[cwkoss]

> to buy heroin, or child pornography, or organically grown cruelty-and-cartel free marijuana

All of those existed and were traded before bitcoin was created.

> energy waste

I'd really love to see an analysis of the carbon emissions attributable to Bitcoin mining vs emissions which were funded by the extravagant salaries of wealthy-elite workers in the traditional finance/banking system. I fully accept the premise that there is some amount of CO2 emitted for maintaining the Bitcoin network, but wonder what the true cost to the climate is for rent-seeking behavior in the financial industry.

[vkou]

If nothing changed, what's the value of BTC, then?

You can't have it both ways. You can't credit it for enabling good illegal transactions, but disavow yourself from all the bad illegal transactions (because they would have happened anyways!) It's an agnostic protocol, you get the bad with the good.