What I meant is: The crypto space lacking regulation doesn't imply a claim that other currency systems don't also lack regulation in some form, nor that regulation is necessarily effective in either case. Stross didn't say regulation is perfect, he said it arose for a reason.

Stross' original statement is about regulation of traditional systems having historic drivers the crypto community had yet to re-discover, in his opinion, either in terms of broad awareness or appreciation. Challenging that would be fine (and interesting); saying "so what if it's bad? this other thing is also bad", though ...

FWIW, I think he's both right and wrong. I think there was a subset of the crypto community (and it likely strongly correlates with the productive one) aware of and actively rejecting a lot of history, but also a larger majority swept up in the hype without awareness of that information.