> The only use-case for it now is for the criminal underworld At least that added validity to the currency; but over time it's become increasingly less useful

> The only use-case for it now is for the criminal underworld At least that added validity to the currency; but over time it's become increasingly less useful for any of the criminal underground other than middleweight tax dodgers, embezzlers, and people trying to beat embargoes or currency controls. My suspicion is that these generally elite crimes (by volume, not by incident count) are tolerable to elite decisionmakers, and the network enables covert transfer of funds to "freedom fighter" groups, informants, and politicians - so the US covert community can hide their activities within the swarm. They surely have the tools and funds to track and unmask everything going on in the network in real time, and if they see something they're truly bothered by, they can use a parallel construction to go after it. Bitcoin becomes Tor. edit: Back in the day you had to fill a plane with cash and fly it to the Contras. Hell, you had to fill a plane with drugs, fly the drugs to where you could sell them for cash, then fly the cash back. The CIA were very early victims of the cashless society.