I don't disagree about weighing pros and cons, of course. But I think that bitcoin advocates would argue that the bitcoin has the same "non-infringing uses that benefit people" and that it's simply a matter of time/popularity until the proportion of "good" uses vs. "bad" uses is similar to the dollar.

Not saying that it's true, necessarily. Just that the current balance isn't the end game and it's not totally fair to criticize a brand new tech/tool/whatever against well-established and well-optimized status quo.

>But I think that bitcoin advocates would argue that the bitcoin has the same "non-infringing uses that benefit people"

I think it would be difficult to argue that it's useful primarily for buying your groceries.

I don't think Bitcoin advocates like following this train of thought any further than "USD is also used for crime".

My point is that the true believers do want to eventually buy groceries with cryptocurrency.

My point is that this conversation is unfair:

Person A: I've just invented a new currency! I think it has better intrinsic properties than USD.

Person B: Well, I can't buy groceries with it right now, so it sucks.

Similar vein:

Person A: I've invented a new thing called the lightbulb. I think it will revolutionize lighting.

Person B: It's more expensive than oil lamps and electrifying buildings would be a massive undertaking. Lightbulbs suck.

If lightbulbs were primarily used for buying opium and running scams on widows in the 19th century I could well understand there being some pushback on the whole idea.

As it was, they were primarily used for lighting rooms from the getgo.

I imagine some historian could probably dig up some sort of analog from 100+ years ago (possibly on tech that never did take off) but this isn't it.

I never owned any BTC. I wouldn't put all of my savings into BTC, but it would be useful for (semi-/sometimes-) anonymous transactions. That makes it better than credit cards, checks, or cash because it can't be CC skimmed or physically robbed.

I would like to buy groceries with it, but I don't want to hold much BTC for very long.

I don't find that they do.

The things that make cash useful for money laundering and black market purchases also make it easy for me to quickly, and without unnecessary ceremony, drop a few dollars in a tip jar, give some money to a panhandler, split the bill at a restaurant, chip in to an office gift pool, pay my kids an allowance, envelope budget, buy ice cream from an ice cream truck, etc. etc. etc.

Bitcoin in particular fails miserably at these sorts of use cases because nobody wants to sit around waiting 10 minutes for a transaction to confirm over a $2 soft serve.

Crypto in general fail because they're complicated and fiddly to work with. This creates way, way too much friction these sorts of casual transactions, and effectively shuts out people who aren't technically sophisticated enough to feel comfortable messing around with this stuff.

That isn't to say that crypto doesn't work as a store of wealth. But, as a circulating, everyday currency, it seems to be stuck in the same situation that Linux on the Desktop has been for the past couple decades: for a variety of reasons, some of them very good and no real fault of its own, per se, the community just doesn't seem to be capable of sorting out the UX.

Monetary value and its instruments are amoral. They're neither good nor bad, so "weighing" their uses would be entirely unfair. The demonetization in India was a perfect example of moralizing currency instruments. (The IMF loved it because of the resale of data from digitizing transactions and India loved it for tracking people's financial habits. Modi loved it because it punished poor people.)

If you're trying to ban cash because you can buy illegal things with it, then you have a logic problem.

Now imagine comparing child pornography (and other things) in mediums before the internet and after. These comparisons are not useful for exponential, paradigm changing technology.

Child pornography was never a significant use of the Internet.

Facilitating CP wasn't the intent behind the internet, but there is significant use, at least if you believe the government when they're trying to justify new regulations.

The same thing holds for BTC and illicit transactions.

But if we weigh up pro- and con- Bitcoin is pretty solidly pro. Having a government-resistant unit of exchange was one of the things keeping Wikileaks alive for example.

All the negative stuff was going to happen anyway - including energy waste. Humans waste a lot of energy. Wikileaks on the other hand would have folded like an origami in any pre-cryptocurrency era.

This is the sort of press freedom that humanity has been longing for since ... I don't know. The birth of the press. It is really hard to financially abuse the truth out of conversation now. Which is part of why the blowback is so panicked.

Edit for spite: "contrary to the interest of civilisation" is the sound of a wealthy man who is friends with wealthy men who are terrified of what an organisation like Wikileaks could uncover.

That is the thing, many people do not believe having anything "government-resistant" is good, as they believe government is good, thus if something is resistant to government it must be bad.

If anything the last 2 years has shown me how fragile freedom is, and how much people are willing to give up freedom for safety and security. Sadly people like you and me that see Government as something that should be controlled and feared are in the minority as most people view government as the solution to all their problems, and as their moral compass.