Nick Szabo  🔑

I should think this would be so only if censorship avoidance is indeed a particularly widespread, if not universal, consumer preference.

Political reality doesn't care about consumer preferences.

Of course you are right that a digital currency cannot survive if gov'ts determine to wipe it out, and can do so.

Antifa will influence payment processors.

They and a far greater number of many otherwise like-minded people who normally stop short of violence but are perfectly willing to using digitally centralized finance to destroy their political enemies' livelihoods.

People make the mistake thinking that censorship-resistant payments are only about the product being purchased. "Who would censor buying coffee". But censorship resistance is also about the individual or organization doing the purchasing.

Indeed, it is increasingly common to see financial censorship based on the professed beliefs of the individual or organization. As I'm using it here censorship resistance is also about the reliable operation and indeed the very survival of the payment or settlement system itself.

Sorry, Nick. I'm confused. What is "censorship" in this context? What distinguishes it from mere refusal of patronage? Let's say I or my firm has a philosophical aversion to some currency, and refuse to do business with anyone who offers it to me. Would that count?

Yes. "Censorship resistance" is an engineering term, in which "censorship" refers among other things to the ability of a payment or settlement service to discriminate in such a fashion, whether based on third party pressure or coercion or of its own volition.