alt Hacker News> Actually that's a problem for a lot of libertarian minded tech, it starts being thought of as enabling freedom from oppressive governments and ends up being adopted by criminals - Bitcoin, Tor, etc.
This is such a sham though.
You have some privacy-protecting technology everyone would benefit from. Ordinary people don't really understand it but would use and benefit from it if it was the default.
Laws are passed that make it illegal to use or otherwise highly inconvenient, e.g. you have to fill out an onerous amount of paperwork even if you're not doing anything wrong. Ordinary people are deterred from using it and ordinary systems don't adopt it. Criminals continue using it because they don't care about breaking the paperwork laws if they're already breaking the drug laws.
Then people say look at this evil technology that only criminals use! As if the reason others don't use it wasn't purposeful.
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Criminals use privacy protection that is not illegal too.
I'm not disagreeing with your general point but in the specific case of Bitcoin I can't think of any laws that have been passed which make it highly inconvenient to use relative to other financial assets. If anything, it seems like legislators (at least in the US) have taken something of a laissez faire attitude toward the technology. Regulators have been more aggressive (e.g. the Treasury) but they're largely just enforcing existing laws which, again, apply to other financial assets.