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Hong Kong - Bitcoin Friendly? Personal View
510 sats \ 8 comments \ @spiderman 7h bitcoin
So, I posted sometime back about the the lack of real Bitcoin adoption in so called Bitcoin friendly Asian cities like Dubai, Hong Kong to Singapore.
Seems like Joe, the Bitcoin journalist, has hit the nail during his trip to Hong Kong.
He wonders, why, apparently, Hong Kong is so innovative with an apparent legacy around Bitcoin and yet, almost no merchant accepts it, as evidenced from BTCMap. In fact, Hong Kong, in spite of leading in crypto adoption, it is nothing like Lugano or Zug (in Switzerland) as examples.
May be it is a genuine question from him, or he deems it politically incorrect to say it loud, but here is the fact.
Many Asian cities are desperate to create a narrative around being Bitcoin friendly, as they see it as a way to pull investment, what they call as innovation, and create jobs. But their authoritarian cultures cannot, for a century at least, wrap their heads around the self-sovereignty when managing my finance, and separation of money and state. These are the true ethos of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is not a number goes up game, not a create jobs game, typically favoured or touted by the political class.
So those Asian cultures will play the narrative around being Bitcoin friendly (but never encourage grassroot adoption by people, mostly play around trying to attract companies to set up shops), until they realise Bitcoin's enormous power that is far beyond any regulator's control. And at that point, the hammer will drop, hard and fast, like what China is trying.
They will realise you cannot regulate Bitcoin, you can either let go the control, or you try to literally ban any mention of it with the implied threat of a firing squad. There is no middle-way.
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0 sats \ 4 replies \ @bitcoingecko 6h
I think Asian cultures, especially Confucious societies, are still very traditional in many ways. Regardless of the government, they focus on stability and hierarchy. Bitcoin doesn't care about these things. The older generation has most of the power. Time will change things. Education about what bitcoin is is still necessary. Of course, authoritarian governments will never like bitcoin as it is explicitly made to not be able to be controlled by a single entity.
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19 sats \ 2 replies \ @spiderman OP 6h
Agree, what slightly pisses me off is the so called rankings of Bitcoin adoption that place cities like Singapore or Hong Kong at the top, when the ground reality could not be more different. It seems like someone is exerting a lot of effort in astroturfing to create a narrative.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @bitcoingecko 6h
Definitely! For me, I use btcmap to assess how truly friendly a place is for bitcoin. Unfortunately, I have yet to go to a really friendly bitcoin place. Hoping to get back to Prague and check out their thriving scene!
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @spiderman OP 6h
Prague is on my bucket-list, but among a few of my destinations, Lugano (Switzerland) stood out the most.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Solomonsatoshi 4h
Western 'liberal democracies' like to thimnk they are liberal and free but when it comes to monetary power their governments are owned by the banks, probably more so than in more 'authoritarian' governments where the banks are sometimes more subservient to the political class than in the west.
Anyone who thinks Bitcoin use as a MoE is allowed in the west is ignoring that fact that lawful Bitcoin MoE use in the west is effectively impractical and this obstruction is rendered because Bitcoin is designated a taxable commodity, so anyone using it as a MoE must record every transaction and calulate tax due upon every transaction - WHO THE FUCK is going to do that? Answer more or less NOBODY!
Does anyone here on SN record every zap and pay the tax due? I suggest nobody does. Ordinary citizens are not going to adopt Bitcoin as a MoE because they do not wish to break the law and there is almost nowhere to spend it even if they wanted to. Bitcoin has been effectively obstructed from MoE use, except for the small minority of us who believe in it enough to break the law every single time we use it as a MoE.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Solomonsatoshi 4h
70% of humanity live under governments deemed authoritarian. None of those authoritarian governments allow Bitcoin to be used as a lawful MoE. In most of the other 30% of the world, the so called libneral western democracies, using Bitcoin as a lawful MoE is made impractical due to tax laws that make it extremely onerous to use Bitcoin lawfully as a MoE. Nearly all governments are very reluctant to release their hold over people by allowing Bitcoin MoE to become widespread- I would argue there is absolutely no guarantee that Bitcoin will ever become lawful and easy to use in most countries unless we all genuinely and determinedly, fight for it. Otherwise it will be completely captured and controlled as a KYCed, taxed speculative commodity held exclusively by institutions and governments.
The ratio of the protocol held by private individuals is rapidly and constantly falling already...and by far most still held privately is held with the primary intent and purpose of speculative gain because MoE use has been so successfully and slyly obstructed (if not outright banned) by almost all governments.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @HighOfLot 3h outlawed
stackers have outlawed this. turn on wild west mode in your /settings to see outlawed content.