Do you think that the world is a better place if ordinary Russians can't access their own money?
Of course no one wants hardship for everyday Russians, but we should be able to say the same about everyday Ukrainians, many of whom have had their whole lives upended.
The war is continuing because of only one man on the planet, and since violent options are off the table, functioning sanctions are the next best thing.
There is an argument to be made that sanctions don't work. Maybe they used to in the long distant past, but they don't now.
Russia doesn't give even half a fuck, Iran gives negative fucks, North Korea gives no fucks, and China is turning the sanctions back against us, to name some prominent examples.
I appreciate the west's desire to settle diplomatic problems using something other than war, but sanctions aren't the solution (anymore?).
Every day that these sanctions against Iran, North Korea, and Russia are in place those countries fall further and further behind. Every day their economies become less and less competitive
Sanctions as they are right now don't work, and that is a problem.
Given that this thread concerns whether the legitimate use cases of Bitcoin outweigh the illegitimate ones, I think this is an argument strongly against the position.
I’d say yes. That’s the point of the sanctions. And somebody should be tracing that Russian money on the ledger and getting the ill gotten properties traced and arrested.
Of course Russians don’t deserve economic hardship, but they don’t deserve to live in an autocracy either. And Ukrainians don’t deserve to be invaded. The lesson here is probably that the “great man” theory of history kind of ignores the everyday people whose lives were ruined by leaders who didn’t have to deal with the worst consequences of their decisions.
It doesn’t look like any of these get accidentally launched onto Kremlin. Or turned against conscription. Or used in any kind of resistance.
There are people there that are sacrificing their lives. Only for some reason, they are sacrificing these lives on the wrong side. On the side of supporting the dictatorship.
Those many everyday Russians punish people (Ukrainians mainly, Europeans in general) for someone else’s decision (Putin’s power trip).
I also wish to remind you that hardship in Russia does not compare to hardship in Ukraine right now.
I say this as someone with relatives in both countries today.
It doesn't work that way. Putin is not working in a factory building tanks and artillery shells. He is not in an office programming which cities ballistic missiles will hit. He is not piloting bombers or manning guns shooting at Ukraine. He is not sitting in tanks ravaging through Ukrainian countriside, he is not in cellars raping and torturing civilians, he has not personally committed any of the tens of thousands documented war crimes in Ukraine. Millions upon millions of "ordinary Russians" choose to do this every day. Without the majority of Russian society actively working to carry out Putin's ideas, or passively sitting on their asses and trying to pretend they have nothing to do with it, Putin would be just a raving madman without any influence on the world like Hitler in his final days.
USSR collapsed when "ordinary Russians" simply stopped following orders. They were told to go there and do this, and they said NO in large enough numbers that the leaders were simply unable to do anything, because eventually even police and military stopped listening them. Russia has not yet reached this breaking point, and millions upon millions remain Putin's willing executioners, and bear the guilt that comes with it.
Every day, Ukrainians put their lives on the line, and hundreds die, in a desperate attempt to stop the curse on the world that Russia has become, while "ordinary Russians" are unwilling to even stage a large protest.
The sanctions target the wrong ones.
As for "unwilling to even stage a large protest", there's simply no one left to organize it. Those people who could do it are either in jail, in exile, or dead.
Why beat around the bush? The reason we’re playing the sanctions game, or the proxy war game, or any other bullshit games nations are playing is because the alternative is worse.
Bitcoin may not be the end all solution, but it's a great current option.