Oddbean new post about login | logout I was able to travel from Riga to Odesa entirely with Bitcoin, paying for the tickets with Bitcoin directly. Riga → Moldova: AirBaltic accepts Bitcoin with BitPay (ugh). Moldova → Odesa: LikeBus accepts onchain Bitcoin (and other coins) via some Ukrainian payment provider.
Wow. What’s it like being Ukraine at the moment?
Not bad. I just had some excellent sushi on a rooftop restaurant with a great view. During a scheduled power outage because Russia has been trying to destroy the Ukrainian power grid and all generating plants – they launched one of the biggest missile/drone attacks in human history against Ukraine just the other day. This building, and pretty much every other business, has installed generators to compensate. The elevators were even working fine. It's more like being in WW2 Britain than the "war torn" countries you usually think of. Lots of stuff is running, and life is reasonable. But it's only possible because brave men are risking their lives on front lines to continually push Russia back.
Of course, keep in mind that at the front lines, Russia is rather literally turning entire towns into dust with relentless artillery bombardment... And where they have been able to capture areas with people still in them, they rape and murder Ukrainians by the thousands. In Mariupol it's quite possible that as much as 100,000 Ukrainians were killed. Russia is refusing to allow third parties access, and the number of people missing is enormous.
Genuinely curious: why BitPay (ugh)? I’m in Canada. Haven’t come across it despite seeking out btc points of sale. (Also, given the choice, paying in fiat, as in, no upside to keeping that in my leather wallet.)
