Hi, I am Alexander, I live in Russia and I am huge cryptocurrency opponent. I hate just about everything about crypto: waste of resources, technical imperfections, five billion kinds of competing coins some of which are clearly fraudulent, great involvement of crypto in scams, speculative investments and all kinds malicious usage some of which were made possible by crypto (e.g. mainstream ransomware). Also little reliability of agents dealing crypto who at the same time have zero responsibility yet require trust.

Who needs "money" like that, right? People invented banking, payment systems and other financial institutions for a reason. I swore I would never touch it.

Year 2022 came and brought War like one Horseman¹ of Apocalypse already hanging around wasn't enough.

• Most popular global payment systems blocked Russia which was bad enough itself but what was even worse it became almost impossible to pay for services which remained operational but had no other forms of payment.
• SWIFT bank transfers mostly stopped working and what remained became very expensive.
• Some foreign investment accounts were frozen. So much for investing in US shares. Poof.
• EU now forbids exporting euros to Russia and some countries (like Finland) can actually confiscate² cash on border.
• Local accounts in foreign currency are restricted by the government which means you can't withdraw cash from them in substantial amount.
• At the same time now they have negative interest rates so if you just leave them they will get depleted anyway. The only way is to convert them to rubles at shamelessly low rates.
• Ruble, local currency, has about four very different rates towards other currencies (depends where, how and in which direction you convert) and suffers from high inflation (which again is very different depending how you calculate but significant no matter what).
• Local government as well as just about everyone else tightened all kinds of financial regulations, restrictions and tracking.
• Looks like everyone declared cold war on cash. I have some money in 500 and 200 euro notes which apparently are next to impossible to use in EU now because are you drug dealer, gun runner or child trafficker as no one else has use for these notes? Locally it is a bit better but clearly not for long.

...

So here I am standing before you admitting I broke my oath. I still think crypto is crap. So is the current state of the world and I hate to say it but the future doesn't look much brighter. I thought these cryptoanarchists had distorted perspective - apparently not. It is not that their vision is dystopian - it is our world that becomes ugly mess fitting their expectations.

#BraveNewWorld #crypto #cryptocurrency #Russia #nowar

¹ - Pestilence of course. Although if you like the other interpretation where it is Conquest - it fits even better.

² - As I hear they don't formally confiscate euro cash on Finnish border but "take it to be returned later on the next visit" and don't really search for it but it happens.

Two years ago I reshared this article but added my version of infographic showing how these tracking apps could work in near future. It was intended mostly as a joke. Mostly. You can see it below.

Well. Here you go: China uses COVID tracking app to block people from joining protests by changing their COVID status to red. Also it is suspected that COVID tracking system was used to identify those who intended to join protests in the first place and then to track and detain those who managed to do it anyway.

#BraveNewWorld we live in.

#privacy #freedom #surveillance #pandemic

After centralized networks started their "war on Trump" many members of the federated social world made clear they don't want any of these people here either. Some of more vocal ones got very aggressive about it.

Something to ponder:
#Gab claims to gain more than one million new users in a few days and now is almost down with capacity problems.
#Telegram claims they got 25 million new users.
#Trump approval rating last time I checked was around 40% so you can estimate potential audience.

Even if you cut these numbers tenfold because bots, hype, etc... it is still shitload of people who are sympathizing Trump and getting the axe now or just following the exodus. And I am pretty sure most of them aren't radicals simply because in every movement hardcore radicals are always the minority. The vast majority are normal people who are leaning towards it to various degree. At the same time people are not one-dimensional. Their political allegiance doesn't define them. They still do other things, sometimes they do interesting and useful things. They often have something to say which is not political slogans.

What can I say to the activists... Congratulations on pushing millions of people into new walled gardens instead of using this chance of inviting them into wider community and possibly influencing them in some positive way. Now they are on Gab - and you can bet they won't change for the better there.

#JustSaying #BraveNewWorld