A little talked about, and perhaps unpopular, Bitcoin usecase: evading sanctions and trade barriers Whether we agree with the ideology of the sanctioned nation or not, its undoubtedly a usecase. Sanctions don't just hurt governments, they hurt the people in that country who may disagree with their government. In particularly, sanctions have hit the people of Afghanistan, Iran, Venuzuela, Russia hard. People in Afghanistan has already used Bitcoin to avoid the economic hardship caused by sanctions, where a lot of humanitarian aid flows through Bitcoin. NGOs like Code to Inspire bypassed Taliban banking freezes, and Digital Citizen Fund have used Bitcoin to deliver aid post-Taliban takeover, preventing families from starving. source: https://theintercept.com/2022/01/19/crypto-afghanistan-sanctions-taliban/ Afghanistan’s “Code to Inspire” NGO (see photo) uses Bitcoin donations, which cannot be intercepted by the Taliban, to train women to write software. Then we have the oil-rich sanctioned nations: Iran, Venezuela and Russia have all had restricted USD access due to US sanctions in 1979, 2017 and 2022 respectively. This has caused the export of vastly fewer barrels per day of oil in each case. Iran already evades sanctions by using Bitcoin as a way to effectively “export oil”, whereas Venezuela has used Bitcoin to pay for imports, evading sanctions. source: https://news.bitcoin.com/venezuela-pays-imports-iran-turkey-bitcoin-evade-sanctions/ Iran is also able to bypass sanctions by monetizing its energy exports through mining. source: https://www.elliptic.co/blog/how-iran-uses-bitcoin-mining-to-evade-sanctions This avoids the IMF's "reform-for-cash" ultimatums while keeping economies running. The petrodollar's grip also weakens as Russia and Iran pioneer Bitcoin oil deals. Though Bitcoin’s share of sanctioned trade is small—under 2% for Iran (source: https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/crypto-crime-sanctions-2025/) and Venezuela’s oil exports—the trend is growing.