Then why have almost all authoritarian governments banned Bitcoin?
> If you can enforce the currency you can enforce wealth inequality and entrenchment of incumbents.
That's the whole point. No one can control Bitcoin which is why it's not appealing to authoritarians. Authoritarians don't like things they can't have authority over.
Showing authoritarian governments don’t like Bitcoin doesn’t help. Western conservatives and CCP’s social views are very similar. Yet they despise one another. Of course. Authoritarians want to be the ones in control. Why would they like other authoritarians?
Second, "Bitcoin being high value to authoritarians" is another way of saying that authoritarians like Bitcoin. There's a lot of evidence that they don't, and for good reason: they can't control it.
The opposite of authoritarianism is anarchism. Anarchism and libertarians are not the same thing. One is hard left, the other is hard right. They can’t both be the opposite of authoritarianism.
Libertarians want to be the ones in power. Being in power is something authoritarians enjoy too. I already responded to the authoritarians not liking something does not mean anything about their principles or beliefs.
For actual products bitcoin (and blockchains like Ethereum with EVM) are the fundamental enabling layer. I like to think of them somewhat akin to TCP/IP or even HTTP. Where are the higher layer applications and use cases built on blockchain with instant and obvious utility to the average person walking down the street? This is what I was getting at with the decade plus of development and billions of dollars of investment.
The internet was a fundamental threat to all kinds of institutions - governments with censorship, big media (including state run), and even financial institutions. The internet provided instant untold value for democracy and free speech. Just widespread and instantly available encryption itself was a HUGE problem and threat to governments, law enforcement, militaries, intelligence agencies, etc. Remember the Clipper Chip "debate" and 40 bit encryption export controls? I do.
Yet the obvious value and utility was so clear even governments like China (with the Great Firewall) knew it was of such incredible value to the economy and clamored for by the citizenry they figured out a way to make it work within their system of government. Inside of a decade billions of people were using the internet to further democracy, free speech, and the dissemination of information.