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Bitcoin is yesterday but look at Ethereum. You can now trade dollar backed tokens issued by fully regulated banks for the cost of an Ethereum transaction. This lets you use smart contracts backed by US dollars, or write contracts to trade US dollars for other currencies. The writing is on the wall, more regulated tokens are on the way. Public stocks to municipal bonds. Why wouldn't people want to cut out the middle man?

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If these tokens are truly regulated by the state and the ledger is editable by the courts, then there's nothing decentralized about it and it provides no advantages over the current system. All of this talk about decentralization and cutting out the middleman is a mirage.

Decentralized isn’t a binary. The courts can’t edit the blockchain but a federation of private keys can. It still allows an alternative to transferring money without Visa or PayPal.

If the courts cannot control it then they will not recognize it as a source of truth. It's very binary.

> Why wouldn't people want to cut out the middle man?

Who exactly am I cutting out when I'm trading USD-backed currency via a smart contract owned by a company?

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