[curtisblaine]

But wouldn't it be fairly trivial for the State to make crypto exchanges illegal and just forbid banks to work with them? You would still have the Ethereum network, but exchanging eth for $ would be illegal and a couple orders of magnitude more difficult (from mundane operation to mafia-level money laundry operation). Given that almost every commercial establishment in the world still operates on meatspace currency (and it would be trivial for the State to make illegal to operate with any other currency), would it really be important to still have an Ethereum network if it can't be used by ordinary people in practice?