[MusaTheRedGuard]

First of all, no. Global, trustless coordination is a hard problem and is not necessarily illegal.

Second, legality is subjective around the world. It is currently illegal in the US to gamble online, for some reason, even though casinos and lotteries are a thing.

It is illegal in many countries to transfer a certain amount of money out of the country, for some reason.

Certain sexualities are illegal in quite a few countries.

Illegal != bad

[gregschlom]

I'm not saying: you don't need the blockchain because you shouldn't be doing bad things.

I'm saying: you need the blockchain if and only if you are doing things that are illegal in your country. It's a decision criteria for when you need the blockchain.

I'm making no moral judgement. And there are very good reasons to want to do things that your government deems illegal (for example, donating to a political organization that has been blacklisted)

[skilgarriff]

I can send 1 bitcoin from myself living in Minnesota to my friend living in Japan for the equivalent of $0.46.

That's an improvement over the existing system. I don't have to trust anyone in between to get my money to him.

How would that be as possible and as "trustless" without blockchain?

[MusaTheRedGuard]

And I'm saying illegality is not the only usecase, though it is definitely a valuable and useful one.

In case it wasn't clear, the usecases i mentioned above (gambling, getting around capital controls) exist and are live in crypto right now.

[oarabbus_]

>I'm saying: you need the blockchain if and only if you are doing things that are illegal in your country. It's a decision criteria for when you need the blockchain.

This is, at face value, simply false.

I want to send $5 to a poor African family. I'll even relax my criteria - I'm willing to wait _up to 3 business days_ for this African family to receive my $5. I live in California.

Could you please point me towards the non-blockchain way to do this?

[jayd16]

The concept at question isn't really illegality as much as alegality (which is not a word that exists). Which is to say, the use case where no legal jurisdiction exists or is ineffectual. I suppose anarchy would be the proper term.

[MusaTheRedGuard]

Or a jurisdiction which has rules that you can't or choose not to comply with