chicken

I don't think this is true, but a lot of this impression is probably because much of the growth in actual use of cryptocurrency for everyday finance is happening outside of places like the US or Europe:

In the 12 months ending June 2025, APAC [Asia-Pacific] emerged as the fastest-growing region for on-chain crypto activity, with a 69% year-over-year increase in value received. Total crypto transaction volume in APAC grew from $1.4 trillion to $2.36 trillion, driven by robust engagement across major markets like India, Vietnam, and Pakistan.

Close behind, Latin America’s crypto adoption grew by 63%, reflecting rising adoption across both retail and institutional segments. In comparison, Sub-Saharan Africa’s adoption grew by 52%, indicating the region’s continued reliance on crypto for remittances and everyday payments. These figures underscore a broad shift in crypto momentum toward the Global South, where on-the-ground utility is increasingly fueling adoption.

There is also the way stablecoins are now a growing top 20 holder of US debt, and major financial institutions moving to have infrastructure on crypto networks. Change is happening even if it isn't immediate or directly visible to everyone.

Don't count out gambling. NFTs are a gambling game, where you win if you aren't the last one holding the bag. There's no hard guarantee that the traffic for a given NFT is real or not, but if its origin is something scarce and noteworthy (like being minted by the subject of a popular meme) then that can be a Schelling point for gamblers to converge on and reasonably conclude that other gamblers will be trying for the same NFT.

At some point the game ends when sources of new players are exhausted and everyone stops playing, but at one point I believe people were playing. Of course at the time people tried to describe why someone might buy a NFT as being some vague other buzzword laden reason, probably because the game ends sooner if everyone knows everyone else is also just hoping to flip it for a profit.

Except apparently it doesn't even do a good job of that

To recap: compliant sites hemorrhaged users while non-compliant sites experienced massive growth.

Even if what's really behind these laws is authoritarian conspiracy, hard to find a way to look at it that makes them seem competent.

To be fair there's all the shit with dollar denominated oil, SWIFT, terrorist regime change on countries that don't want to play along, etc. It might not be based on any kind of fair exchange of value, but that's not quite the same as the USD's global reserve currency status being vibes-only.

With red spraypaint even, doesn't match the wall at all

(because they killed them)

It's like when horses were replaced by automobiles. the economy kept going, just maybe with more glue and less oats.

What does that enable? Could people in states blocked by the main network use it through these?

all the privacy debates surrounding Google search results from the past two decades apply one-for-one to AI chats, but to an even greater degree. That’s why we (at DuckDuckGo) started offering Duck.ai for protected chatbot conversations and optional, anonymous AI-assisted answers in our private search engine. In doing so, we’re demonstrating that privacy-respecting AI services are feasible.

I like and use DuckDuckGo but I don't see how they can guarantee this, similar to how a VPN might claim to keep no logs but you can't really know for sure.

I think it would be cool if there was software that downloads local copies of wikipedia, stackoverflow etc., and you can ask questions that will be responded to with relevant informative pages without that query going to a server.

Relevant username

As long as you don’t somehow bumble into the rare role of being the person who they decide to parade around as the example with an absurd punishment

I could be wrong, but I researched it some years ago and I'm pretty sure even this has not happened since the early 2010s when industry groups were still using that strategy (though I'd welcome an example if you can cite one). They switched to the ISP letters thing, but those are not legal proceedings, even if you could get your internet shut off, and so I don't count it as getting in trouble with the law. Of course it's still undesirable and a good reason to bind your torrent client to a VPN.

I see the main issue as, some people who might be considering taking psychedelics end up thinking the visual hallucinations are the main thing that will happen, when the internal stuff is way more intense even if you only took enough for very mild visuals. Since these drugs have a profound and potentially lasting effect on your mind and perspective, even though it's generally positive, people should have a better idea than that what they're getting into, in the interest of informed consent.