The existing monetary system isn't rules-based, it runs on threats and favors. You can do whatever you want, you just have to worry about the IRS punishing you

The existing monetary system isn't rules-based, it runs on threats and favors. You can do whatever you want, you just have to worry about the IRS punishing you for it after the fact. Piss off the wrong people and you'll have your accounts frozen. Do favors for the right people and taxpayer money will be diverted to bail you out. Have the wrong kind of business and no bank will touch you. Sure, there are rules written down somewhere, but it's an out-of-band thing to be enforced by whoever cares enough and has a big enough stick. Exceptions will be made to boost or suppress your activity based on whether you're friend or foe to those in certain powerful positions. Like when congress forgave all of the covid loans they had taken out , or when they shut down wikileaks donations, or the bank bailout in 2008 that motivated bitcoin in the first place. There's a bunch of awful stuff in crypto, plenty of cases where hard forks are used to break the rules that are baked into the protocol. But none of that changes the fact that baking the rules into the protocol so they're followed by default is a good idea, and that enforcing them in the ad-hoc way that the traditional system does is incredibly wasteful.