At least your money is safe, it’s what I mean by control. They can’t take it from you.

            • Alphane Moon@lemmy.world
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              4 months ago

              I disagree.

              The specific methods, be it crypto or some offshore fake company scheme, don’t matter.

              If you are a nobody and you give the government reasons to prosecute you, they will crack your scheme no matter how convoluted your crypto setup. This is basic common sense.

              The whole “crypto = freedom” is a ruse promoted by various scammers and criminals to attract marks.

              The scammers figured out that some low effort copytext about “freedom” is an easy way to attracts marks in context of a crypto scam, especially north american ones who like to believe they understand the meaning of freedom. When in reality their knowledge of such matters is extremely lacking; and I am being very diplomatic in this.

      • cheddar@programming.dev
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        4 months ago

        You obviously don’t know what you are talking about. Why are you talking then? This is silly.

        • Alphane Moon@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          Right, everyone who disagrees with me as a fool and knows nothing.

          You might disagree with what I am saying, but you can’t deny this is a reasonable take and not mere shitposting or engaging in “hate crimes against the blockchain!”.

          • cheddar@programming.dev
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            4 months ago

            This is not about blockchain, silly. You simply don’t know how people use it. It can be very, very valuable tool, especially among people who have to use privacy-oriented services like Proton. The fact that you confidently ignore such use cases tells more than enough about the depth of your knowledge: it is based on hateful social media comments and nothing else.

            • Alphane Moon@lemmy.world
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              4 months ago

              “Silly”

              Very mature comeback. An excellent reflect of the validity of crypto use cases. Couldn’t have done better myself.

              If you knew anything about business and industries, you would know full well that cryto/blockchain has been a massive failure in practically every use case other than two I outlined above.

              If you did care about “privacy” w.r.t. crypto, you wouldn’t be using bitcoin.