I guess it comes down to whether one does the cost benefit analysis for society as a whole or for individuals.

While decentralized permissionless markets can (and have) helped some individuals escape economic restrictions (capital controls, sanctions, etc.) it's not at all clear to me that they have had an overall positive effect, or ever will.

At the end of the day, the rise in the price of bitcoin, scams like AfriCrypt and OneCoin, the new Salvador laws etc are all just new means of extracting capital from the Global South. I'm of the opinion that the benefits to individuals are not balancing the overall societal harms, but I could see how someone with a more individualistic ideology would disagree.

You do have a point there. Crypto does have a massive fraud problem. And I'll admit that so far, it's been a net negative for society.

I'm hoping this will change as the ecosystem matures.