Eight years ago, I wrote a book about pitching technology. The core lesson was simple: To convince skeptics, you must show your solution’s value isn’t just better — it’s uniquely better. Years later, as I began advocating for Bitcoin’s role in humanitarian crises, this lesson resurfaced with urgency. Skeptical friends asked “Can’t stablecoins do the same?”, “What’s so unique about Bitcoin?”
The answer lies not in theory, but in the protest rallies of Abuja, the blackouts of Caracas and the underground schools that girls secretly attend in Kabul — places where 1.7 billion unbanked, 250 million battling high inflation or hyperinflation and 2.3 billion under authoritarian rule fight to survive. These stories rarely breach Western media algorithms, which act as a shadow-ban of the developing world, favoring headlines about ETFs over existential financial struggles.
It doesn’t take too deep a look into these parts of the world to discover that Bitcoin is not only vital but uniquely vital in a way stablecoins and other altcoins do not and cannot replicate. Let’s look at three nations that are adopting Bitcoin over stablecoins and why.
Nigeria: Where Sovereignty Outweighs Stability
Context: 223 million people, 95 million live on less than $1.90 a day. 23.71% inflation (April 2025), 18.3-20 million children not in school. Only 30% have access to safe drinking water.
In 2024, Nigeria faced severe economic and political upheaval, with the local currency naira crashing to a record 1,643 per dollar by August — down from 460 in early 2023. This not only eroded savings and purchasing power, it eroded trust in the government and led to widespread protests over soaring inflation and fuel costs. These protests were triggered by widespread anger at government economic mismanagement and policies that failed to halt the economic slide.
On occasion a stable currency, the naira’s collapse left families and businesses struggling to afford imports into a dollar-dependent economy. Public frustration intensified and with it, political instability. This volatile climate of currency devaluation, restricted financial access and social unrest set the stage for Nigerians to turn to alternative financial systems like cryptocurrencies, seeking solutions to safeguard their wealth amid a crumbling economic framework.
But the government wasn’t about to make that easy for its citizens. Nigeria’s government restricted stablecoin. “Illicit flows,” aka money laundering, was often used as the government’s official reason for anti-stablecoin actions. More likely the Nigerian government took action because they viewed stablecoins as undermining its monetary policy by enabling unregulated capital flows and currency substitution, reducing its central bank’s control over money supply and exchange rates.
No doubt, bitcoin can be seen as undermining monetary policy in some similar ways, the difference being, Nigeria’s government was not able to curtail bitcoin’s usage as effectively due to its decentralized nature.
The specific actions Nigeria’s government took came in three forms:
- Banking Restrictions and U.S. dollar supply shortages had the effect of limiting fiat on-ramps/off-ramps for stablecoins like USDT, which required KYC-compliant exchanges. P2P bitcoin trading soared after the restrictions, as users bypassed banking controls using private wallets and DEXs.
- Regulatory Crackdowns: Nigeria’s government took specific legal action to sue unlicensed USDT traders. Nigerian authorities then launched a broader attack, accusing crypto-trading platform Binance of “exploitation, devaluation of the naira and money laundering.”
- Premiums and Volatility: Regulatory pressures and FX shortages likely inflated premiums, making them less practical than bitcoin, which operates without centralized dependencies.
All three measures — banking restrictions, regulatory crackdowns and premiums/volatility — impacted bitcoin a lot less than it impacted stablecoins. Stablecoins’ reliance on centralized issuers, banking rails and KYC-compliant exchanges made them vulnerable to government actions, as we saw when USDT trading was disrupted. By contrast, Bitcoin’s decentralized, permissionless nature enabled Nigerians to bypass restrictions via P2P platforms and private wallets, sustaining its adoption.
Afghanistan: How Bitcoin Was a Financial Lifeline After the Taliban Takeover
Context: Taliban rule, most women are unbanked, Afghanistan’s currency devalued 50% between 2021 and 2022. Eighty-five percent live on less than $1 a day, 80% of school-aged Afghan girls and young women are out of school.
When the Taliban seized control in August 2021, Afghanistan’s banking system collapsed under sanctions, leaving citizens — especially women — with few options. Traditional remittance networks like Hawala charged exorbitant fees (5-20%), while frozen central bank reserves made dollar access nearly impossible. In this vacuum, bitcoin emerged as a critical tool for survival. In 2021, Bitcoin Magazine previously reported how women were safeguarding Bitcoin seed phrases as a last line of financial defense. After the Taliban banned crypto in 2022, peer-to-peer bitcoin trading persisted underground.
Why Bitcoin Outperformed Stablecoins in Crisis
Stablecoins, reliant on centralized issuers and dollar-backed banking rails, faltered under Afghanistan’s unique constraints. U.S. sanctions froze $7 billion in central bank funds, which cut off the dollar liquidity needed for stablecoins like USDT. While Forbes India noted isolated cases of stablecoin use for salaries, most Afghans found them unusable. Meanwhile, sanctions blocked fiat conversions and the Taliban’s November 2021 foreign currency ban further restricted access. Bitcoin, by contrast, once again thrived precisely because of its decentralized design: no intermediaries to freeze transactions, no KYC to expose users and a global network that resisted shutdowns. Where stablecoins were hobbled by their ties to traditional finance, Bitcoin enabled direct, pseudonymous transfers.
Venezuela: Scarcity Trumps “Stability”
Context: The Venezuelan bolívar has lost 99.99% value since 2018; 76% of Venezuelans live on $1.90/day. Over 7.7 million Venezuelans have fled the country since 2014 due to economic collapse and political instability. Over 10% of children under five in Venezuela suffer from stunting due to chronic malnutrition.
Carlos, a Caracas mechanic, measures his life in bolívars — or rather, the absence of them. Since 2018, Venezuela’s currency has shed 99.99% of its value, Carlos explains, Carlos is an example of many Venezuelans who used bitcoin, not stablecoins, to preserve wealth as the bolívar continued to lose value. The government introduced strict capital controls into the market so that even if you somehow manage to earn USD, you can’t get the money transferred to your bank account.
Bitcoin provides a financial lifeline for people like Carlos, unlike stablecoins that are pegged to a USD that itself lost 18% in purchasing power since 2020.
That’s right: People like Carlos, schooled in the hard knocks of currency hyper-debasement, realized earlier than many in the West that stablecoins are not really stable.
Stablecoins by their name present the appearance of being a safe harbor, because they are pegged to the USD, but this is akin to anchoring a ship to a midsized rock on the seabed. This is a lot better than not anchoring your ship at all, because you avoid the immediate tempestuous seas of your local currency’s hyperinflation. However, over time you still slowly drift into the open ocean of dollar debasement. Because the USD itself loses purchasing power, this slowly but inexorably drags stablecoin holders toward the same inflationary waters they sought to escape.
Venezuela’s lesson mirrors Nigeria’s: in economies gutted by hyperinflation, slow erosion of wealth is deadlier than volatility.
How Governments Target Stablecoin Liquidity in Authoritarian Regimes
What we’ve seen in Afghanistan, Nigeria and Venezuela are not anomalies. Around the world, authoritarian governments don’t just dislike stablecoins — they systematically dismantle access to them. Their tactics fall into six categories. Let’s take a look at these, using examples from authoritarian regimes around the world.
- Proposed Stablecoin Bans (e.g., Brazil): Criminalizing stablecoin trading or payments.
- Banking Blockades (e.g., China): Severing fiat gateways to freeze stablecoin and crypto liquidity. While the ban in theory applied to Bitcoin too, the Bitcoin ban was not fully enforced due to Bitcoin’s decentralized architecture. Reuters for example commented, “repeated (Bitcoin) prohibitions highlight the challenge of closing loopholes and identifying bitcoin-related transactions.”
- KYC Enforcement (e.g., Hong Kong): Forcing strict identity checks for stablecoin transactions, which discourages use in regimes with heavy surveillance.
- State-sponsored hacks (e.g., North Korea): Drain stablecoin reserves and disrupt market confidence.
- Licensing Strangleholds (e.g., Russia’s proposed rules): Imposing strict licensing for stablecoin issuers or platforms, to limit their operation.
- Surveillance and Arrests (e.g., China’s OTC crackdowns): Monitoring and penalizing anyone involved in stablecoin trading.
The Lifeline: Why None of These Six Strategies Work On Bitcoin
Unlike stablecoins — which depend on centralized issuers and platforms vulnerable to regulation, hacking or shutdown — Bitcoin operates beyond any government’s grasp. Its decentralized network of miners and nodes has no single point of failure, no CEO to pressure and no intermediary to block. While authorities can freeze stablecoin transactions or impose strict licensing rules, Bitcoin transactions flow peer-to-peer, bypassing traditional choke points. Wallets remain private, miners are globally distributed and the network resists censorship by design.
Governments may restrict stablecoins with relative ease, but Bitcoin’s architecture ensures it stays out of their reach.
For example, Russia has explored cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin, to bypass Western sanctions — particularly since the 2022 Ukraine invasion. State-backed initiatives, like their proposed centralized exchange, were set up to facilitate cross-border payments in crypto to avoid SWIFT restrictions and frozen foreign reserves.
In parallel, Russia’s central bank has imposed restrictions on foreign stablecoins like USDT to tighten control over domestic financial flows. On 18 May, CoinTurk alleged that Russia is now seeking to limit USDT’s use in domestic transactions, encouraging the adoption of a state-controlled stablecoin. This aligns with efforts to prevent capital flight, ensure compliance with AML regulations and promote “friendly” digital assets that align with national security goals.
Why both? Russia’s dual approach reflects a fascinating strategic nuance: They leveraged bitcoin for international sanctions evasion while restricting foreign stablecoins domestically to maintain economic control and reduce reliance on USD-pegged assets ( as these are subject to foreign influence, for example Tether’s ability to freeze wallets).
When it comes to authoritarian regimes that want strict capital controls, bitcoin is antifragile; stablecoins are not.
The Altcoin Mirage
OK, so stablecoins don’t offer a viable alternative to bitcoin. But what about other altcoins?
It turns out these don’t work so well either because centralized altcoins such as XRP, Solana and Ethereum replicate stablecoins’ fatal flaw: dependency. Developers can reverse transactions (as Ethereum did in 2016), validators can freeze wallets and the often uncapped supply of altcoins mimic fiat currency debasement.
The failure is systemic. For example, when Nigeria banned Binance in 2024, Solana-based USDC users found themselves stranded, but bitcoin traders simply pivoted to decentralized exchanges like HodlHodl.
The common theme is that stablecoins do not replace bitcoin because:
- Inflation hedges require scarcity and anchoring to an asset that’s not losing purchasing power itself. Stablecoins lack these two properties.
- USD scarcity in countries such as Nigeria makes stablecoins unreliable (premiums hit 60%+ during FX crunches).
- Political risk: The government can’t ban bitcoin, but it can (and does) target stablecoin liquidity.
People in autocratic nations use bitcoin not despite its volatility, but because its sovereignty-preserving properties outweigh short-term price swings. Stablecoins are tools for transactions; bitcoin is a tool for survival.
The Myopia of Privilege
The assumption that stablecoins can replicate bitcoin’s utility often stems from myopia shaped by stable currencies, functioning democracies and robust banking systems — luxuries foreign to the 2.3 billion people under authoritarian rule and the 250 million battling high inflation or hyperinflation. Western commentators, insulated by privilege, tout stablecoins as “good enough,” unaware that in Abuja, a frozen USDT account can erase a family’s savings overnight, or that in Kabul, stablecoins’ reliance on KYC checks excludes 80% of women from the financial system. Media algorithms impose an effective shadow ban by simply not reporting on parts of the world deemed “not of interest” to the West, exacerbating this disconnect.
To those shaping the narrative: Look beyond your banking app. Ask yourself why Nigerian P2P bitcoin volume dwarfs France’s, or why Afghan refugees memorize seed phrases instead of trusting Tether. The first-hand accounts are these. So is the data that shows these stories are not anomalies but rather evidence of Bitcoin uniquely meeting a pressing need to a huge user community in a way stablecoins cannot. Stablecoins and altcoins innovate within systems that have already failed the Global South. Bitcoin exists outside them. Better conclusions begin with curiosity, not assumptions. Bitcoin’s value isn’t in replacing stablecoins — it’s in doing what they fundamentally cannot do.
Let’s stop projecting our realities onto theirs and start listening.