True! But then again, some arguments lend themselves to inconsistent application, usually because they aren't precise enough.

What I'm getting at (albeit awkwardly), is that I wish your argument included some notion of threshold. At what point do you consider the potential for misuse to be so extreme that the technology should be banned? If you don't address this point, you sound unreasonable to many.

The point I meant to address here, is that Bitcoin is incidental to this crime. The criminals stole data and blackmailed people. Bitcoin didn't do that. If Bitcoin didn't exist, criminals would still steal data and blackmail people. Blackmail existed long before Bitcoin. Perhaps it's marginally easier because of Bitcoin, although accepting your payment for crimes via a system where all transactions are public record doesn't seem that smart to me, but whatever.

Banning things doesn't stop criminals from using them. It doesn't even stop many otherwise law-abiding people. Many of the people who support banning guns are able to recognize that banning drugs doesn't stop people from using drugs and banning abortions doesn't stop people from getting abortions, so why should banning guns stop shootings?

If you want to stop people from doing something, you need to figure out why they're doing it and remove the reason that causes them to do it. The existence of guns doesn't cause people to shoot up schools. Likewise the existence of Bitcoin doesn't cause people to blackmail. If it's not the cause, then removing it can't remove the effect.

> If it's not the cause, then removing it can't remove the effect.

You’re confusing “root cause” with “causal”. Guns do “cause” murder insofar as they facilitate the act of killing. The same argument can be made for Bitcoin facilitating blackmail.

Whether or not banning either technology is a worthwhile trade off is debatable, but an effectively enforced ban is unambiguously effective.

Facilitating is not causing. These are two different things.

Just about any object can facilitate the act of killing. A car, a bowling ball, a swimming pool. Do these things cause murders too? That's not how causation works.

A car can facilitate going to the store. Does the car cause you to go to the store? Of course not. You go to buy the thing you needed. The car is just a means.

Facilitation is literally a mediator or moderator in an effect. It is not a root cause, but it is part of the causal chain. As such, acting upon it can reduce the effect.

Simply put: an effective crackdown on guns, cars, snowballs, scissors, and Bitcoin can absolutely reduce the associated downsides. The question isn’t “is it effective”. The question is “is it worth it”.

The question is absolutely "is it effective". There's a reason we do root-cause analysis and five-whys exercises. If the source of the problem is not corrected, the problem does not go away.

If your basement is flooding from a burst pipe, maybe you can "reduce the associated downsides" by bailing it out. This doesn't fix the problem though, does it? You're actually prolonging and exacerbating the issue by not turning off the water from the source.

Temporary band-aids that address the symptom rather than the disease are not effective in the long run. They also often come with secondary effects and unintended consequences that create additional problems.