The crypto part is fine, not that I can claim to understand it.
The trustless model where the paper insists that irreversible transactions are the only acceptable form of financial settlement is hubris and ignorance.
> the paper insists that irreversible transactions are the only acceptable form of financial settlement
The paper never insists that irreversible transactions are the ONLY acceptable form of financial settlement. In fact it says "the system [financial institutions] works well enough for most transactions".
It points out that there is NO electronic system that allows no reversible transactions, as you can with cash. That's why it's titled "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System". The author wanted something similar to cash, but electronic.
Besides that, discrediting a paper just for the introduction, which is just the opinion of the author regarding why they think such paper is interesting, is short sighted in my opinion.
Maybe short sighted. But given the current state of crypto currencies and the culture surrounding them, it seems an entirely fair assessment. That crypto currencies are designed to eschew third parties is a defining feature that attracts people who don't care to be scrutinised.
Mostly, those people are looking to bypass the law.
Crypto currencies encourage illegal activity by design. The paper sets that out, in plain sight in the introduction.
What you're saying boils down to the age old discussion regarding privacy, "nothing to hide", etc that has been discussed a million times. I suggest searching for previous discussions regarding this.
Even then, I don't think a technology should be disregarded just because it has some use cases that you disagree with.
Also you vastly overestimate how much crypto is used for "illegal activities". The reality is that it's almost entirely used as an investment, similar to gold.
> Crypto currencies encourage illegal activity by design.
They definitely don't ENCOURAGE illegal activity. You can argue they can maybe facilitate it. It still is much worse than cash for illegal activity in most cases however.
And by the way, just because something is illegal does not mean it's bad. A lot of things that are legal and accepted now were illegal before. And even if you agree with all current laws in your country, remember that there are a lot of other countries, maybe not entirely democratic, with very different and unfair laws.
> They definitely don't ENCOURAGE illegal activity. You can argue they can maybe facilitate it.
This is what I like to call the "sawn-off shotgun" idea. Sure, there might be a legit use for a sawn-off shotgun, but they are never used for that[0].
I would agree that speculation is the most common use for Bitcoin, although I'd more characterise that as rube farming. If you attempted to launch a security with the characteristics of Bitcoin, you'd be in jail. When the music stops, there simply won't be any chairs.
As for disregarding a technology because I don't agree with the use cases, it's perfectly legit to avoid pyramid schemes and greater fool farms for the same reason. The often-cited-but-always-missing good use cases for crypto currencies are such a tiny proportion of what it actually gets used for they become a novelty.
The paper never insists that irreversible transactions are the ONLY acceptable form of financial settlement. In fact it says "the system [financial institutions] works well enough for most transactions".
It points out that there is NO electronic system that allows no reversible transactions, as you can with cash. That's why it's titled "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System". The author wanted something similar to cash, but electronic.
Besides that, discrediting a paper just for the introduction, which is just the opinion of the author regarding why they think such paper is interesting, is short sighted in my opinion.