This is a common retort used by crypto proponents (of which I am one). It overlooks, however, that is it much, much, much easier to do large-scale financial crime using cryptocurrencies than it is to do so with USD due to the intense and robust controls applied to USD for precisely that purpose.

One need only look at the rapid rise of cryptocurrencies in criminal enterprises over the last 10 years or so to see the truth in that.

Well, USD has many other (legal) uses. I have yet to see a legal use for Bitcoin that was not better served by cash or traditional banking.

I have been saving in bitcoin since I understood it, and people who tell me bitcoin has no use simply make no sense to me. My purchasing power goes up in the long term, and much more than theirs even if they "invest" with traditional banking.

Ah, my apologies. You're right, financial speculation is also a prime use case for cryptocurrencies.

Personally I'm also against it, but you're correct that it's a legal use case.

It’s because we were promised cheap, fast, and decentralized and got the opposite.

It’s expensive as hell to use crypto to move money. It’s very slow, and I’m forced to use centralized coin exchanges which destroy the original decentralized nature of the currencies.

Why should we be excited about a product that is the opposite of what it sets out to do?

You want what was promised, but you use it in the way that's prescribed by the state, that's your failure. Besides, why do people keep pretending like lightning doesn't exist..

You can use Lightning. I agree its main promise is still in the works, but the digital gold thing is also a feature.

I find a good use in it via making legal, but otherwise “high risk” transactions traditional financial institutions either don’t touch or make very difficult to engage in.

Much easier for me to send a small amount of crypto to a VPN provider, or a custom parts supplier in a “strange” country where Visa/MC/bank wires are a huge hassle if available at all.

It’s not a huge use case, but it removes a ton of unnecessary friction from transactions traditional banking left behind as deemed “not worth the hassle” to them.

Or as I describe it: Digital cash. I don’t need the flea market vendor to need to be vetted by some financial provider to sell me their 3d printed parts collection.

Cross-border remittances is one. Making donations to organizations that are being actively persecuted/censored by the state is another.

Sometimes that's the right thing to do, but none of those examples sound legal.

Donating to Wikileaks is entirely legal. The blockade undertaken by Visa and MC at the behest of the USG was extralegal; there were no charges against anyone at the time.

Even had there been charges, donating would still have been legal.

Furthermore, your criterion was “not better served”; please don’t move the goalposts.

Remittances and cross-border donations are way better served by cryptocurrencies than any other mechanism, full stop. It’s faster, cheaper, and way more reliable than any other method.

Cross border remittances are not legal?

Of course it can be legal, but if someone is using cryotocurrencies for this purpose then they're probably skipping some necessary steps.

They could also just really like cryptocurrencies, but that's not a point in favor of the technology.

The only “necessary step” is sending the money. All of the other steps artificially imposed upon cross-border transfers in tradfi are unnecessary.

Maybe they don't like the high fees of the traditional financial system

The fees come from fulfilling legal requirements like detection of money laundering and terrorism financing, and also customer security features like fraud detection and multi-factor authentication.

There are fintechs for customers who want lower fees and don't need e.g. physical branches or phone support. That's perfectly fine.

But a fintech that didn't perform KYC would be shut down pretty quickly by the police, so there's a floor on how low fees can be while remaining legal.

Congrats, you went from it's not legal, to it's irrational, to it's more competitive because of government regulation, you've made progress.

> more competitive because of government regulation

That's the same as "not legal".

But I agree that it's still a useful technology, because the moral argument sometimes trumps the legal one. If a north korean defector uses Bitcoin to exfiltrate their life savings, I don't think anybody will complain how it was technically illegal under North Korea's law.