> You can either throw your support behind the prohibitions that the collective enforces, or you can support an escape valve for individuals to defy it.

I 100% support individuals defying illegitimate laws. I did so twice in the last few months. I did not require cryptocurrency to do it and presenting either supporting prohibitions I disagree with -OR- supporting cryptocurrency is a false dichotomy.

We already have an untraceable value credit system in place for transacting illicit things. It's called cash, and it predates even the financial markets that crypto alleges to be trying to replace (while tripping over themselves to continue having access to the real financial system which incidentally is the main way crypto becomes non-anonymous because cryptocurrency cannot in fact create wealth it can only move it around from the actual financial system it claims to oppose, but that's a whole other thing entirely).

If it's a release valve as you say, then it is a release valve bolted to the side of an oppressive financial plumbing system, and is therefore reliant upon it. It is not salvation, is it at best, a new set of masters who have different preferences to the old. Perhaps an improvement (sex work) perhaps merely a different sort of monster (hosting kiwifarms) but nevertheless, not freedom. Just a different puppeteer with a different set of strings.

> NFTs don't work this way; the goal is not for the chain to tell you which token is "real", whatever that means. That's up to you to decide.

THEN WHAT DOES IT MATTER!? I have decided I own the Brooklyn Bridge. May I now list it for sale on Zillow?

Ownership as a concept only functions as a social contract with everyone else who shares your reality. I can SAY I own whatever the fuck I want, that is meaningless, utterly without value at all, if the person I'm attempting to sell it to does not recognize my ownership first, which for anything of value requires documentation. I own my home, because my name is on the deed, and it's also worth noting that I don't really, because the property is actually owned by a mortgage company, to whom I pay money. Nevertheless, I could sell my home, and then use the proceeds to pay off that mortgage company, and then take what's left and pocket it. But that entire arrangement depends on a contractual legal system with it's origin of trust in, ultimately, the Federal Government and judicial system, and because cryptocurrency is allergic ideologically to centralization (which isn't to say centralization isn't rife through the entire ecosystem anyway, because as it turns out, you kinda need central resources to use, well, anything) they refuse to do this.

> No one cares that you print your own versions of valuable pokemon cards at home.

In fact people do care! If you sold counterfeit Pokemon cards to a collector, you could be sued in civil court and possibly charged with fraud for misrepresenting goods! Not to mention sued by the holder of that intellectual property for reproducing it without their permission.

Maybe they can't recover their money under this stupid system, perhaps that's true, but that only matters if literally all your assets are in crypto. If you have a car, they can take that. If you have a home, they can take that. If you have $50 to your name in a checking account, they can take that and burden you for life with debt for whatever that doesn't cover. And in the event you manage to somehow crypto your entire life and they "can't touch you," you then go to jail because while everything is else beyond the reach of the feds (kind of) YOU, as in the physical manifestation of you, are not.

Up to the point where you leave this ecosystem, you have "money" in ethereum. Once you cross that threshold, you have *jack shit.* Actually you have less than jack shit, because you're down whatever real money you exchanged for fake money on the promises of whoever convinced you to buy into it.