> Why does it make a difference whether your wealth is denoted by USD, Bitcoin, milk caps, or Rai Stones? If tanks roll over your capital city and your countrymen are made to kneel in a row, what good is it that you can refuse to give up the private keys?
The soldiers lining up your countrymen and shooting them in the head so they fall into a ditch become the new owners of your countrymen's USD and milk caps, but not their Bitcoin or rai stones. This kind of thing (the "pillaging" part of "raping and pillaging") is historically a major incentive for going to war.
> If tanks roll over your capital city and your countrymen are made to kneel in a row, what good is it that you can refuse to give up the private keys?
If your seed phrase is erased from your brain by a bullet, it probably doesn't do you much good. But it will completely change your life if you manage to escape: a refugee with pockets full of gold is observably different from a destitute pauper; a refugee who has memorized two seed phrases is not observably different from a refugee who has memorized only one. That's the difference between starting a new life as a homeless beggar and buying a country estate to retire on.
> the colossal environmental damage inherent to a Bitcoin-driven world economy
You seem to be begging the question here; why should we expect a Bitcoin-driven world economy to produce colossal environmental damage? Mining Bitcoin with fossil-fuel energy is unprofitable, so we should expect Bitcoin to produce a colossal shift to cheaper renewable energy, which may reverse the colossal environmental damage caused by fossil fuels. Or it may not.
The soldiers lining up your countrymen and shooting them in the head so they fall into a ditch become the new owners of your countrymen's USD and milk caps, but not their Bitcoin or rai stones. This kind of thing (the "pillaging" part of "raping and pillaging") is historically a major incentive for going to war.
> If tanks roll over your capital city and your countrymen are made to kneel in a row, what good is it that you can refuse to give up the private keys?
If your seed phrase is erased from your brain by a bullet, it probably doesn't do you much good. But it will completely change your life if you manage to escape: a refugee with pockets full of gold is observably different from a destitute pauper; a refugee who has memorized two seed phrases is not observably different from a refugee who has memorized only one. That's the difference between starting a new life as a homeless beggar and buying a country estate to retire on.
> the colossal environmental damage inherent to a Bitcoin-driven world economy
You seem to be begging the question here; why should we expect a Bitcoin-driven world economy to produce colossal environmental damage? Mining Bitcoin with fossil-fuel energy is unprofitable, so we should expect Bitcoin to produce a colossal shift to cheaper renewable energy, which may reverse the colossal environmental damage caused by fossil fuels. Or it may not.