I don't understand such kind of comments. Let's talk again after you experienced a bank cancelling your business account for no reason with seemingly having landed on a shared hidden blacklist that makes it impossible to get a new bank account.
Yes it has, anyone in the world can open their own "current account"/"deposit account" for free, right now. Barring hacking you, no government or authority can access it without your consent. None can prevent you from receiving money in it from someone else, or from transferring money out of it to someone else.
I can receive bitcoins but I cant buy food with bitcoins or pay my staff with bitcoins. At some point I need to convert these coins to fiat and that's subject to the same controls that GP noted.
Are you sure you can't spend Bitcoin directly for goods and services? Have you tried? When was the last time you searched for physical shops near you [1] that accept it?
I can buy mining equipment or stay at an hourly love hotel located in the red light district in my city according to the map. I guess some of my needs could be met.
Not bad. I have a dentist one town over, and "Bitcoin Fabio" who has spammed the map in every major city nearby and buys and sells Bitcoin, and seems very trustworthy, because he says it is "100% safe !"
No one should be using on-chain Bitcoin transactions for in-person exchange. Partly due to the high fees, but mostly because of double-spending and lack of privacy. Lightning Network solves all of these problems. Fees are much lower, settlement is instant and clear to even unsophisticated users, and the recipient cannot see from where the funds originated.
Taxes are a different issue and that's up to each jurisdiction to solve via better legislation.
Don't you still have to pay the tx fee to open a lightning network channel? Anyway the whole thing lost me with the block size debate (always been a big blocker). Where are we at with lightning network adoption anyway?
Yes, an on-chain transaction is required to open a channel. But once open you can continue to use it forever, or until you (or your counter-party) decide to close it.
Lightning Network adoption is slow and steady. There are several newbie-friendly mobile wallet apps available [1][2][3]. Some nice improvements have been developed and pushed live in the last 18 months (e.g watchtowers [4] and atomic multi-path payments (AMP) [5]). There are now five Lightning Network node implementations (lnd, eclair, c-lightning, rust lightning, Electrum). And there are hardware projects working to bring LN into the physical space - one of which is my own project, a Lightning-only Bitcoin ATM named "Bleskomat" [6].
"Coinbase will automatically convert all cryptocurrency to US Dollars for use in purchases and ATM withdrawals".
This removes a little friction, but the vendors are not taking crypto. Its not really any different than using a US credit card in a foreign country - the vendor isn't taking USD, even if thats what I end up being billed in (along with the associated fees).
Bitcoin is supposed to be trustless but now I have to not only trust the merchant but a stranger on the internet to purchase those items using their fiat.
Bitcoin is a leaf node in the network, like "dollar". Bank account is at a higher level. A bank is a business that provides lending
,transfer, and custody services, the currency can be anything, including bitcoin.
Most likely the people running sex-trafficking rings are not stupid enough to use something like Bitcoin as you don't want to have a public ledger with all your transactions fully visible on the internet if you're doing stuff like that.
Probably Zcash is a more likely contender for that, as it is the only cryptocurrency offering fully anonymous transfers together with normal, public transfers in the same wallet.
