At the risk of entering the "what is money" rabbithole... "Money", banks, and the financial system broadly are a system of laws, contracts, and faith. Bitcoin

At the risk of entering the "what is money" rabbithole... "Money", banks, and the financial system broadly are a system of laws, contracts, and faith. Bitcoin can clearly exist outside the modern financial system as a thing that manages a distributed ledger, but any time it attempts to become "money" it is going to smash into one or more of those. This is an example of "any regulated financial industry will need to enforce these laws, regardless of how offensive those laws are to math." This specific issue may or may not have merit, but in the long run regulation of things that can be regulated inevitable (exchanges, things that have a physical address in countries with laws, etc). Politicians and judges aren't really swayed by "it's MATH, bitch!" and in fact most of society isn't really run that way either.