The specific case I read about was someone escaping the Russian occupied areas of Ukraine this way: https://www.forbes.com/sites/tatianakoffman/2020/06/13/why-b...
It’s also more common in countries with bad currencies and limited access to USD (Venezuela).
You’re right it’s not perfect, but it gives more power to individuals than the alternatives. It’s also possible something like Zcash could allow individuals to transact despite an all seeing panopticon, but I don’t know how that works well enough to have a strong opinion.
Or in fact, any financial law by any government. And yet if you say a major application of crypto is crime everyone gets all hurt...
That being said, most studies point to the conclusion that the major application of Bitcoin at least is not crime:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/haileylennon/2021/01/19/the-fal...
https://cryptoforinnovation.org/resources/Analysis_of_Bitcoi... (by Michael Morell, former Acting Director, Deputy Director and Director of Intelligence at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA))
Indeed. By regulating the transparent cryptocurrencies and banning privacy coins from exchanges like Monero and MobileCoin which is how the criminals and scammers cash out their ransomware money into fiat currencies.
Governments can trivially prevent this if they wanted to. Bringing your wallet along will be of no use if nobody dares to transact with you because they themselves will then need to explain the source of their newfound wealth.
The current ability of crypto to (sometimes) escape government oversight is temporary and only exists because it's currently a rounding error in the grand scheme of things, but I can guarantee you it will be cracked down on.