You hit the nail on the head with the “out of government control” line. As has been shown by some political polling done on LW, a good chunk of rationalists (full disclosure, myself included) have libertarian leanings. We regard the government’s ability to control transactions and the money supply as a huge liability. I wish I shared your optimism about our ability to “vote out” governments who do a bad job of money management and use their control of the monetary system to enforce unjust laws, inflate the money supply to prop up spending on unjust wars or all kinds of other nefarious purposes, but so far, the track record hasn’t been great. “Mostly useful for criminal activity” is an overstatement—it’s very useful for, say, transferring money around the world with far less fees and hassle than traditional methods like wire transfers at a bank—but it is pretty good for criminal activity, and that’s not a bug, that’s a feature. If there’s something that you want to purchase that the government has deemed a crime for reasons you consider bad or unjust, whether it’s medicines for abortion or birth control, firearm components, or recreational psychadelic drugs, cryptocurrency can enable you to do that and reduce your risk of said unjust laws being enforced on you.
You hit the nail on the head with the “out of government control” line. As has been shown by some political polling done on LW, a good chunk of rationalists (full disclosure, myself included) have libertarian leanings. We regard the government’s ability to control transactions and the money supply as a huge liability. I wish I shared your optimism about our ability to “vote out” governments who do a bad job of money management and use their control of the monetary system to enforce unjust laws, inflate the money supply to prop up spending on unjust wars or all kinds of other nefarious purposes, but so far, the track record hasn’t been great. “Mostly useful for criminal activity” is an overstatement—it’s very useful for, say, transferring money around the world with far less fees and hassle than traditional methods like wire transfers at a bank—but it is pretty good for criminal activity, and that’s not a bug, that’s a feature. If there’s something that you want to purchase that the government has deemed a crime for reasons you consider bad or unjust, whether it’s medicines for abortion or birth control, firearm components, or recreational psychadelic drugs, cryptocurrency can enable you to do that and reduce your risk of said unjust laws being enforced on you.