Crypto is not a zero-sum game. You may not see it, but there is value in decentralized digital currency.
"well sure its a scam now, but in 100 years from now..."
"Nobody cares matt"
but then it turns out there's an army of crypto fools who repeat any stupid point he makes without reflecting on the value of those points.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Anonymous currencies for purchasing things that are illegal in the jurisdiction of the seller and/or buyer certainly have a value, but more as a service than a currency, so I wouldn't expect to make money sitting on coins. Instead I'd expect the payoff to be for buying them from the illegal sellers to sell to the illegal buyers. Essentially, being a launderer with possibly lower risk and less effort than in the past.
Imo a currency that makes those possible has negative value.
Regarding the "fiscal games" by nation states part - in democratic societies those "games" are policy decisions, voted for by the people. I find trying to circumvent the will of the people as expressed in a democratic vote morally questionable, and think that enabling antidemocratic behavior, too, is negative value. (Not to mention that it doesn't work anyways, as you noted).
When you live in a nation whose bank's decisions don't influence the world economy, you don't get a vote when those nations decide to raise or lower interest rates, or to suppress the value of their currencies, or have trade wars with each other. The idea of insulating yourself from those decisions that you did not vote on is attractive, but it now seems like more traditional assets are likely a better approach.
'Regular' currency has been used for all sorts of nefarious things since the dawn of currency, including assassinations and child trafficking and such. Nothing about USD/EUR/CAD/etc. inherently makes it impossible to purchase or participate in illegal goods/activities.
I'm not in favor of cryptocurrency, but the argument that cryptocurrency is the thing enables bad things to be bought/sold is a really tired argument and seems to forget all of human history prior to the last 10 years.
I believe KYC, banking regulations, and traceability all reduce the utility of conventional money for bad things. You can't easily transfer large amounts of money without leaving a trail that investigators may find in the conventional system. Bitcoin solves this!
How do you think crimes were paid for before BTC?
On a related note, my dealer takes cash and even accepts electronic transfers, but not BTC.
There's nothing special about cryptocurrency there, except that regulators have not regulated KYC/AML enough yet.
There's very little "value" in cryptocurrency, there is some value in the concept of blockchains, with proof-of-stake, replacing titles offices and other regulatory registers. NFTs are essentially that, but don't have any legal or regulatory power behind enforcing the "ownership" that the NFT records.
Darknet markets exist, are not a big secret, and are largely enabled by cryptocurrencies. This stuff has been in mainstream press since 2013.
Ask people if they think a market for criminals to exchange illegal goods and services provides positive value and you'll find that most don't think it does.
Just cause there's money to be made, doesn't mean value is created or otherwise robberies would be quite valuable too.
If a market enables breaking of laws created by democratic processes, any economic value is outweighed by its negative societal and democratic value.
If you win 50 bucks in a casino and spent 100 betting, I suppose you technically "won" 50 bucks, but in colloquial use of language it'd be more correct to say you lost 50 bucks.
The externalities are debatable, but I think we can accept that drug trade in the onionland has less negative externalities than drug trade on the street.