> with slow transactions

How are bitcoin transactions slow? Bank transfers and credit card payments take forever to settle.

Bank settlement is basically instant in Europe

So? It’s not instant for most of the world.

And cash is instant everywhere.

True, but "illegal" is dependant on the nation it is relevant to, as an international currency legality is relative. Another way of seeing this: the benefits of global government / infrastructure without the need for global control - few nations are so democratically representative that the tax laws well represent the wills of the people.

Also true - but you might call that a separate problem, and one for which the solution is very unlikely to be "no government at all". Bitcoin takes currency permanently out of the purview of all forms of organized governance, barring unreasonable invasion of privacy. All of us now have to live in that world, and none of us were consulted - Satoshi didn't take a vote. That is far less democratic. Deliberately and unilaterally undermining our organized institutions - flawed as they are - is, if not illegal, then certainly antisocial.

Of course, you could say all the same things about e2e encryption, which society seems to have decided - grudgingly, and with much pushback - is ultimately a good thing. But perhaps free speech and financial exchange are different animals, McCutcheon vs. the Federal Election Commission notwithstanding.

> All of us now have to live in that world, and none of us were consulted

No one consulted me wrt the existence of other nations (outside my own) and their laws either, I'm not sure democracy needs to extend globally for all things.

To some degree, I think the "more/less democratic" argument is a little "whataboutism: individual freedoms are the goal of democracy, not the other way around, and btc/e2e are a form of power and civil disobedience that might help get them.

> undermining our organized institutions

Many of those institutions are private banks - they are not "mine", even though they get bailed out by tax money on occasion. Is it antisocial to be antisocial towards antisocial institutions?

> you could say all the same things about e2e encryption

You could, and the reason is a terrible record globally wrt privacy rights. I don't consider it a matter of free speech - free speech (to me) is primarily about what you can say/promote in public, privacy (to me) is about what you can keep private.