>hasn't found many real world uses beyond gambling, drugs, confidence schemes, money laundering, tax evasion, and other financial criminality
Lots of people believe the war on drugs is a stupid, counter-productive endeavour, and indeed empirically there's no evidence of its success. The value on crypto is absolutely in that it gives common people a means to "fight back" against the power of the state and it's never-ending quest to control their private lives.
Most "financial criminality" in practice works out to "anyone doing anything the US government disagrees with", and not everyone believes the US has the right to police how the rest of the world spends its money. Nobody sanctioned the US when it killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in Iraq; do you think that's a fair system?
> Lots of people believe the war on drugs is a stupid
Agree 100%. I must emphasize that the war on drugs is a political problem.
> The value on crypto is absolutely in that it gives common people a means to "fight back" against the power of the state and it's never-ending quest to control their private lives.
Cryptocurrency claims to offer a solution to political problems, but the political problems it creates are worse than the problems it claims to solve: Its very hard to conduct commerce when the value of your money fluctuates widely; and (for drugs) there's no regulations guaranteeing the quality of the product.
I voted to legalize pot 8 years ago, and now I can go to a store and I have plenty of safe products to choose from. I wish I could do the same for psychedelics; and I'm rather sure that the opiate epidemic would be easier to contain if recreational opiates were also guarantied quality.
Cryptocurrency (and drug markets hidden on Tor) aren't going to solve what really is a political problem.
> The value on crypto is absolutely in that it gives common people a means to "fight back" against the power of the state and it's never-ending quest to control their private lives.
The cost of that bit of freedom being that it funnels all of their meager savings to the top of the pyramid, making a few very wealthy people even more so.
Lots of people believe the war on drugs is a stupid, counter-productive endeavour, and indeed empirically there's no evidence of its success. The value on crypto is absolutely in that it gives common people a means to "fight back" against the power of the state and it's never-ending quest to control their private lives.
Most "financial criminality" in practice works out to "anyone doing anything the US government disagrees with", and not everyone believes the US has the right to police how the rest of the world spends its money. Nobody sanctioned the US when it killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in Iraq; do you think that's a fair system?