I misread the title to mean -- Crypto company claims that it insures the FDIC. Customer: "Are you FDIC insured?" Crypto Bank: "lol, WE are the FDIC's insurance in case THEY go bankrupt."
Currently, once you get money laundering of of the picture, cryptocurrencies are good for speculating, and - what else?
Cyrpto can have a stable money supply where it is not possible to create unlimited currency out of thin air, thereby risking hyperinflation, which protects the money of responsible savers. This will also likely force governments to balance their budgets, instead of spending like drunken sailors and competing for goods and services against the remainder of the public. Also, if deflation takes hold, then savers can protect their wealth without needing banks, stocks, bonds, or other potentially risky investment methods.
Transactions are not possible to block. If you want to legally purchase an item, the government cannot make it inconvenient for you to do so by ordering banks to halt transactions from the seller. One prominent example happened recently when medical marijuana became available in California, and banks were denying business to legal sellers.
Governments cannot order money to come out of the accounts of individuals, remotely. True, they may be able to punish you in other ways, and all bets are off if they arrest you and confiscate the piece of paper where you have your key written down. But you at least have the freedom of saying "no, I refuse, so come and take it".
It is also relatively easy to transfer wealth across boarders without the risk of confiscation. Write down your key in a cloud storage, memorize your login and password, and there is now no trace of wealth to uncover as you travel. This can reduce your risk of civil asset forfeiture, or allow you to escape with your money from a country with a repressive government.
Not everyone believes that the features of crypto are benifitial, because its takes power away from government. They will disagree with what is "good" or "bad" based on whether they trust the government with control of the money system.
So society should have no defense against lies spread by the President. Got it.
"The price of liberty is eternal vigilance." It means that your defense is by making arguments against what you don't like. It doesn't mean that you can just ban the speech with which you disagree, and hope that it goes away. History has show, more often, that the opposite occurs.
If a person can be sued for what they said on Facebook, why do we need to change the rules of/for Facebook? I'm not being facetious, I'm trying to understand both sides here.
Facebook is acting as both a platform and a publisher at the same time. The reality is that the little guy isn't going to face a lawsuit. And with the big tech corporation immune, this leaves zero accountability. The corporate tech oligarch reaps the vast majority of the benefits, while paying no price.
Would I run an online forum if I could be sued for what forum users post? Hell no. The result would
Before Section 230 existed, online forums were safe because of a case called Cubby v. Compuserve, from 1991. It established that Compuserve was not liable because they didn't moderate their forums, and so they had no reason to know about the speech that was occurring. Another key lawsuit was Stratton Oakmont v. Prodigy from 1996. In that case, they were found liable for defamation because they were moderating. You are not automatically liable simply for having a comments section or a forum. It's a similar idea to how the phone company isn't liable if you say bad things to someone else over the phone. The carrier (probably!) isn't listening in (I kindly ask that we leave the Edward Snowden side of the argument for another day.)
Drugs & money laundering form the backbone of the Bitcoin economy since, well, you can't do anything else with it
There are a few other possible uses, 1.) conduct private transactions without government scrutiny or taxation, 2.) store of wealth that isn't subject to government debasement inflation, 3.) can cross international boarders without detection or taxation. While it isn't perfect, and some other assets have advantages that crypto does not (example: physical precious metal ownership does not have a counterparty risk, whereas crypto relies on the continuation of the network; example 2: cash works in the event of an EMP/solar flare/power outage), there are a few niche uses for bitcoin where it is most appropriate for the situation. As always, don't put all your eggs in one basket, and diversify your assets properly.
It is sort of ridiculous though - what if you don't have a social media presence? Will they believe you?
Perhaps they will not, but if they find it later, then lying on your visa application may be grounds for being deported or losing your U.S. citizenship (example - John Demjanjuk).
You can tune a piano, but you can't tuna fish. You can tune a filesystem, but you can't tuna fish. -- from the tunefs(8) man page