Using fiat dollars, even digital, is a PITA.  Tether is much more fluid.  The reason is banks are doing all this KYC & anti- unauthorized money laundering crap and that's discouraging people from using traditional payment methods.  Where I am, if you get more than $5k in deposits per month, the bank wants to know what you're doing and where the funds are coming from, so the solution, if you don't want to be hassled about it (and no one does) is to not have more that that deposited in a single month at any one bank.  So banks are losing retail business.  

Maybe you should post an article about that.

THE EU JUST FIRED A €120 MILLION WARNING AT X - AND IT BACKFIRED IMMEDIATELY The European Commission has finally done what it has been threatening for nearly 2 years: It slapped Elon’s X with a €120 million fine - the first-ever punishment under the Digital Services Act. Officially, Brussels says this is about “transparency,” “interface design,” and “research access.” Unofficially, everyone knows what this is really about: Europe wants control over online speech, and X refuses to play hall monitor for the EU bureaucracy. And Washington just noticed. did what any hero would have done. The man didn’t bother with diplomatic phrasing. He called it exactly what it is: “A fine for not engaging in censorship. The EU should be supporting free speech, not attacking American companies over garbage.” ’s response? 2 words: “Much appreciated.” That exchange matters, because it crystallizes the growing fracture between Washington and Brussels on digital governance. The EU sees the internet as an environment to police. The U.S. - at least the current White House - sees speech as something to protect. This is not a small disagreement. It goes to the core of whose values define the next century of the web. Europe insists this isn’t censorship... but its actions tell a different story. The Commission says X is being punished for deceptive design and insufficient transparency in its ad library. Yet TikTok - whose data practices have triggered national-security alarms in half the Western world - walked away with no fine, simply by promising to tweak its interface. The message is unmistakable: Comply with EU speech rules? No problem. Challenge Brussels’ narrative control? Prepare your checkbook. For a bloc obsessed with “tech sovereignty,” this is an extraordinary way to demonstrate insecurity. U.S. officials have been warning for months that the DSA drifts into censorship. Now Europe has handed them Exhibit A. Expect renewed U.S. pressure in trade talks, increased scrutiny of EU regulatory bias, more aggressive defenses of American platforms, and faster tech decoupling between Washington and Brussels. For Europe, a deeper question looms: Is the DSA protecting citizens - or protecting political power? The ugly truth: Europe risks regulating itself into irrelevance. While Brussels plays digital sheriff, its startups collapse under compliance costs. Its industrial base is shrinking. Its demographic crisis accelerates. Its dependence on U.S. security grows... And its contribution to global innovation keeps sliding. Meanwhile, the platforms it tries to bully - X, Google, Apple, Meta, Amazon - remain overwhelmingly American. Europe is fighting for control over an ecosystem it did not build, does not direct, and increasingly cannot influence without threats and fines. That is not sovereignty. It is dependency dressed up as policy. The bigger fight isn’t about X. It’s about the future of the open internet. What happens next will set the tone for years: If the EU gets away with punishing platforms for “non-compliance,” regulation becomes a weapon. If the U.S. pushes back effectively, free speech stays the default norm for the democratic world. Right now, Brussels is betting that tech giants will bend. But X just became the first major test case that refuses to kneel. Europe wanted to send a message. Instead, it started a transatlantic fight - and exposed its own anxieties in the process.