“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@lemmy.zip
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        18 hours ago

        Then I wonder how I’m still alive, as in January of 2025, will mark two years since I started buying my groceries every single month with it.

      • HappyTimeHarry@lemm.ee
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        2 days ago

        Believe it or not there are number of services that you can pay in monero and get a payment in zelle, venmo or a money order.

        • BigFig@lemmy.world
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          24 hours ago

          So no, you’re not paying IN monero, you’re exchanging through a middle man for a real currency, the USD. If the entity you are paying directly isn’t accepting the monopoly money, then it’s not the same thing

          • HappyTimeHarry@lemm.ee
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            14 hours ago

            Semantics, but if saying it like that makes more sense to you then sure: I use middleman who accepts monopoly Money from me and pays my rent in “real” money for me.

        • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
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          18 hours ago

          I’m certain that you sold Bitcoin and paid for a house with cash. You probably used a service like RealOpen designed to make it feel like you’re doing something cool, but the end result is exactly the same unless you deliberately sought out a seller that was willing to receive Bitcoin.

          As it turns out, keeping money in the bank and never working with large amounts of cash is sufficient protection from civil asset forfeiture, as they generally can’t just take your accounts from you during a traffic stop or at airport security.

      • shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip
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        2 days ago

        It’s not going to rise or fall that much in such a short amount of time. That’s for sure. With Monero, I generally prefer to use the 365-day simple moving average, and I found that normally it fluctuates within about 6% of that level. So that’s not a terrible fluctuation in either direction. Actually, if you have the money and patience, it would be a really good swing trade. Buy Monero when it is like 6% below the 365 day simple moving average. Wait for it to climb 6% above and then sell it all and do it again. But as I said, you would definitely need time because those swings can take several months.

        • spongebue@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          Even if it does stabilize/is stable enough that the world shifts to it, what an interesting factoid that early adopters (who were lucky enough to pick the “right” crypto) would stand to benefit more than others.

          Sheesh. At least you stopped shilling this crap on gonewild

          • shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip
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            1 day ago

            It actually works very well in those kinds of situations. People like that are constantly getting booted from the banking system and financial services. So crypto is a very good fit for that. Some of the very first people to use Bitcoin back in like 2010 and 2011 was WikiLeaks. After they were cut off from the Visa network, they were cut off from PayPal and other money transfer businesses and they were cut off from their bank accounts and they would have shut down had it not been for the funding they got through Bitcoin. There are a few industries that are perfectly legal that are just morally dubious to some people and therefore get kicked out of the banking system quite easily. Take a look at Operation Choke Point and Operation Choke Point 2.0.

            • spongebue@lemmy.world
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              1 day ago

              I’m sure this will all be very convincing to get your average people to replace their existing bank account with that

              • shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip
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                1 day ago

                You could take a look at the bank bail-ins in Cyprus in like 2013, where anybody with over $100,000 worth of assets had all their money taken from them by this Cyprus government in order to stabilize the banks. How would you feel if the equivalent of your 401k that you were relying on for retirement was just taken away to stabilize a failing bank? Sure, because your money helped stabilize the bank, you get stock in the bank. But who on earth would want stock in a just failed bank?

                • spongebue@lemmy.world
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                  1 day ago

                  I’m sure this will all be equally convincing to get your average people to replace their existing bank account with that

                  • shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip
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                    1 day ago

                    Yeah, most people aren’t going to figure it out until they’ve been really hurt, and then they’ll be looking for something else. Pain is the only thing that makes habits change quickly. Otherwise, they either will not change or will only change extremely slowly.

        • electric_nan@lemmy.ml
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          2 days ago

          I have less than zero interest in trading crypto. I think it’s all a net negative for the world with only dubious utility. The utility may improve, and something like monero may be what brings me on board, but I’m not there yet.