[CryptoPunk]

The internet also created new classes of crime. It doesn't mean we're worse off for liberalizing access to telecommunicatiom.

As for which I think is more likely, I think it's liberalization of finance and the retreat of the surveillance state. The new DeFi system is so much more efficient than the traditional financial system and the restrictions it's straddled with, that economic value will flow to it, and economic interests will trump the institutional inertia of the up-to-now steadily advancing surveillance state.

And it's fortunate too. If not for the sudden splash of financial liberalization brought about by cryptocurrency, the frog in the pot would have slowly been boiled by the creeping centralization of finance that has occurred over the last 40 years.

The last 40 years has seen regulatory institutions increase the restrictions they impose, the staff they employ, and the budgets they oversee, while becoming increasingly intertwined with the corporate giants they are meant to regulate through campaign contributions, political lobbying and the revolving door that exists between them and the private sector.