I disagree again. The main strengths of BTC should be the lack of fees, easy access to financing from anywhere, application built at the top of the blockchain, etc.etc. Nothing related to anonymity. I will never advocate something which can help people avoid taxes, set dark markets, sell drugs, finance terrorism etc. I see this as unfortunate side effect of BTC which is there exactly due to the lack of any kind of control and consumer protection. Personally, I would like it to go away so we can have this beautiful new technology developing on new ideas, business, investment funds, increased financing options, BTC start-ups etc. All this has nothing to do with anonymity.
Why do you consider the Bitcoin technology beautiful? Certainly, the underlying idea is clever, but all that it enables is a way of transferring wealth across the internet without the need to trust a 3rd party. Mainstream financial networks need trusted 3rd parties to function, and a significant duty of those parties is in stymieing criminal activity.
If Bitcoin is beautiful to you, then the existing banking system should be more beautiful still, for this system:
- requires participants to register their personal information, information which is used to catch criminals.
- allows chargebacks used to reduce the effectiveness of fraud.
- enables lawful investment, big business, and start-ups.
- stores transactions in a small number of secure locations (rather than on thousands of nodes all over the world).
- processes transactions using a small number of protected servers (rather than via a global, wasteful, POW-based competition).
- allows monetary policy thought necessary to maintaining financial stability.
- allows state-approved banking with many regulations designed to prevent bad behaviour.
- allows lawful high-tech extensions deployed by huge companies (see developments by Apple, Google, and Facebook).
- is already mainstream and far less volatile than Bitcoin.
The first two points imply the reduced access and also make up for the lion's share of the fees. One can argue that Bitcoin does lead to lower fees due to competition between potential transaction processors but, with no systemic anonymity, these processors would quickly become swamped in regulation and reporting requirements, killing off all but a handful of giants (parallel to VISA and MasterCard).
TL;DR: Anonymity goes hand-in-glove with "low fees" and "easy access".
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