I'm still surprised that bitcoin is hated here, such a great technology. It's a decentralised currency, and it's working really well. A lot of big institutions are taking it seriously now. Does paper cash printed by government make more sense?
My simplistic view is that government money such as the dollar serves a small handful of purposes: It's a medium of exchange, short term store of value, and tool of government economic policy. The government has loosely defined "short term" by the target inflation rate. I suppose that regularizing the taxation process is another purpose.
Does it work? Apparently some national currencies work better than others. People in some countries will, if possible, use some other country's money in preference over their own, for all but minor daily transactions. Thus, objecting to one kind of money, and swapping it for another, predates bitcoins.
What I think makes bitcoin different is that no government can influence its purpose, leaving its purpose up to each user to define on their own terms.
Perhaps another way of thinking about it, is that its own behavior defines its purpose, because if your use is in opposition to its behavior, then it doesn't work for you. This could be said to be true of dollars as well.