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Comment by potamic | Hacker News Reader

If a country does not allow their citizens to exchange currency, then this is as good as a black market and comes with the same risks as obtaining currency through any other black market means.

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Carrying around or storing piles of foreign currency is much riskier than having a USDT wallet. You also cannot fly to another country with cash.

crypto off-ramps & on-ramps are expensive though.

check binance & other markets - e.g convert USD 10 to USDC

Expensive relative to what? When people are rescuing their hard-earned savings of 200k USD out of a third-world country, they would be happy to pay even double-digit per cent commissions, and crypto is much, much cheaper, faster and safer than all other available options.

Of course, if you're a US citizen transferring 200k USD from Chase to Bank of America, crypto doesn't make any sense.

Who are these people in 3rd world countries that have 200k USD cash? You make it sound like they've scrounged to make it happen... But its far far more likely to be people either trying to wash the money or they were from less than legitimate sources.

Definitely not lower class people like you seem to imply (or perhaps I'm just reading into it?)

I only know the situation which touched dozens of my friends and acquaintances. Say, you’re a relatively successful software professional in Russia, who has a small apartment and a car in a big city. Then the war with Ukraine starts, and all Russians are automatically sanctioned and blacklisted from the international financial system. You don’t want to make drone software or facilitate black-market oil trading, so you decide to sell everything and leave the country with your wife and kids to work elsewhere.

What, in your opinion, are your options for transferring abroad the cash you got from selling your hard-earned assets?

His entire point is that Russia is not a third world country.

In Argentina, the money changes pay more pesos for 100 dollar bills than 20 dollar bills, and won't accept money that is too beat up. Definitionally it's not the poorer people who can buy dollars in large denominations.

He didn't imply he was referring to "lower class people." He's referring to people who have savings in countries with volatile currencies. Even for $100, having a stablecoin reserve can be a saving grace. Especially when trying to find asylum elsewhere.

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