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The US also can't completely prevent people from creating counterfeit cash, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdollar. The transparency of bitcoin is a win here, as everyone can verify that this kind of fraud is not occurring at the base layer.

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> The US also can't completely prevent people from creating counterfeit cash, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdollar. The transparency of bitcoin is a win here, as everyone can verify that this kind of fraud is not occurring at the base layer.

Emphasis on "here." I think the one big problem with Bitcoin et. al is that (from a user perspective) they trade major regressions in important areas for small wins against other problems (often purely ideological problems).

Case in point: counterfeiting isn't a major problem in most places. Bitcoin may address it better than cash can, but that's at the cost of major regressions in privacy, economic policy, etc.

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I appreciate the nuance-- I completely agree that there are tradeoffs and that no money technology is perfect in all regards. I don't think it is fair to call complete resistance against counterfeiting a small win though, it eliminates an entire category of crime. You can't only consider the total size of the problem counterfeiting currently causes (which is small), but also the expenditure and surveillance that is needed to achieve that outcome.