A bit of a shaky analogy I’ll admit in advance, but drugs are also considered property in the US and that very possession is a crime itself. Possessions viewed by the government as harmful will eventually be legislated away, as you say “a crusade.” But to assume that the US is just going to let crypto walk through and displace the dollar (the pillar of the modern economy - the IMF uses the dollar as its barometer) is just ludicrous. Either crypto will be outright banned or will be mutated through legislation into a centralized currency - the very thing it sought to solve.

> And the rights to own are protected by the constitution.

You don't have a constitutional right to own absolutely anything, though. If you buy grenades, for instance, the state will seize them and imprison you. Someone already mentioned Executive Order 6102, regarding gold.

You can still own it, but businesses can just be banned from accepting payments.

How in the world is the (US government at least) going to stop a business from accepting whatever they want as a form of payment?

how in the world is the US government going to stop restaurants from letting people inside?

In some places they never did.

Slowing the spread of a virus and dictating what people can trade with is an apples to orange comparison. This is not a good rebuttal.

Which means that it isn't treated as a currency.

I could buy a Tesla with Bitcoin, but what good is that if I have to pay capital gains tax for "selling" the Bitcoin even though I didn't actually sell it, I used it?

This treatment of secondary currencies (regular ones included) is not universal across the world.

Because Bitcoin is property just like stock.

That's my point; it's treated as property, not currency, which sucks.

> what good is that if I have to pay capital gains tax

You would (almost) never pay cap gains on cash even if the law required it, because cash goes down in value over time. Everyone knows this, so no one holds cash, they buy stocks, bonds and realestate. When it comes time for the Tesla, they have to sell those assets, pay cap gains, then buy it, just like BTC. If you wanted to avoid cap gains, your only choice is to hold cash, in which case you would have less overall money at the end.

tl;dr: all appreciating assets are encumbered with cap gains, the only way to avoid it is to buy non-appreciating assets, which is worse

This is a compelling argument because what? The US government is incapable of passing new legislation to regulate/outlaw property? An interstate-trading crypto ban would be legal, as far as I can tell.

heroin is considered a property, too, i guess? i'm not in the US, so i'm not sure, but it at least used to not be a good thing to get caught owning heroin.