The World has watch Canadian Politicians attack and freeze the bank accounts not only of the Canadian Truckers who were protesting in Ottawa, but also those who donated to the protesters.
One case being reported is a single Mom, another I saw citing an 83-year-old woman who lives alone, both of whom claim their donations were made prior to the protests being deemed "Illegal".
It's a fairly concerning situation, especially if your political party isn't in office. As we love to say Bitcoin fixes this, but holding crypto is pretty easy, actually using it as a medium of exchange is much more difficult.
Most of the truckers and those who donated are very likely working class people with Mortgages, Truck payments, and Groceries among their most common expenditures. None of this is easy to accomplish without exchanging the Bitcoin to cash, via a 3rd party often a bank or an exchange both of which would be high risk for anyone the government is trying to seize the funds.
Even in my own financial life, if you looked through my bank account most of the transactions would be paying utilities, grocery stores, restaurants, etc. Many bars in my local area do accept BTC, but I don't know if that is a normal or the result of living in a conservative area in a very liberal state. The point is most of my fiat life would not be easily replaced by using #bitcoin
With all the current Bitcoin adoption happening lately, I can imagine we will have quite a few retail outlets and clearinghouses developing more ways to accept BTC, but it still must be pretty difficult.
There is some progress, companies have added Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as a way to pay. Tesla began accepting BTC for its vehicles in early 2021 - dropped it in May and added it back in July. In addition PayPal recently developed a payment option as well.
Over years I will expect crypto to change how we pay each other with more p2p (peer to peer) transactions taking place, but I can't see retail and banks making quick progress in this area.
Recently we've seen several nations adopt Bitcoin in full or in part like El Salvador, Ukraine and Russia. Obviously as more people have Bitcoin and have motives to be able to do business with it, hopefully the pace these changes come will speed up.
For your average trucker, single mom or 83-year-old ladies, we are a long way away from financial freedom, but this is the hope and promise of crypto.
Here are a few other places that currently accept BTC.
One could also use a combination of bitcoin and cash to do many things reducing the amount of cash they leave in the bank at risk, and frankly, I'm not at much risk at this point, but I'd just rather not support the banks and large organizations.
Can you live on your crypto, not talking expense wise, talking about practicality.
@whatsup