> They also don't eliminate payment processor risk
Of course they don't magically solve all problems, but that doesn't make them useless.
> I'm skeptical how many people in Venezuela saved their fortunes via Bitcoin et al
I've read some article from people who did it, but I don't think it's common.
The problem with leaving the country is, how do you take your assets with you? You cannot easily move a house, and you will get searched at the border and your gold, dollars, jewelry etc will get confiscated if found. With cryptocurrencies you can theoretically move any amount, by just memorizing 12 or 24 words, by hiding a piece of paper or by encrypting it and placing it online somewhere.
Monero is unfortunately not really anonymous either in many common scenario's, like repeatedly sending payments to or from the same address. [0] It's definitely better than Bitcoin though, but far from anonymous.
Overall I think that cryptocurrencies (and the internet overall) could use some better privacy strategies. Tor-like routing, no possibility of finger printing, etc.
> Many, including Satoshi, believed cryptocurrencies provided privacy for payments.
(emphasis mine)
Satoshi's writings indicated that he understood the public ledger he was creating was not anonymous. He even talked about ring signatures as a possible method to add obfuscation.
(Ring signatures is one aspect combined with others that Monero uses to achieve financial privacy. Anonymity requires extra steps taken by the user. Financial privacy ≠ anonymity.)
You don't, as a best practice, repeatedly send payments to or from the same address in Bitcoin. So if you continue not doing so in Monero, you end up with much more anonymity.
Monero is.
> They also don't eliminate payment processor risk
Of course they don't magically solve all problems, but that doesn't make them useless.
> I'm skeptical how many people in Venezuela saved their fortunes via Bitcoin et al
I've read some article from people who did it, but I don't think it's common.
The problem with leaving the country is, how do you take your assets with you? You cannot easily move a house, and you will get searched at the border and your gold, dollars, jewelry etc will get confiscated if found. With cryptocurrencies you can theoretically move any amount, by just memorizing 12 or 24 words, by hiding a piece of paper or by encrypting it and placing it online somewhere.