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Comment by Pmop | Hacker News Reader

And unlike those things, Bitcoin cannot be confiscated by the government, specially third world tyrannical governments that seem to always be trying their hardest to impoverish and screw those under their administration.

> it's a pyramid scheme

That's your opinion.

> easily replaced by any other shitcoin

It's not.

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> And unlike those things, Bitcoin cannot be confiscated by the government...

The IRS seized $3 billion worth about a year ago. https://www.irs.gov/compliance/criminal-investigation/histor...

There's a major difference between confiscating something that they first have to get their hands on (physically or digitally) and confiscating something like your bank account which doesn't require more than a phone call.

See for example the Canadian government freezing bank accounts[0] of anyone trying to contribute to the vaccine mandate protests.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60383385

Bitcoin is constantly confiscated by the US government. Can you clarify what you mean?

I guess he mostly means as a way to get around currency controls. Obviously if the government comes with the police you can be confiscated

But for example, Argentina has incredibly harsh currency controls, any freelancer or company that tries to export goods or services gets paid half the value per dollar and is forced to sell their dollars to the government

While companies can't really avoid it, most freelancers go around the control by using crypto and so can get the full value of their work

The government has to physically come and take it from you. They cannot remotely freeze Bitcoin like they can with conventional financial instruments.

I bet a tyrannical government can easily confiscate your BTC with enough "enhanced interrogation".

It's true. It would be a lot more difficult with something like a privacy coin. Someone could write down a 12/13 word phrase as a hot wallet and have a cold wallet with a memorized phrase. No one knows how much are in either wallet or that the two are even linked.

Pretty sure after they break out the blowtorches you’ll be volunteering this information…

Torture works a lot better if you know what you're looking for. With BTC you know exactly what it is you're looking for and how much. If all you know is they paid with a privacy coin then you have no idea how many wallets they have or how much money, there's no more advantage to giving up 2 wallets than 1 as there's no reason for an attacker to not think there's a 3rd you're holding out on if they didn't believe you the first time -- the options would be give up everything and get blow torched or give up only some and get blow torched

Rubber-hose cryptography: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber-hose_cryptanalysis

Doesn't even need to be governments. A man was tortured in his home with a drill in front of his 4 year old while being robbed of his bitcoin:

https://www.ccn.com/dutch-bitcoin-trader-suffers-brutal-tort...

Crypto bros thrive in an extremely abnormal environment where violence is controlled and outsourced to a powerful central authority. Good thread on this:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1579124072390463488.html

It can't? Strange how the government ended up controlling the Silk Road's stash

> Bitcoin cannot be confiscated by the government, specially third world tyrannical governments that seem to always be trying their hardest to impoverish and screw those under their administration.

This just seems apt: https://xkcd.com/538/

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