Cryptocoins are primarily a solution to avoiding taxation of wealth and arrest by government authorities for illegal purchases/transfers; otherwise Visa/MC woul

Cryptocoins are primarily a solution to avoiding taxation of wealth and arrest by government authorities for illegal purchases/transfers; otherwise Visa/MC would simply have lobbied for regulations that electronic payments must be operated as purpose-neutral platforms, which would significantly increase their revenue (and shielded them against the puritans demanding they prohibit porn) while neutralizing a potential competitor’s value to electronic payments. The stored-value bubble hinges on this as well; if cryptocoins weren’t effective for evading taxation and arrest, then generating and spending them would have compelled tax payments out of one’s currency reserves and arrests for black market purchases and cross-border transfers. That they provide what resembles a neutral payment platform is a side effect of those goals, and that neutrality hinges on regulated banks being willing to provide accounts to those excluded by Visa/MC in order to convert cryptocoins to legal tender. Banks are largely just as unwilling as payment processors, for the same regulatory and political reasons as payment processors, which is why this is ultimately a problem of neutrality regulation rather than of crypto.