Crypto is useful today as a currency if you're worried about censorship from Visa/PayPal/Stripe/... and not from governments. The article's primary point about

Crypto is useful today as a currency if you're worried about censorship from Visa/PayPal/Stripe/... and not from governments. The article's primary point about how decentralization doesn't matter when the government is powerful enough to demand blocklists and whatnot may or may not have merit, but if you wanted to legally transact in any of the following online, which payment provider would you use without fear of being spontaneously shut down (not arguing that the items are beneficial per se, just that many governments are fine with most of them and most payment providers are not)? (1) Marijuana paraphernalia (2) Cigarettes (3) Politically charged symbols like confederate flags and swastikas (4) Knives (5) MLM pamphlets (6) Digital goods (MMORPG gold/items) (7) "Adult" photos/videos/toys/... ... Crypto provides an satisfactory solution _today_ for all of those things. It's a little inconvenient to have a currency exchange and fees tacked on just to avoid having bank accounts or whatever frozen, but it works, and governments don't bother to step in and block those transactions even where it might be feasible for them to interfere. Moreover, the alternatives I'm aware of are all measurably worse in one or more factors including fraud potential, cost, and risk of frozen assets. IMO it'd be better just to legislate that banks and payment providers are dumb infrastructure like an ISP should be so that it isn't a concern in the first place, but in a world where I don't see that happening crypto is a good enough workaround.