> Another story is from a guy whom recently fled from Venezuela to Colombia, and blogged about his experience. On his journey, he was shaken down by police officers, local tribes, traffickers, basically everybody.
> Here too crypto could have played a humanitarian role.
How would crypto help if the police officer says "we'll keep you locked up until you make a payment to this address"?
These local cops just want a quick grab of free cash from people passing by their roadblocks and to do so with as little noise as possible, as it's corruption. They don't know you and don't know what you have. For them to detain you for any length of time, they have to spend an insane amount of time and effort for a completely unknown result, whilst not being able to do shakedowns on other people passing by. It makes no sense.
With crypto, they have no idea what you have. It would probably still be wise to have tiny amounts of cash on hand to make for a believable story that you own little, rather than nothing (which is suspicious). Also, you should play dumb, like a person not remotely able to comprehend any tech.
In the rare case where such officer is somehow suspecting you own crypto and is really eager to spend a lot of time confiscating it, you go with the distraction wallet strategy. A small crypto wallet which you give up whilst your real wealth is in a bigger wallet. On the bigger wallet, you enable delayed withdrawals and multi-sig. Confiscation will be physically impossible.
The police officer will have to know you have money. Bitcoin is anonymous, so tracking down people with money is hard. Also, he'll have to find you first, which is much harder than just input your tax number and press 'block' button.
> Here too crypto could have played a humanitarian role.
How would crypto help if the police officer says "we'll keep you locked up until you make a payment to this address"?