Crypto facilitates bypassing financial regulations, drug trade, evading taxes, extorting ransoms, breaking sanctions and so on.
I’m not at all surprised it’s popular. I’m surprised that even relatively sane US admin did not crush it.
One need only look at the rapid rise of cryptocurrencies in criminal enterprises over the last 10 years or so to see the truth in that.
Personally I'm also against it, but you're correct that it's a legal use case.
It’s expensive as hell to use crypto to move money. It’s very slow, and I’m forced to use centralized coin exchanges which destroy the original decentralized nature of the currencies.
Why should we be excited about a product that is the opposite of what it sets out to do?
Much easier for me to send a small amount of crypto to a VPN provider, or a custom parts supplier in a “strange” country where Visa/MC/bank wires are a huge hassle if available at all.
It’s not a huge use case, but it removes a ton of unnecessary friction from transactions traditional banking left behind as deemed “not worth the hassle” to them.
Or as I describe it: Digital cash. I don’t need the flea market vendor to need to be vetted by some financial provider to sell me their 3d printed parts collection.
Even had there been charges, donating would still have been legal.
Furthermore, your criterion was “not better served”; please don’t move the goalposts.
Remittances and cross-border donations are way better served by cryptocurrencies than any other mechanism, full stop. It’s faster, cheaper, and way more reliable than any other method.
They could also just really like cryptocurrencies, but that's not a point in favor of the technology.
There are fintechs for customers who want lower fees and don't need e.g. physical branches or phone support. That's perfectly fine.
But a fintech that didn't perform KYC would be shut down pretty quickly by the police, so there's a floor on how low fees can be while remaining legal.
That's the same as "not legal".
But I agree that it's still a useful technology, because the moral argument sometimes trumps the legal one. If a north korean defector uses Bitcoin to exfiltrate their life savings, I don't think anybody will complain how it was technically illegal under North Korea's law.
[2017]: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/11/bitcoin-price-falls-on-repor... "Bitcoin price falls again on reports that China is shutting down local exchanges"
[2021]: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/22/china-crypto-crackdown-wipes... "China’s renewed crypto crackdown wipes $400 billion off the market as bitcoin slides"
Also it funnels money to the people running it which enables them to lobby etc politicians.