I think the effects would have been worse in the short term, but the long term effect is much worse -- signaling to an industry that wanton risk taking will essentially be rewarded and if you're large and connected enough the government will debase the currency to keep you in business, so you're free to fuck up again.

I think you're arguing on the side of "countries need monarchies because the people can't be trusted" and "printing presses allow seditious ideas to spread and must be outlawed or tightly controlled", but, again, I can't be certain.

How is it that we can have two totally different interpretations of the truth? Isn't economics a science? Why is it that there are such varying opinions? I think it's because economies are too complex for any one person to accurately model. What you need is markets to decide what works and what's valuable and what the prices should be. What you need is competition, and that's what cryptocurrencies provide.

Bitcoin is already competing with weak currencies of corrupt governments and winning. A lot of improvements need to be made before Bitcoin is anywhere close to making a run for the #1 currency in the world, but if you're watching the technology closely, there's still a lot happening in crypto and it might be sooner than you think.