“OIG Investigators found that the DEA paid one airline employee tens of thousands of dollars over the past several years in proceeds from cash seized as a result of their tips. However, the vast majority of those airport seizures aren’t accompanied by criminal prosecutions. This has led to years of complaints from civil liberties groups that the DEA is abusing civil asset forfeiture—a practice that allows police to seize cash and other property suspected of being connected to criminal activity such as drug trafficking, even if the owner is never arrested or charged with a crime.”

  • shortwavesurfer
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    3 hours ago

    We have our own platforms where we can easily find each other in order to connect for circular economy purposes. And yes, somebody in crypto would easily benefit if people moved to a crypto standard because they took the risk early. I’ve recently been seeing chatter about governments around the world trying to tax people on their crypto holdings because they got in early and it’s not fair to everybody else. Well, everybody else didn’t take the risk.

    • spongebue@lemmy.world
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      1 hour ago

      Right, just like any stock, futures, or other assets it’s generally subject to capital gains tax if it appreciates. Nothing new there, except a new thing understandably falls under that umbrella.

      So, you’ve got people who decided to spend real money on this thing that they hope could turn into its own real money. And they have a lot to gain if it does. So they push for it. Problem is fiat currency isn’t a problem for the overwhelming majority of people, myself included. There may be problems with how much of that currency they get and what they can buy with it, but the basis of that currency (crypto vs fiat vs gold standard vs whatever) doesn’t really change anything for people like me. But we still have to deal with people like you trying to convince everyone else that we should use your crypto, effectively giving you our wealth for no tangible reason that we can see.

      So yeah, when you would only stand to gain from this revolution you’re proposing, and everyone else only stands to lose depending on when they catch the boat, you can see where it’s hard to take this seriously.

      • shortwavesurfer
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        38 minutes ago

        Fiat currency only really works well for those of us blessed enough to be born in the Western world, United States, Canada, England, Europe, etc. For a lot of people in the world, fiat currency is an absolute plague. Have a look at places like Venezuela where inflation is so high that people have to kill each other for basic necessities to survive or Argentina that is just now managing to pull itself out of years of crazy inflation levels. For those types of people, a crypto that we in the West would consider to be highly unstable is actually extremely stable as compared to their local currency. Plus, all you need to access crypto is any sort of internet connection and an electronic device such as a laptop or smartphone. Those people do not have access to the banking system either because of physical distance or governmental issues.