Bitcoin, bästa argument för och emot

A pharmacist by training, Younes soon strayed from tracking price charts and instead became engrossed by the economic theory underpinning digital currencies like bitcoin.

As he continued his studies, he noticed a lot of similarities between Lebanon, Venezuela, and Argentina.

“I panicked and withdrew all my money from the bank,” said Younes, who added that he emptied his account in mid-2019 — just a couple months before banks locked people out of their accounts. “I was paranoid thanks to bitcoin.”

Younes tells CNBC that he initially moved 15% of his money into bitcoin, and he kept the remaining balance in cash. Today, 70% of his cash is in bitcoin.

“I was actually telling everyone to do the same in my family, like, please try to withdraw some money, and don’t keep it in the bank,” said Younes.

“But no one really believes a pharmacist — a person who is not related to our banking system,” said Younes.

Younes, who was born in Poland but moved to Lebanon with his family in 1998, tells CNBC that most of his family works in the banking system in Lebanon.

“They always believe that everything is fine with the banking system, so you get this confidence that everything is alright,” he said.

Within months, his family was wiped out.

His father-in-law, who is 75 years old and retired years ago, had safeguarded his entire net worth in the bank.

“My family, like every single family member in Lebanon, got really hurt by the whole devaluation and currency crisis,” said Younes.

Multiple sources tell CNBC that people across the country are afraid to put their money in the banks or store it in cash at home because of the risk of theft.

More tech-savvy users sometimes cut out the middleman and hold their crypto cash on personally owned hardware wallets. Gebrael, for example, prefers the autonomy and security that he derives from self-custody of his bitcoin. He tells CNBC that he keeps all of his bitcoin in cold storage on a thumb drive-sized device called a Trezor hardware wallet.

Beyond the added security of holding his own keys and disconnecting his wallet from the internet, Gebrael says the appeal of cold storage has a lot to do with the fact that he doesn’t have to connect his personal identity to his bitcoin. He added that the anonymity offered by self-custody helps protect him from being caught in the crosshairs of government-issued sanctions. Gebrael cited the example of the Canadian government blacklisting all crypto exchange wallets connected to the truckers participating in the ‘Freedom Convoy’ protests.