[CryptoPunk]

>>For one will realize that institutions serve various important social functions that go far beyond middleman style profit and rent skimming.

Monitoring transactions? Preventing people from transacting?

I think people should be able to do peer-to-peer electronic transactions the same way they can do peer-to-peer physical transactions with cash.

It would empower individuals and serve as a guard against encroachments of their liberty.

If cryptocurrency were never invented, people would have had no way to donate to Wikileaks when the financial blockade was imposed on it by major payment intermediaries. And that's in the West. Imagine what the situation is like in countries like China.

Organisations on the fringes like Wikileaks are important guarantors against centralized tyranny. Without a payment system outside the control of centralized authorities they can be more easily snuffed out.

In other words, cash is an institution as well, and is important.