Are Cryptocurrencies inherently evil?

Cryptocurrencies have a rather bad social standing and evil reputation since the emergence of Bitcoin in 2009. Bitcoin has been associated for a long time with online drug deals and dark web black markets such as the seized Silk Road. Moreover, almost on a weekly basis the news are full of new investment losses due to hacks of Cryptocurrency exchanges. In addition, the fraudulent ICOs, Ponzi and Pyramid schemes probably grow by the hour.

Thus, are Cryptocurrencies inherently evil? Is this whole endeavor just a playground for fraudsters and scammers? Well, I am currently reading the Cryptonomicon written by Neal Stephenson in the 1990s and I stumbled upon a quote that I think fits perfectly. Of course, when Stephenson wrote the book Cryptocurrencies were nowhere in sight. The quote is about an analogy to a censorship free data haven, but this naturally comes very close to censorship free Cryptocurrencies.

You know, back in the forty-niner days, every gold mining town in California had a nerd with a scale, the assayer. He sat in an office all day. Scary-looking rednecks came in with pouches of gold dust. The nerd weighed them, checked them for purity, told them what the stuff was worth. Basically, the assayer’s scale was the exchange point-- the place where this mineral, this dirt from the ground, became money that would be recognized as such in any bank or marketplace in the world, from San Francisco to London to Beijing. Because of the nerd’s special knowledge, he could put his imprimatur on dirt and make it money. Just like we have the power to turn bits into money.

Now, a lot of the people the nerd dealt with were incredibly bad guys. Peg house habitues. Escaped convicts from all over the world. Psychotic gunslingers. People who owned slaves and massacred Indians. I’ll bet that the first day, or week, or month, or year, that the nerd moved to the gold-mining town and hung out his shingle, he was probably scared shitless. He probably had moral qualms too— very legitimate ones, perhaps,

Some of those pioneering nerds probably gave up and went back East. But y’know what? In a surprisingly short period of time, everything became pretty damn civilized, and the towns filled up with churches and schools and universities, and the sort of howling maniacs who got there first were all assimilated or driven out or thrown into prison, and the nerds had boulevards and opera houses named after them. Now, is the analogy clear?

So, is the analogy clear?