An address could be kept anonymous with good op-sec. If you know that your actions are going to attract the ire of some people with guns, you will practise op-sec.
Well, what's wrong with cash?
- Uncensorability
Well, what's wrong with cash?
- Irreversibility
Well, what's wrong with cash?
Except for the fact that cash is issued by the "evil" government your points provide zero reasons why I should prefer crypto "currencies" over cash.
And that's a purely ideological stance.
-Privacy: See the recent example where the state sponsored espionage involving sophisticated hackers had their activity traced though Bitcoin's blocktchain transaction log.
Even Monero's XMR is prone to statistical analysis to unmask users:
https://content.sciendo.com/view/journals/popets/2018/3/arti...
https://www.wired.com/story/monero-privacy/
A more serious question will be what happens when the laws catch up with users using a system designed for money laundering, tax evasion, and enabling black markets?
-Uncensorability
The software which enables blockchains and proof of work is susceptible to attacks by motivated state level attackers, so far only smaller blockchains have been targeted (presumably by rival groups with expendable mining resources).
A much easier censorship attack occurs at lower network levels.
One important point: if we actually include all 7 billion
people on the earth, most of whom have zero BTC or
Ethereum, the Gini coefficient is essentially 0.99+. And
if we just include all balances, we include many dust
balances which would again put the Gini coefficient at
0.99+. Thus, we need some kind of threshold here. The
imperfect threshold we picked was the Gini coefficient
among accounts with ≥185 BTC per address, and ≥2477 ETH
per address. So this is the distribution of ownership
among the Bitcoin and Ethereum rich with $500k as of July
2017.
In what kind of situation would a thresholded metric like
this be interesting? Perhaps in a scenario similar to the
ongoing IRS Coinbase issue, where the IRS is seeking
information on all holders with balances >$20,000.
Conceptualized in terms of an attack, a high Gini
coefficient would mean that a government would only need
to round up a few large holders in order to acquire a
large percentage of outstanding cryptocurrency — and with
it the ability to tank the price.
With that said, two points. First, while one would not
want a Gini coefficient of exactly 1.0 for BTC or ETH (as
then only one person would have all of the digital
currency, and no one would have an incentive to help boost
the network), in practice it appears that a very high
level of wealth centralization is still compatible with
the operation of a decentralized protocol. Second, as we
show below, we think the Nakamoto coefficient is a better
metric than the Gini coefficient for measuring holder
concentration in particular as it obviates the issue of
arbitrarily choosing a threshold.
...However, the maximum Gini coefficient has one obvious
issue: while a high value tracks with our intuitive notion
of a “more centralized” system, the fact that each Gini
coefficient is restricted to a 0–1 scale means that it
does not directly measure the number of individuals or
entities required to compromise a system.
Specifically, for a given blockchain suppose you have a
subsystem of exchanges with 1000 actors with a Gini
coefficient of 0.8, and another subsystem of 10 miners
with a Gini coefficient of 0.7. It may turn out that
compromising only 3 miners rather than 57 exchanges may be
sufficient to compromise this system, which would mean the
maximum Gini coefficient would have pointed to exchanges
rather than miners as the decentralization bottleneck.
Conversely, if one considers “number of distinct countries
with substantial mining capacity” an essential subsystem,
then the minimum Nakamoto coefficient for Bitcoin would
again be 1, as the compromise of China (in the sense of a
Chinese government crackdown on mining) would result in
>51% of mining being compromised.
Again, PoW is not immune to "Irreversibility" it actually constantly has a known attack surface for reversing transactions and double spending. The only thing preventing it is so far no only a limited amount of attacks on smaller blockchains have taken place.
- Uncensorability. I can pay whoever I want whatever I want, with no third party able to insert themselves between me and the recipient (or dictate who can send or receive money) for any purpose.
- Irreversibility. Yes, often held up as a weakness, but has its uses. Not all transactions are physical merchandise where a third party enforcing refunds is useful.