Governs' oppression of bitcoiners may turn against them

[cryptosize]

If they were smart, they would try to stack as many sats as possible (it's easy to become a wholecoiner when you earn 5 digits per month) and escape the rat race, but they won't even do that...

Pardon me, but if you earn 5 digits per month, haven't you already escaped rat race?  

Someone who works 12+ hours per day hasn't really escaped the rat race... it's not like MEPs are sitting all day and doing nothing.

Whether they produce something useful or not is up for debate.

But I think they could escape the rat race for good if they worked 4-8 years, bought a nice amount of BTC and then retired. So far nobody has done it.

[Ever-young]

Governs oppress bitcoiners for almost a decade now. Being aware that bitcoiners earn real fiat money from their crypto transactions, governs around the world started to extort bitcoiners, for taking away the money these people earned without having the State helping them in any way. People work, get paid for their work, but the State wants its share.

This is actually happening but i think there's a way it can get mitigated to an extent, if the user learn to go on full decentralization with handling his bitcoin by avoiding the use of the centralized exchanges through which the government can use to track him, here the asset is meant to be secured with more guaranteed safety on a decentralized exchange than a centralized one, you can run a bitvoin full node using bitcoincore, you can as well get yourself a hardware wallet to privately secure your asset and you make use of a decentralized p2p when in need for an exchange to fiat, if you can avoid centralized exchange, then you're almost close to being privately secured and don't announce yourself of your involvement in bitcoin to the public.

Most certainly,
Adopting full decentralization is a very good way to avoid being tracked by the governs as well as Centralized Exchange vulnerabilities.
Staying anonymous I believe is the hope of every Bitcoiner, being invisible and unseen by the government, and it's really not their true intentions to give up their privacy and anonymity by using a Centralized Exchange, knowing fully well they could be tracked via the information they relinquished to the exchange.

I think the reason why most investors consider the option of Centralized Exchanges is simply because they believe that's the most easy way  to spend their bitcoin because they do not really know or haven't considered better options to spend their bitcoin.

[Felicity_Tide]

- centralized exchanges should be avoided no matter what, for all the reasons I mentioned in OP
- decentralized exchanges are more and more; they started to become also more user friendly
- private wallets are a must, in order to be the owner of your private keys; preferably, users should choose those with open source code
- exchanges between a coin and another one should be made either through peer-to-peer transfers between users or through atomic swaps
- bank accounts should never be associated with crypto
- cash-in / cash-out anonymous crypto ATMs should be also used; they can be found through www.coinatmradar.com.

By following these easy steps we can maintain our privacy. The important part, though, is to have users willing to follow these steps and to leave behind all their unhealthy habits (using centralized exchanges, associating bank accounts with crypto accounts, giving personal information to third parties, using custodial wallets or wallets with closed source code etc.).

I really see no harm in following these rules/principles as they are as simple as what you can explain to a 2-year-old. Sometimes, I think users of Bitcoin who know the true definition of privacy are the ones taking another route. I actually see no reason why someone who anticipates privacy would prefer to use more of CEX and neglect DEX.

I think the reason why most investors consider the option of Centralized Exchanges is simply because they believe that's the most easy way  to spend their bitcoin because they do not really know or haven't considered better options to spend their bitcoin.

And do you know that such actions can hurt those investors? You see, the government tends to punish a person or group of people based on things they've monitored or can refer to as evidence. By using a CEX, your privacy is certainly not secured, as matters can also arise from that angle while you are still busy facing another.

[peter0425]

Imagine having the Legendary ranks filled with just passionate and very principled Bitcoiners. The newbies and young users will be guided properly by them.

This forum has been a great platform for beginners and experts alike to learn and grow in the crypto space. However what you are dreaming about is a little impossible unless we completely change the system.

Merits are given from member to another. Some people will agree with you and some will not, some will give you merits and some will not. Since this forum consists of diverse kinds of investors it might be difficult to set one standard of what or who should be given a merit.