This is the most cogent answer I've seen regarding BTC utility for those living under less stable regimes. Usually it's a hand-wavy "something something Venezuela something," which, as bad as Venezuela is, makes it seem like crypto is only really relevant in exceptional cases of instability.
So please, the fact that some venezuelan hners say they use bitcoin doesn't make bitcoin a real valid alternative and widely used
Venezuelans right now only care to protect against the 5000% yearly inflation and they do it with the dollar, they don't care _for now_ about dollar losing value when Bolivar loses 5000%
I'm not Venezuelan or in Venezuela, but I definitely know Venezuelans here in Argentina who send Bitcoin back to Venezuela. But it's clearly not widely used—the best estimates are that there are only a few billion dollars per year in total Bitcoin remittances, of which under US$400 million (per year) are to Venezuela, and there are 5 million Venezuelan expats. And Venezuela has almost 30 million people. So clearly only about 2%–10% of Venezuela's population uses Bitcoin at most, and many of them only use it to provide "send money to your family" services to and from other Venezuelan expats—who may not know or care that Bitcoin is involved.
That certainly doesn't add up to "widely used" but it's not "absolutely 0" as you said in your other comment either.
When I said, "Bitcoin is very popular in Venezuela" I meant relative to its popularity in other countries, not relative to the Venezuelan population as a whole. I mean, if I said Emacs was very popular in Venezuela, that wouldn't mean that every other moto-taxi driver could give you Elisp tips. It would just mean that more people used Emacs than VS Code.
Where does this hypothetical 2% of Bitcoin adopters live? Maybe not in Caracas where it's easy to find someone to exchange dollars with. Maybe they live close to the Colombian border, where they trade with drug traffickers? (Though why would Colombian drug traffickers be Bitcoin buyers rather than sellers? Maybe I need to think this through better.) Maybe they live in rural areas? Probably one of the P2P market sites has a map.
If you had to flee Venezuela, maybe through unsafe areas where bandits were operating, would you rather be carrying your savings in Bitcoin or in dollars?
Hey firekvz, very interesting to hear a take on crypto from someone who actually knows what's happening on the ground. I was wondering if you'd be interested in having a chat for a policy paper I am working on. It would be beyond helpful because as you said the media and a lot of major research paints a very different picture.
If we're talking about political regimes, though, I don't think we're even talking about "less stable" regimes—whatever you might think about Cuba ethically, old Raúl and his brother have been in power there for over 60 years and show no signs of losing control, and I don't see any signs of incipient revolution in Indonesia, PRC, Mexico, or Vietnam either. Here in Argentina we've remained democratic since 01983, electing presidents from three different political parties (UCR, PJ, and PRO), and there's no serious insurgency. It's the economy and government policy that are ruinously unstable, to a point that seems satirical to anyone accustomed to the US, but is lamentably common worldwide.
Thanks for the effort.