AMA: Long-time DU lurker and democratic supporter, know everything there is to know about bitcoin

[Rassah]

47. Let me know if this is libertarian or not

Big banks are deciding more and more that low-income families and neighborhoods are too risky, and not worth doing business with. Due to this, families are routinely denied from opening even basic bank accounts, and some towns even have banks closing branches and abandoning people completely. My in-laws live in a town in western Maryland, and their bank branch closed down a couple of years ago, so getting a checking account means driving far, with your fingers closed. Since our economy is being based more and more online, with credit and debit cards, this means that these people are basically blocked from being able to participate. Here in west Baltimore, the only option for these people is to buy prepaid VISA debit cards at the local WalMart at ridiculous fees. Not only are the poor restricted from participating with the rest of us, but the poor get poorer just for trying. And that's just in US. Many countries in the world are just plain blocked by VISA, MasterCard, PayPal, etc, so the people here have no access to that system, and often no access to banks at all. Bitcoin is simple enough to run on a cell phone (even over SMS), to open an account all you need to do is download the app or sign up with a free online service, and you instantly get access to a secure private bank account, with a possibility to buy and sell anything online from anywhere in the world. And the transaction fees are typically fractions of a penny. It will very likely be an enormous equalizer for poor families in US, and 3rd world countries around the world.

I am gay, but my husband and I are lucky enough to live in a state that recognizes our marriage, so if anything happens to one of us, there won't be any issues with inheritance. Many other same-sex families around the country are not so lucky. So if one of their partners dies, their join ownership of their money and stuff isn't recognized by anyone. There have been plenty of horror stories about in-laws clearing out the survivor's bank accounts, because they claim that the survivor was just a friend, and thus have no legal right to anything that belonged to their dead partner. Bitcoin allows two or more people to establish joint accounts that are only spendable by those parties. In other words, the law doesn't matter at that point; if the gay couple decides to own a Bitcoin account jointly, only they have access to the funds in the account. Not because of a legal recognition, but because of the way the software is encoded. Maths. No amount of enraged in-laws yelling at it can change a math function. So in this way, Bitcoin allows same-sex couples, or any partners, really, to establish joint ownership of wealth that doesn't require any security but themselves, and can not be challenged by any outsiders who may disapprove of the relationship.

If you are an illegal immigrant (whether you snuck in to work on a field, or were snuck in by your parents without you knowing it), opening a bank account is pretty much impossible. So your only option is to get paid in cash, deal with cash, carry cash, and attempt to safely store cash (like low income families above). And if you want to send some money home to support your family, even if you are here legally, you have to use an international money transfer/remittance service, which costs 10% to 25%. Seriously, imagine having to give up a quarter of your earned income to some big bank, just so your family doesn't starve back home. Using Bitcoin, immigrants can receive payments on accounts on their phone (or even on paper, since to receive coins you just need an address, which is just a long string of characters). There are no issues with secure storage, since you can easily password protect your money. And as for sending money back home, you can send bitcoins themselves to your family anywhere in the world (for something like ¢1), and they can exchange it for their local currency for about 1% (there are exchanges in Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, China, Africa, and many more places). So, stand in line, give up cash, pay 10% to 25% fee, and hope the teller doesn't rip you off (not like you can sue them if you are illegal), or pick an address from an address book, enter amount, hit send, and have them withdraw it into their bank account, or pick it up as cash, for about 1%.

Or how about raising money for charity. Have you heard stories about PayPal and KickStarter shutting down charity fundraisers and seizing all the donated money, because the spur of the moment "Oh sh** this family needs help!" requests didn't file proper paperwork? Charities that use Bitcoin for donations can get funds from anywhere in the world, and no one can seize them (though please make sure you're not donating to a scam. P.S. If you are donating anything but blood to Red Cross, you are donating to a scam)

Plus there are things like donating to pro-democracy groups that have been banned from accepting donations by either dictator governments or corporations that don't want to look bad, being able to use it to give a big F U to crony corporations that paid off republicans to pass pro.monopoly regulations (large corporations push for more regulations, because these corporations are the only ones able to comply, thus keeping small competitors out, and tricking the government into giving them monopoly power), etc etc etc.

Bitcoin is just a tool. A tool is only what it's users make it to be. Libertarians are using it for their purposes. Progressives can use it for their own. In the end, whether Bitcoin is Libertarian or Progressive only depends on who uses it more.