But as a solution for the institutional failures it still is not a replacement and obviously the solution in Venezuela needs to be repairing the system.
Same with Sci-Hub in this case. The Bitcoin donations alleviate financial pressure somewhat, but of course the lawsuits and IP-infringement will still haunt everyone involved.
From that premise that the probem is universal, the deduction that the solution is also not just a temporary fix seems like the only reasonably conclusiont to me.
I'm not completely sure whether you're arguing that the bitcoin hype will pass once we've sorted out a few problems, or just that it'd be a nicer world if that could ever be the case; but either way, I don't think cryptocurrencies should be a last resort but instead become the norm. Offense is the best defense, after all.
In fact people like leaders so much that exposed to a capricious and cruel world they'll invent imaginary and often cruel ones just to give the world a sense of order. Think the old testament God or lizard people conspiracy theories.
Given we're going to huge groups of people running around following leaders I think our best effort is spent trying to make the selection of those leaders pick non-evil people who run vaguely meritocratic and fair systems. Rather than trying to engineer ideal de-centralized systems _which will also have to be robust against the mob following their evil leaders.
Obviously this is a false dichotomy and we can do both, but please don't give up on good leadership, people need it and there's plenty of examples of it exiting.
What I don't understand is why people don't then just use one of the literally thousands of other currencies -- most of which handle small transactions just fine.
For small transfers I use DogeCoin and the fee is 0.2 cents.
If anything, the crash last March has proven that BTC is not a safe asset and not immune from a global financial meltdown. Other way around - its very sensitive to it actually.
In the old days, the very point of a savings account is that it keeps the value stable, and pays interest on top. The more long term you save, the higher the interest. Compounded.
The point you seems to be missing, that the system cannot be repaired in a day and people need to eat, while they doing the repair.
I suspect donations are used mostly to keep the lights on.
I don't doubt for a small handful of people who got their hands on some BTC they individually are better off. That doesn't change the fact it's not a reasonable solution at scale.
I don't think one can call PayPal an institution. As for an ability to transact - I don't see why shouldn't we replace institutions that prevent us from transacting.
Failing business models of Elsevier and likes are a problem of their shareholders. I, personally, want them crushed.
Reasonable solutions at the margins tend to be adapted in some major way by the masses in time, like bottleneck microstates can end up driving steady state long term behaviors of systems in glassy dynamics… technical solutions to make lawsuits and IP-infrignment have no teeth are being adopted more everyday but not as fast as some would like.