> And since cryptocurrencies aren't really used for real transactions, we can't really see how they would fare in a competitive currency market. They used to b

> And since cryptocurrencies aren't really used for real transactions, we can't really see how they would fare in a competitive currency market. They used to be. I made online purchases and bought coffee in real life using Bitcoin just a few years ago. The evolution of Cryptocurrency has been away from any real-world usefulness, and toward its current incarnation as a largely speculative instrument. And I would argue that in fact this has been the result of a Libertarian experiment playing out. Everything about Bitcoin has been opt-in: in principal anyone is free to own a node, and the community would have been free to opt-in to a governance structure which would have discouraged actions which made Bitcoin less useful to the majority of users, but this is not what happened. Instead power was consolidated in the hands of a few, who chose their own self-interest to the detriment of the larger community. I am not a fan of coercive government, but I struggle to see how the story of cryptocurrency to this point does not provide evidence that some strategy is needed, beyond maximal personal liberty, to discourage bad actors from causing disproportionate harm to the collective.