Agreed. This is still a strawman even if the majority of on chain transactions were one hop associated to verified addresses from darknet markets.

Another punny point: drug dealers that are following the Ten Crack Commandments[0] shouldn't be frequent users.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Crack_Commandments#:~:text....

The main use is speculation not a store of value. If BTC would counter inflation and keep its value (equal purchase power) even with high volatility no one would care about it. It would still be worth single digit dollar or more likely it would have died a few years after it went online. People buy BTC because they want to sell for significant more to a later time.

Chainalysis does have a superior brand recognition for this kind of analysis work, and have been used while conducting criminal investigations, e.g.

But, no, they don't. They qualify it here as "Known illicit BTC".