My problem with bitcoin is that, fundamentally, it is born of mistrust of even the concept of “politics”. It considers, for example, the ability of established and democratically-controlled institutions such as central banks to conduct monetary policy as a net negative, and tries to replace it with the supposedly objective reality of an algorithm doing its thing without regards to the outside world. That’s why you will find, if you go down this rabbit hole, a large overlap of blockchain enthusiasts and the political spectrum somewhere between nihilism, Ayn-Rand-style social darwinism, and anarchism; All the handwringing over the supposed conspiracy that abolished the gold standard follows naturally.

This is even more obvious for the disaster that is the DAO: the idea that the nuances of human life and its conflicts currently settled by courts can adequately and unambiguously captured in code is, as has now been shown repeatedly, laughable. Personally, I also consider it somewhat frightening that people would actually subscribe to a philosophy so myopic as to completely deny the value of anything that isn't technology.

Technologically, bitcoin it is certainly fascinating. And a decentralised, electronic competitor to cash does seem more attractive than a future where VISA and PayPal control all that data. Unfortunately, bitcoin has completely failed in that regard. Adoption as an actual means of payment is declining. Even experts frequently lose money to hacks, hardware failures, or inattentiveness. Settlements take longer than many competing technologies, and the one area currently underserved, namely micropayment, is also priced out of bitcoin.

Bitcoin evangelist are also not doing the technology any favours. See, for example:

> Do people fear what they don't understand?

This implies that bitcoin critics are stupid. They're not.

> Are they mad because they feel like they missed out?

This implies that they are jealous. While that's obviously something that happens, I can assure you it is in no way a significant in the opposition. I do own a few dozen bitcoin, for example, because I used mining to get into cuda a few years back.

> Does Bitcoin's success mean their loss (like the banking folks and the government establishment)?

That implies some sort of conspiracy, and also portraits any critic as being a shill, or bot, or similar, whose opinion can then be considered illegitimate.

It's interesting to see how the bitcoin community was, from the start, driving by this antagonism versus government and the financial system. Bitcoin was considered as some sort of grand threat to the established order, and the government was expected to come down hart on it "any day now". In reality, however, regulatory bodies have almost without exception taken a rather relaxed approach. Questions of taxation were clarified, and existing rules such as KYC enforced to discourage the use of bc for illegal activity, yes. But overall, governments' reaction was nowhere near what the community expected, or what would be expected from a corrupt system trying to defend its power against a credible threat.

It is only with the rather obvious overheating, and widespread fraud, of ICOs that scrutiny of this market has somewhat increased.