I believe the Bitcoin name is just dragged on these things. Criminals will use everything just to do their bidding and sadly, they found Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies to do their bidding much easier. And this criminal activity associated with Bitcoin was already in the past. We can see Bitcoin now associated with legal merchants and accepted by the open-minded government.
Aside from that, Bitcoin is seen by people not only here in the forum as a mode of payment and I think, there is much more people outside this forum who use it as payment. Btw, isn't fiat currency have higher cases when it comes to corruption and criminal activities?
Don't take this as a "I support criminals" statement, but without the Silk Road and all the illicit activity that happened through BTC on the darknet we maybe wouldn't have known today about its existence yet. Criminal activity is associated with lots of things, IIRC there was some kind of candy (or soap) cartel at one point
Governments aren't as "open-minded" as they seem imo: they push for a "legalizing & accepting Bitcoin" narrative while implementing rules that go against Bitcoin's fundamental ideas. And yes, you are right, fiat is used
way more in criminal activity & corruption than Bitcoin is. Here's a quote from one of my older replies (will translate from Romanian):
Effect of too much TV/Media/Social Media I guess.
Very true. That's the moment when you literally only take what you see on TV & MSM for granted without ever questioning a narrative. Sadly, too many people are going through this nowadays.