The "out of government reach" part applies equally to TOR, VPNs etc, I believe. Yes, it's a vanishingly small number of people profiting from that while doing t

The "out of government reach" part applies equally to TOR, VPNs etc, I believe. Yes, it's a vanishingly small number of people profiting from that while doing things most of us agree with, but for some, that's worth it. Banks controlling who gets to participate in sending and receiving payments is obviously bad in my opinion. Being able to participate in the economy is fundamentally important. The government cannot outlaw a legal business, but banks and payment providers can do it for them. That doesn't bother anyone that buys a pop album off Amazon, but that's a different issue if you want to sell porn or drugs or whatever US morals have issues with and just get cut off from payments, so that your willing customers cannot pay you. When that happens, people get out the old "it's a private company, you have no right to their platform"-spiel and crypto-currencies solve that. Crypto-currencies are to finance what the fediverse is to social media. They have shortcomings, in a perfect world we wouldn't have any need for them, but they fill a niche in the real world we inhabit.