i watched the decline in bulgaria over the period from 2013 to 2020. everything went downhill. the most startling example was banking. when i arrived in 2013, i was able to open an account with Fibank just with my dutch passport, and the bank nearby was open 10am to 10pm 7 days a week. they were great. by 2015, it started to be a hassle when i needed an account for a fiatmine job at an outsource app call center, and then i was able to renew it in 2018 when i moved to Belovo from Sofia, and then... i am back there, in Varna, and i felt like i was talking to a soviet state bureaucrat trying to reopen the account for the new job i had then. i gave up. ended up signing up with a neobank based in Varna for my pay.

most fun thing was in 2021 that same bank i first opened an account with, Fibank, their ATM was rigged up so it gives the money before the card, i was in a hurry to go across the road to sort out my residence permit, and realise half an hour later i forgot to pull the card. oopsie. bank is holding it hostage demanding the card issuer verify that i was the owner.

that account had 500 euro worth of ethereum in it, and the helpdesk (wirex) refused to sort me out with at least giving me back my goddamn shitcoins.

i should have never used that card, but i also tried with binance and that card literally got sniped by a dozen hackers before i even first used it, and poof 300 euros worth of btc gone, before i was able to lock the card up.

anyway, sorta going sideways with talking about european banking standards but it was the most obvious and first thing that went to shit in bulgaria. branches were closing up, service quality declined rapidly...

i even opened up a business account with the tax for a remote job later in 2021 and that ended up being a load of bullshit with me not needing it and them demanding 800 euros to close up the account and they never refunded one brown stotinki of my due tax refunds for business expenses.

let's just say that after that, i have pretty much mostly stayed out of government offices and had as little to do with taxation as possible since then. thankfully xapo bank, being established in a pseudo-UK offshore tax haven, have served me well in the meantime but man have the banking cartel obstructed in every possible way the adoption of bitcoin. they are the biggest reason why adoption isn't happening faster, because they know that their business model is dead in the water, they are just rearranging the deckchairs while they pretend that people are not completely fed up with their monopoly fascist arrangements with government.