Well, unless you can exert sufficient influence on the system itself from outside. Ask Tor how the whole "anonymity is guaranteed by decentralization" thing wor

Well, unless you can exert sufficient influence on the system itself from outside. Ask Tor how the whole "anonymity is guaranteed by decentralization" thing works out when individual actors control the majority of the nodes involved. To say nothing about rubber-hose cryptanalysis or simply banning crypto currencies an seizing assets. It also doesn't really matter if the person fucking with a resource is a state or an extremely rich individual or a company, except for ideological reasons. Diamonds (even natural ones) are fairly abundant and largely worthless but that doesn't stop De Beers from selling them at ridiculously inflated prices because they hold enough of a monopoly to be able to create artificial scarcity (and spend a lot of money on marketing to distinguish their "product" from the cheaper but higher quality artificial alternative). That crypto currencies aren't subject to the power hierarchies of the institutions you name in the exact same way as state-backed currencies doesn't mean they are not impacted by real world power hierarchies at all -- nor at least less so. Literally the only thing guaranteeing the "value" of anything is (state) violence. The reason you can charge ten bucks for a fancy cup of coffee is that if I drink without paying, you can call the cops.