Bitcoin Is An Unreplicable Lifeline In Authoritarian Regimes

Eight years in the past, I wrote a e book about pitching expertise. The core lesson was easy: To persuade skeptics, you could present your answer’s worth isn’t simply higher — it’s uniquely higher. Years later, as I started advocating for Bitcoin’s position in humanitarian crises, this lesson resurfaced with urgency. Skeptical pals requested “Can’t stablecoins do the identical?”, “What’s so distinctive about Bitcoin?”

The reply lies not in principle, however within the protest rallies of Abuja, the blackouts of Caracas and the underground faculties that ladies secretly attend in Kabul — locations the place 1.7 billion unbanked, 250 million battling excessive inflation or hyperinflation and a pair of.3 billion underneath authoritarian rule battle to outlive. These tales hardly ever breach Western media algorithms, which act as a shadow-ban of the creating world, favoring headlines about ETFs over existential monetary struggles. 

It doesn’t take too deep a glance into these elements of the world to find that Bitcoin isn’t solely very important however uniquely very important in a method stablecoins and different altcoins don’t and can’t replicate. Let’s take a look at three nations which might be adopting Bitcoin over stablecoins and why.

Nigeria: The place Sovereignty Outweighs Stability

Context: 223 million individuals, 95 million stay on lower than $1.90 a day. 23.71% inflation (April 2025), 18.3-20 million kids not in school. Solely 30% have entry to safe drinking water. 

In 2024, Nigeria confronted extreme financial and political upheaval, with the local currency naira crashing to a report 1,643 per greenback by August — down from 460 in early 2023. This not solely eroded financial savings and buying energy, it eroded belief within the authorities and led to widespread protests over soaring inflation and fuel costs. These protests had been triggered by widespread anger at authorities financial mismanagement and insurance policies that did not halt the financial slide. 

Once in a while a steady foreign money, the naira’s collapse left households and companies struggling to afford imports right into a dollar-dependent financial system. Public frustration intensified and with it, political instability. This risky local weather of foreign money devaluation, restricted monetary entry and social unrest set the stage for Nigerians to show to alternative financial systems like cryptocurrencies, looking for options to safeguard their wealth amid a crumbling financial framework.

However the authorities wasn’t about to make that straightforward for its residents. Nigeria’s authorities restricted stablecoin. “Illicit flows,” aka cash laundering, was usually used as the federal government’s official reason for anti-stablecoin actions. Extra probably the Nigerian authorities took motion as a result of they considered stablecoins as undermining its financial coverage by enabling unregulated capital flows and foreign money substitution, lowering its central financial institution’s management over cash provide and change charges. 

Little doubt, bitcoin may be seen as undermining financial coverage in some comparable methods, the distinction being, Nigeria’s authorities was not in a position to curtail bitcoin’s utilization as successfully attributable to its decentralized nature. 

The precise actions Nigeria’s authorities took got here in three kinds:

• Banking Restrictions and U.S. greenback provide shortages had the impact of limiting fiat on-ramps/off-ramps for stablecoins like USDT, which required KYC-compliant exchanges. P2P bitcoin buying and selling soared after the restrictions, as customers bypassed banking controls utilizing personal wallets and DEXs.
• Regulatory Crackdowns: Nigeria’s authorities took particular authorized motion to sue unlicensed USDT traders. Nigerian authorities then launched a broader assault, accusing crypto-trading platform Binance of “exploitation, devaluation of the naira and money laundering.”
• Premiums and Volatility: Regulatory pressures and FX shortages probably inflated premiums, making them much less sensible than bitcoin, which operates with out centralized dependencies.

All three measures — banking restrictions, regulatory crackdowns and premiums/volatility — impacted bitcoin loads much less than it impacted stablecoins. Stablecoins’ reliance on centralized issuers, banking rails and KYC-compliant exchanges made them susceptible to authorities actions, as we noticed when USDT trading was disrupted. In contrast, Bitcoin’s decentralized, permissionless nature enabled Nigerians to bypass restrictions through P2P platforms and personal wallets, sustaining its adoption.

Afghanistan: How Bitcoin Was a Monetary Lifeline After the Taliban Takeover

Context: Taliban rule, most girls are unbanked, Afghanistan’s foreign money devalued 50% between 2021 and 2022. Eighty-five % stay on less than $1 a day, 80% of school-aged Afghan girls and younger girls are out of faculty. 

When the Taliban seized management in August 2021, Afghanistan’s banking system collapsed underneath sanctions, leaving residents — particularly girls — with few choices. Conventional remittance networks like Hawala charged exorbitant charges (5-20%), whereas frozen central financial institution reserves made greenback entry practically unimaginable. On this vacuum, bitcoin emerged as a crucial instrument for survival. In 2021, Bitcoin Journal beforehand reported how girls had been safeguarding Bitcoin seed phrases as a final line of economic protection. After the Taliban banned crypto in 2022, peer-to-peer bitcoin trading persisted underground.

Why Bitcoin Outperformed Stablecoins in Disaster
Stablecoins, reliant on centralized issuers and dollar-backed banking rails, faltered underneath Afghanistan’s distinctive constraints. U.S. sanctions froze $7 billion in central financial institution funds, which minimize off the greenback liquidity wanted for stablecoins like USDT. Whereas Forbes India famous remoted instances of stablecoin use for salaries, most Afghans discovered them unusable. In the meantime, sanctions blocked fiat conversions and the Taliban’s November 2021 overseas foreign money ban further restricted access. Bitcoin, in contrast, as soon as once more thrived exactly due to its decentralized design: no intermediaries to freeze transactions, no KYC to show customers and a worldwide community that resisted shutdowns. The place stablecoins had been hobbled by their ties to conventional finance, Bitcoin enabled direct, pseudonymous transfers.

Venezuela: Shortage Trumps “Stability”

Context: The Venezuelan bolívar has misplaced 99.99% worth since 2018; 76% of Venezuelans stay on $1.90/day. Over 7.7 million Venezuelans have fled the nation since 2014 attributable to financial collapse and political instability. Over 10% of kids underneath 5 in Venezuela suffer from stunting attributable to power malnutrition.

Carlos, a Caracas mechanic, measures his life in bolívars — or slightly, the absence of them. Since 2018, Venezuela’s foreign money has shed 99.99% of its worth, Carlos explains, Carlos is an instance of many Venezuelans who used bitcoin, not stablecoins, to protect wealth because the bolívar continued to lose worth. The federal government launched strict capital controls into the market in order that even in case you in some way handle to earn USD, you may’t get the cash transferred to your checking account.

Bitcoin gives a monetary lifeline for individuals like Carlos, in contrast to stablecoins which might be pegged to a USD that itself misplaced 18% in buying energy since 2020.

That’s proper: Folks like Carlos, schooled within the onerous knocks of foreign money hyper-debasement, realized sooner than many within the West that stablecoins are usually not actually steady. 

Stablecoins by their title current the looks of being a secure harbor, as a result of they’re pegged to the USD, however that is akin to anchoring a ship to a midsized rock on the seabed. This can be a lot higher than not anchoring your ship in any respect, since you keep away from the instant tempestuous seas of your native foreign money’s hyperinflation. Nevertheless, over time you continue to slowly drift into the open ocean of greenback debasement. As a result of the USD itself loses buying energy, this slowly however inexorably drags stablecoin holders towards the identical inflationary waters they sought to flee.

Venezuela’s lesson mirrors Nigeria’s: in economies gutted by hyperinflation, sluggish erosion of wealth is deadlier than volatility.

How Governments Goal Stablecoin Liquidity in Authoritarian Regimes

What we’ve seen in Afghanistan, Nigeria and Venezuela are usually not anomalies. World wide, authoritarian governments don’t simply dislike stablecoins — they systematically dismantle entry to them. Their ways fall into six classes. Let’s check out these, utilizing examples from authoritarian regimes world wide. 

1. Proposed Stablecoin Bans (e.g., Brazil): Criminalizing stablecoin buying and selling or funds.
2. Banking Blockades (e.g., China): Severing fiat gateways to freeze stablecoin and crypto liquidity. Whereas the ban in principle utilized to Bitcoin too, the Bitcoin ban was not fully enforced attributable to Bitcoin’s decentralized structure. Reuters for instance commented, “repeated (Bitcoin) prohibitions spotlight the problem of closing loopholes and figuring out bitcoin-related transactions.”
3. KYC Enforcement (e.g., Hong Kong): Forcing strict identification checks for stablecoin transactions, which discourages use in regimes with heavy surveillance.
4. State-sponsored hacks (e.g., North Korea): Drain stablecoin reserves and disrupt market confidence.
5. Licensing Strangleholds (e.g., Russia’s proposed rules): Imposing strict licensing for stablecoin issuers or platforms, to restrict their operation.
6. Surveillance and Arrests (e.g., China’s OTC crackdowns): Monitoring and penalizing anybody concerned in stablecoin buying and selling.

The Lifeline: Why None of These Six Methods Work On Bitcoin

Not like stablecoins — which rely upon centralized issuers and platforms susceptible to regulation, hacking or shutdown — Bitcoin operates past any authorities’s grasp. Its decentralized community of miners and nodes has no single level of failure, no CEO to strain and no middleman to dam. Whereas authorities can freeze stablecoin transactions or impose strict licensing guidelines, Bitcoin transactions circulation peer-to-peer, bypassing conventional choke factors. Wallets stay personal, miners are globally distributed and the community resists censorship by design.

Governments could limit stablecoins with relative ease, however Bitcoin’s structure ensures it stays out of their attain. 

For instance, Russia has explored cryptocurrencies, together with bitcoin, to bypass Western sanctions — significantly because the 2022 Ukraine invasion. State-backed initiatives, like their proposed centralized change, had been set as much as facilitate cross-border funds in crypto to keep away from SWIFT restrictions and frozen overseas reserves.

In parallel, Russia’s central financial institution has imposed restrictions on foreign stablecoins like USDT to tighten management over home monetary flows. On 18 Might, CoinTurk alleged that Russia is now looking for to restrict USDT’s use in home transactions, encouraging the adoption of a state-controlled stablecoin. This aligns with efforts to stop capital flight, guarantee compliance with AML rules and promote “pleasant” digital belongings that align with nationwide safety targets.

Why each? Russia’s twin method displays a captivating strategic nuance: They leveraged bitcoin for worldwide sanctions evasion whereas limiting overseas stablecoins domestically to keep up financial management and scale back reliance on USD-pegged belongings ( as these are topic to overseas affect, for instance Tether’s skill to freeze wallets).

In relation to authoritarian regimes that need strict capital controls, bitcoin is antifragile; stablecoins are usually not.

The Altcoin Mirage

OK, so stablecoins don’t supply a viable different to bitcoin. However what about different altcoins?

It seems these don’t work so properly both as a result of centralized altcoins similar to XRP, Solana and Ethereum replicate stablecoins’ deadly flaw: dependency. Builders can reverse transactions (as Ethereum did in 2016), validators can freeze wallets and the usually uncapped provide of altcoins mimic fiat foreign money debasement. 

The failure is systemic. For instance, when Nigeria banned Binance in 2024, Solana-based USDC customers discovered themselves stranded, however bitcoin merchants merely pivoted to decentralized exchanges like HodlHodl. 

The frequent theme is that stablecoins don’t change bitcoin as a result of: 

• Inflation hedges require shortage and anchoring to an asset that’s not dropping buying energy itself. Stablecoins lack these two properties.
• USD shortage in nations similar to Nigeria makes stablecoins unreliable (premiums hit 60%+ throughout FX crunches).
• Political danger: The federal government can’t ban bitcoin, however it may well (and does) goal stablecoin liquidity.

Folks in autocratic nations use bitcoin not regardless of its volatility, however as a result of its sovereignty-preserving properties outweigh short-term worth swings. Stablecoins are instruments for transactions; bitcoin is a instrument for survival.

The Myopia of Privilege

The idea that stablecoins can replicate bitcoin’s utility usually stems from myopia formed by steady currencies, functioning democracies and sturdy banking programs — luxuries overseas to the two.3 billion individuals underneath authoritarian rule and the 250 million battling excessive inflation or hyperinflation. Western commentators, insulated by privilege, tout stablecoins as “ok,” unaware that in Abuja, a frozen USDT account can erase a household’s financial savings in a single day, or that in Kabul, stablecoins’ reliance on KYC checks excludes 80% of girls from the monetary system. Media algorithms impose an efficient shadow ban by merely not reporting on elements of the world deemed “not of curiosity” to the West, exacerbating this disconnect.

To these shaping the narrative: Look past your banking app. Ask your self why Nigerian P2P bitcoin quantity dwarfs France’s, or why Afghan refugees memorize seed phrases as an alternative of trusting Tether. The primary-hand accounts are these. So is the info that reveals these tales are usually not anomalies however slightly proof of Bitcoin uniquely assembly a urgent must an enormous person group in a method stablecoins can not. Stablecoins and altcoins innovate inside programs which have already failed the International South. Bitcoin exists outdoors them. Higher conclusions start with curiosity, not assumptions. Bitcoin’s worth isn’t in changing stablecoins — it’s in doing what they essentially can not do.

Let’s cease projecting our realities onto theirs and begin listening.