But is anonymity the only real reason for having created the BTC? To circumvent government seizure from economic sanctions or evade detection from police when doing something illegal? I would think there's more to it than this, something more akin to the Internet that benefitted the world for the better.
Anonymity is important, and there are lots of great articles about why it isn't important for just criminals. But my main point was simply that when you make a transaction, you know it can't be undone, you don't need permission, you don't worry about confiscation, etc.
Imagine you're selling something on craigslist and the guy wants to write you a cheque. Who the fuck is gonna trust that? Cash is clearly what you will choose. But now imagine that this cash is just as much at risk of seizure or risk of devaluation. Plus, cash only works for in person transactions.
We also know that cash is actually risky in a bank. Most banks only have protections up to 100k or 250k. Clearly, your cash in the bank isn't really your cash. It used to be that you only worried about a bank failing maybe, but now governments are in the "seizure" game as well. But your bitcoin in a cold wallet is 100% safe. Heck, you can even exchange it back to cash if you so choose, but for the transaction part, the bitcoin sent and received will be final.
I used to follow photography quite closely and there was this scam going around where a photographer would be hired for a big job. The client sent a cheque, but sent too much and asked for the difference to be returned or sent to some other vendor. So you think you got a 10k cheque and pay out 5k. Well, in 2 weeks the bank finds out the 10k cheque is no good and your 5k cheque that you wrote is long gone, and hence you are out 5k. Governments are now scamming entire states by seizing funds and all this other stuff too. Some countries are forced to buy USD in order to do a transaction, but its difficult for them to get access to USD. All of this currency business is truly problematic.
So believe it or not, the entire world is gonna move towards a better payment system. If you want to move 100 million, it will be easier to do it with bitcoin since you won't worry about any counter party risk. Then you can choose if you want to keep it in BTC or convert to fiat once the transfer is done, but once again, you now have to worry about your fiat, so why not just stay in BTC? And hence why much of it sits unmoved in over a year.
The Satoshi whitepaper talks about bitcoin I think mostly from an electronic peer to peer way to send money. But I think bitcion today represents so much more and the importance and use case has significantly evolved than simply sending value electronically.
