Steak one day and dog food the next? What is he talking about, that's certainly not the Bitcoin I know of.

Love the irony we see of more and more each day. Forbes talking about trust in an asset they would have been more than happy to diss in the years before. A publication from new media carrying/promoting an illustration of revolution and yet talking about someone from the old school of money having a "deep understanding" of Bitcoin.

Well, give the guy credit for highlighting the revolutionary vision of Satoshi Nakamoto for this technology. Satoshi wanted to disrupt the corrupt centralized financial institutions, because the people were suffering as a result of the mistakes that they made. 

Banks are working very close to governments and it is the governments that are using taxpayers money to pay for their mistakes. <In the form of multiple bailouts.>

So, yes Bitcoin was a cry for help to disrupt these authoritarian institutions and it did this by providing them with a alternative option. 

But the government can block miners, exchanger, and banks to facilitate transactions so that people can't convert their bitcoin into cash.
If governments really ban bitcoin, there is nothing people can do to avoid that, even bitcoin can't help citizens in authoritarian regimes. Luckily in some countries ruled by dictatorship like in north Korean and Vietnam don't ban bitcoin.

It's interesting how the community has known about this all of along, while mainstream outlets report this as something sensational or just found.

But yeah, we can see case studies of this in countries that have authoritarian regimes and economies deep in trouble. The prime example right now is probably Venezuela. With Maduro and Chavez before him, you can probably tell that the economy isn't doing too well with hyperinflation and decline in petrol exports.

BTC can play a significant role not only diminishing the control of the government over how the population transacts, but also protects individuals from the imminent depreciation of the currency that they hold. Again, this simply proves critics of bitcoin who say that it has no practical use completely wrong.

Big CEOs like this one are have either good or bad opinion for cryptocurrencies. The one saying bad opinion and negative comments don't really want anything to do with the crypto industry. The ones saying favorable opinions and positive comments are the ones which has plans on being involved with the industry or at least just at the least the blockchain technology behind it. It's that too obvious for this guys, just take a look at Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk they are very vocal with crypto and they are also involved with the industry. Don't be surprised if Forbes would have some kind of partnership with a project soon or have a blockchain system part of their business it's inevitable to happen when CEOs and owners of businesses are into crypto.

and Lightning doesn't need mining to fundamentally operate. So, miner bans are even less disruptive the more Lightning is being used, it's effectively a hedge against any type of disruption to the blockchain layer (but the channel liquidity is of course restricted by however much is available before any problem starts, and at what rate new channels can be opened in the adverse conditions)


so, on-chain disruptions (like miner bans) are a bit pointless to attackers really

Not 100% that I have the details right, but there was maybe a story about the collapse of the USSR that demonstrates how even mundane technology can tip the balance in fragile regimes; supposedly, middle-class Russians used fax machines to communicate coded messages to their anti-regime friends, and to print information pamphlets for the people without a fax machine.

It is just whatever gets them the most clicks, or the most advertising revune, etc. We saw that approach with quite a lot of news outlets back in 2015, and then after a couple years their opinions where completely flipped and they went from BTC being a ponzi scheme to BTC being a get rich method.

If BTC does find itself in North Korea, it could very well spell the end of their rule, it'll help a lot of people find another way of doing Finance and would be risky for their goverments.

In my understanding the statement "steak one day and doog food the next" would refer to the volatility of bitcoin. Possibly it is talking about the 2017 bitcoin bubble wherein it has reached the highest peak of 20k$ but by 2018 it explodes and it went down to 8k$. Those statements are deep but this is just a nature of a market-based currency. I cannot argue with that statement since that is true but sure there was an overstatement since even today even the price dropped bitcoin is not still to be considered a dog food.

But anyway, surely bitcoin has the power to oppose the tyrannical rule of the government since it is not controlled by the government. But even if we can escape the government, we cannot escape the illicit activities of syndicates who are using cryptocurrency especially bitcoin in their daily transactions. And because of that the government has placed a regulations in the use of cryptocurrency and with that even though bitcoin is decentralized somehow the government is catching up.

It's easier said than done. We people have had a history of different emperors and governments who have framed rules for us and we have quietly obeyed such rules in pursuit of peace and order of our dear ones. Now ruining the idea of governments and a central power altogether is really a very sharp idea which bitcoin is feeding to public. After the Hong Kong protest and people using it as their backup currency has really sparked a lot of words about how people can fight with governments by taking away the economy from them. But comparing Hong Kong with major countries can be a pretty big mistake. Hong Kong was a small city if we see by area with highly educated and affluent people. Most of the countries suffering with Authoritarian Govts don't have such a thing. They are large and demographically differentiated and encompassing a decentralized system in such countries to fight against the Regulators themselves is a very hefty tasks. Whatever Forbes may say Bitcoin is not a very appealing tool to beat authoritarian Govts.