Having been in this space since back when a bitcoin was a fraction of a dollar... "Rejection of the traditional banking system" was mostly a symptom of "Doing

Having been in this space since back when a bitcoin was a fraction of a dollar... "Rejection of the traditional banking system" was mostly a symptom of "Doing things the traditional system would label 'illegal'". In which case the upsides of crypto are clear - You can pass money around online without regulation. And the downsides are WELL understood - the "system" does not have your back if/when things go wrong. Just like most black market trades. The problem happened when the "finance" crowd started seeing bitcoin's value increase at a large rate (and particularly how little media coverage was needed to temporarily spike the value), and essentially turned the entire thing into a ponzi scheme. They weren't interested in using it as anything other than a pump and dump investment vehicle, and its lack of regulation was a magnet for the worst sort of folks. As a tool for online dark exchanges, or other government forbidden actives (ex: fleeing the country with ill-gotten gains, or holding businesses hostage with malware) - there is a small niche for digital currency. I'm pretty well convinced there is NO other use case where your national currency does not serve as a better alternative. Even the semi-plausible use cases (ex: preserve value during times of high inflation) have proven to be utterly meaningless if you're holding US dollars, and the vast majority of cases you would be better holding onto shiny metal instead.