I guess the difference is that it's users are not at the mercy of bankers (made of flesh, tradition and law) but instead predicable computer programs (made of logic & code).
Your dichotomy is imaginary. The computer programs are made by programmers (made of flesh, tradition and law), and bankers usually don't directly make the calls, instead relying on their programs (made of logic and code).
That is only partially true. Only very non-controversial changes manage to get through. You can see from the current blocksize debate that it is quite difficult to change the bitcoin protocol.
Also majority of hash power doesn't decide everything. If miners decide to create cartel where they change the protocol rules (via hard fork), they still need a place where they need to sell those mined coins. So exchanges/services/merchants should be in the same boat.
Also there will be always a lot of competing cryptocurrencies, where users can switch to when needed.
How is that different from regular currency? It is quite hard to implement laws that effectively enable negative interest rates. You can see that in, well, this discussion.
What really happens is that power is shifted away from regular people (who can at least assert some influence on those making the changes) to those holding capital.
The user is still at the mercy of someone: In current implementations at those who have a majority of computing power in the network. Code changes in Bitcoin have happened in the past and will happen in the future.