Whether You Like It or Not, Bitcoin Offers the Same Benefits to All Its Users. Good or Bad.
Bitcoin is a global P2P payment system whose transactions cannot be censored. With no leader, Bitcoin belongs to each of its users. Anyone can become a node on the Bitcoin network if they want to. It's even something I encourage everyone to do to be truly independent. But that's another story.
Bitcoin's characteristics as a payment system mean that it offers the same opportunities to all its users.
Whether you are good or bad, Bitcoin will give you the same opportunities. The ability to use its payment system quickly and securely without anyone being able to censor your transactions. If you're doing legal transactions, Bitcoin will be your ally. If you're doing illegal transactions, Bitcoin will also be your ally, because there's no one to censor you.
Bitcoin technology is neutral. It is neither good nor bad in itself. It's how you use it that will determine what happens next. I feel compelled to say this because I hear some voices raised against Bitcoin, saying that its system could allow Russia to violate economic and financial sanctions by America and the Europeans.
So when access to SWIFT, the dominant global interbank network, is cut off to Russian banks, they may turn to the Bitcoin system. Not exclusively to Bitcoin, since the Russian SPFS system is still growing and a connection to the Chinese CIPS system is planned in the medium term, Bitcoin could be part of the solution to some degree. But Bitcoin will not be the number one solution used by Putin's Russia.
It was more or less the same criticisms that emerged when Iran started using Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies to contravene the US embargo to some extent. Iran has even used the mining industry to generate profit from its natural resources in an uncensored way.
However, none of this is the fault of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.
The decentralization of Bitcoin is essential, and so is the fact that there is no leader. This leads to situations where states might find it advantageous to use Bitcoin. But isn't the problem elsewhere? In the inability of humans to solve their problems peacefully?
Bitcoin is a weapon, but it is up to you to use it peacefully. If you use it to harm, the problem is with you, not with Bitcoin as a system.
Some imagine that America and Europe might then seek to attack Bitcoin if Russia were to use it too heavily to circumvent sanctions. We are not there yet, but I think it is a losing battle. Bitcoin cannot be stopped. Its adoption would be slowed down because the general public would be afraid at first, but in the end, any actions to try to ban Bitcoin will only strengthen its legitimacy in the eyes of all those who make freedom something essential in their lives.
This is what we saw at the beginning of 2022 with the authoritarian excesses of the government of Canada towards peaceful Protestants. If Justin Trudeau's government has finally been able to stop the Freedom Convoy with its authoritarian methods, it will only be a Pyrrhic victory, as the future will show. What the Canadian government has done is to accelerate awareness of Bitcoin's usefulness as an uncensored P2P payment system, when many people in the Western world previously saw Bitcoin only as a store of value.
Bitcoin adapts to the needs of each of its users. That's a great lesson to learn.
And in these difficult times when war is taking place between Russia and Ukraine, the Russian people also need Bitcoin. The Ukrainian people are the first to be threatened by the advance of Russian troops, but the Russian people are also going to experience very difficult times due to the megalomania of Vladimir Putin.
American and European sanctions will hit the Russians even harder than Putin and his billionaire oligarch friends. Bitcoin will be a way for them to protect themselves from a fraudulent banking system that will not hesitate to block money withdrawals to prevent the system from collapsing.
Because no matter which country you go to, the problem with the banking system will be the same. It is flawed, and not fixable. So Bitcoin is an absolute necessity for the world of the future, even if some people are already using it and will continue to use it for bad things in the future.
The problem is already the same with the U.S. dollar or the euro in the current system, and Bitcoin will not revolutionize the natural human penchant for corruption. On the other hand, by taking power away from them, their penchant for corruption will no longer be able to wreak havoc on the masses as it does in the current system.
Russia will be able to use Bitcoin if they deem it necessary, but that will not detract from the merits of Bitcoin and its necessity for the world of the future. Since we cannot change people, we must protect ourselves from them. And that's why Bitcoin is the path we must follow for a better future for all.
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