No, being prosecuted at the whim of the powerful is horrible, but Bitcoin claims to be a kind of technological "escape hatch" from this kind of abuse.

The sooner we find out that it isn't an escape hatch, the better. We can then return to social and political hard work of curbing the powerful, instead of pretending we can just take our cryptocurrencies and escape.

While I agree with the sarcastically made point that the whims of the powerful are not by themselves good enough reason to outlaw things, one of the more frustrating arguments made in favour of Bitcoin is that it can free us from government control.

I say that claim is not true, and recon bitcoin is all hat and no cattle in this regard.

I also reckon that when the government is sufficiently democratic (i.e. not just the whims of the powerful), undermining it is a bad thing, which is the only reason I don’t want to say “time for Bitcoin to prove us wrong”.

Look, one problem with crypto is that there exists anonymous super-whale actors that are using it to siphon money off of smaller average-joe investors. No doubt some of these actors have nation-state backing (China, Russia, Iran...)

The other problem is that for every idealist crypto supporter, there's exists another thousand crypto investors who have only one intention; to convert their investment back to fiat at a profit.

The latter (the 99.9% super-majority) ensures that crypto, no matter its supposedly idealist origins, are intricately linked to fiat (virtual fiat at that).

In fact crypto has gone from being a form of anti-banker for-the-people idealist payment options to being a form of virtual faith-based shares whose value is literally linked to nothing.

How was ransomware's ransom paid before crypto?

It at least lets one retain the moral high ground. By contrast, in El Salvador it's going to become illegal to not use Bitcoin.

I see some outright hypocrisy in that move being cheered by more libertarian-minded folks. If Bitcoin's supposed to be about not being forced to do things by government, then wouldn't governments forcing people to use Bitcoin be just about the worst possible thing that can happen to it? This would be like if Frodo decided to start wearing the ring and using it to try and take over the world, kind of thing.