“Nothing to worry about if you’ve got nothing to hide” goes back even further than 2012.

That has absolutely nothing to do with what I'm saying. What I am saying is that cryptocurrencies are so horrible in every way except anonymity that the ONLY reason you would use it is for illegal activities, speculation, or paranoia.

i personally use it as a passive, diversified savings instrument, but i don't mess with altcoins or trading. most crypto is actually exceptionally bad for anonymity, worse than cash, and the proportion of criminal activity it facilitates is 1-2 orders of magnitude lower than the conventional economy: https://www.forbes.com/sites/haileylennon/2021/01/19/the-fal...

it is in fact so bad for anonymity that i suspect you have not read much about it!

i don't disagree that it features a lot of hype bubbles and ridiculous speculation, but that's hardly specific to cryptocurrency. how's your local housing market been looking lately?

It isn’t even that good at anonymity for the most frequent use case compared to alternatives. By far the most transactions that may benefit anonymity are local and involve relatively low values. Cash is a perfect fit for that and gives you even more (and a lot easier) anonymity then cryptocoins.

Cryptocoins only prove them selfs superior if the transaction is located to far away to conveniently travel, or involves such large sums that gathering or carrying as cash becomes inconvenient (or impossible). I would think that over 99.99% of people never engage in such transactions where they additionally require—or even prefer—anonymity.

s/cryptocurrencies/encrypted communcation

And does the mainstream crypto outside Monero help you to hide things? You are still dealing with some actors and surely they keep records if you don't solely do face to face activities. In which case why even bother and not just go with Euros or dollars...

this is the exact same argument as politicians saying that encryption is only useful for child pornographers

I thought this too, but then looked into and saw that fiat currency use for illicit things is an order of magnitude more then crypto (as a percentage of total use).

zero knowledge proofs have other uses, for example proving to your family members no-one has bought the same gift for the same person, without revealing the nature of the gift.