> For example, illegal transactions, scams and gambling together make up less than 3% of volume.
> We show that the vast majority of Bitcoin transactions between real entities are for trading and speculative purposes. Starting from 2015, 75% of the real bitcoin volume has been linked to exchanges or exchange-like entities such as on-line wallets, OTC desks, and large institutional traders.
So 75% of the transactions are just speculative trading, not transactions for goods or services, which is what is being discussed. Taking the paper's numbers at face value, as a percentage of non-speculative transactions, illicit transactions are 12%, which is quite high.
There are also papers which quantify the amount of illegal activity as high as 46% [1] in 2018.
Illicit activity is still probably the most durable use non-investment use-case for Bitcoin, and realistically will be the most enduring use case going forward.
1. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3102645
But remember that "illicit" also includes sending donations to protestors in Canada when the government froze their bank accounts, or sending payments to dissident organizations that have been blacklisted and denied banking services, etc.
We can also say that the primary use case of signal is "illicit" communication -- that is, attempts to skirt eavesdropping by various government security organizations, and this is why Signal received funding from the U.S. government - it was a device to assist in coordinating anti-government protests in nations the US wanted to oppose. For the same reason, the U.S. Navy created and funded Tor.
So this is a two way street -- the ability to send payments and securely communicate even if your government doesn't want you to do that is great when they are used to support dissidents in nations you oppose, but not so great when they are used for similar purposes at home, or when they are used for organized crime. Just because a technology's primary use case is "Illicit" doesn't mean it's not a valuable or useful technology.
In 2019, forex volume was $6.6T per day [2], or $1716T per year. Meanwhile global GDP was only $87.5T [3]. In other words, almost 95% of global currency volume is speculation. Why would anyone use currencies that are mainly used for speculation?
Both the traditional and crypto economies are reflections of human behavior, but because crypto is more transparent, you can see it for yourself. And a lot of people don't like what they see. But it's not a new problem nor unique to new currencies or technologies.
[1]: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/032916/how-big...
[2]: https://www.financemagnates.com/institutional-forex/executio...
[3]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/268750/global-gross-dome...
Much of that figure are payments for untaxed, but otherwise legal activities. On the other hand, crypto figures are straight up payments for illegal activities.
Much of that trading volume, speculative or not supports the international trade of real goods and services and hedges currency risk for large international companies [1]. The same cannot be said of Bitcoin, which does provide the same utility.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/the-...
I think that remains to be proven and I don't think it's anywhere near certain.
[1] And it's highly likely the CIA is still, in 2022, deeply tied in drug trafficking and drug money laundering.
That is because it is overwhelmingly used for standard non-shady stuff, like trading legal goods and services. Crypto can't make a similar claim.