You need 'legal rights' because it's (almost) the only way to enforce agreements. Suppose you use BTC to buy something, and someone ripped you off. Do you get

You need 'legal rights' because it's (almost) the only way to enforce agreements. Suppose you use BTC to buy something, and someone ripped you off. Do you get a gun, and 'take care of your own business'? Do you grasp that 'the law' and 'the government' is there to manage the social contract that we have in place? Commercial law is there to help us sort out agreements we make with one another. Crypto-currencies have very limited ability to do that. Also - owning a 'coin' is owning an abstract number that someone made up, which does not give it a whole lot of value. Owning a 'share' implies ownership in the company ---> The company's money in their bank account, their real-estate etc. - it belongs to you. That's a really big deal - someone giving you their cash, and their future earnings, the IP, in return for 'money now'. "It's not a utopia - it's a vision for the future unfolding, 'happening right now'" No it's not. Nobody is using coins for any kind of commerce, and ICOs are turning out to be scams so they will disappear fast. BTC is just a pyramid scheme. It will be 'around for a while' because more people will find out about the scheme and 'want in'. Eventually it will lose steam. My bet is that BTC crashes when the first economic crash happens in the West - people will need to liquidate their BTC and prices will fall - as soon as their is legit downward price pressure on BTC it could go to zero pretty quickly.