I am looking at what is actually happening, not hypothesizing.
> There’s nothing to stop an oppressive government from preventing its people from buying bitcoin the same as they prevent them from buying pounds and wiring them to British banks.
There's also nothing to stop an oppressive government from killing its people (and some do). But oppressive is not binary, and people have used bitcoin to "smuggle" money out of (at least) Venezuela and China, despite capital controls and government crackdown, in ways that they weren't able to do with british pounds (and which would have been much harder and riskier with physical gold).
> You are attributing magic powers to bitcoins that they do not have. Black markets are not invulnerable to government crackdowns because they are digital. On the contrary, digital networks are in many ways easier to control centrally than distributed underground physical networks.
I am not attributing any magic powers. I am observing the reality as it happens now ; governments crack down on digital networks and black markets but it's much, much harder for them to shut down than bank transfers.
To stop bank transfers, all you need to do these days as a government is click the right button. To take down the Silk Road, the US government took many months and a lot of work; an oppressive regime might have done that more quickly and swiftly, but it would still have taken considerably more effort than shutting down wire transfers. The special feature cryptocurrencies have is ease of carrying across borders .
> The dark hints about how any government may become oppressive is a red herring. The issue isn’t that bitcoin isn’t needed because my government isn’t currently oppressive, it’s that bitcoins utility in the face of an oppressive government is wildly exaggerated.
Oppressive is not binary. Cypriots were (perhaps still are) subjected to very strict capital controls, with no attempt to crackdown on bitcoin.