I want to stress that I don't consider this a minor difference.
> In the same way that if someone takes your cash into their possession, they might not have legal ownership, but now they have to somehow be involved in its' future transfer
Yes. Cash can be stolen by a pickpocket. But two things make this not a difference in degree, but in kind:
1. You can't pickpocket $70M 2. A pickpocket can quickly hand the $100 in your pocket to an accomplice, but not to an accomplice in Bolivia.
If you want to move millions or billions in cash then you have to fill out paperwork exactly because that's how money laundering happens. Cash isn't actually easy to move, nor anonymous, at scale.
$70M is 700kg in $100s. And any legit business you show up with $1M in cash will report it, because they have to and/or because they don't want to be tried as an accomplice to money laundering.
I've had friends receive huge sums in cash, and they have reported it exactly for this reason. Enforcement against financial crime is actually built in.
I think the comparison to cash therefore is completely inappropriate, to the point where I question if it's even said in good faith.
> In a cryptographic system you need the key in order to do things. Whether you think it's good or bad to apply that principle to the concept of money is orthogonal to the ground reality of how it actually works.
In my opinion it's not "money" that's being replaced with math, but "intentions". It's not about replacing fiscal policy with math so much as replacing laws against theft and money laundering.
The definition for the features of cryptocurrencies tend to be the exact description of money laundering and tax evasion.
So if the goal is "I want to commit all the financial crimes" then yes, for those purposes cryptocurrencies have found their use cases.
I hope that it's cathartic for you; I just wanted to discuss how possession works in cryptocurrencies.
My apologies for using the word ownership instead of possession, lazy language on my part.