It's a fact at the macro level. Individual speculators may profit but there's no benefit to the species. They don't even work as currencies because the transaction costs are so high.
There are cryptocurrencies where transaction fees (I'm assuming that's what you meant by 'costs') are actually very low, if not zero (see Nano).
The 'costs' of proof of work are indeed high though. The amount of energy consumed for one bitcoin transaction to happen is astounding. My point above is that there are numerous alternatives (which in my opinion are poised to topple bitcoin), which don't have these costs.
I disagree with 'no benefit to the species' (even bitcoin has many benefits). But the costs of bitcoin are also high, and the benefits can come without those costs.
The benefits are unrealized fanatasies about freedom from government that will never, ever happen.
The government, tax, justice systems and regulatory bodies are made out of people, you can't fool them with some "haha it's not USD" technicality like a sovereign citizen. It's all the same at the end except for a bunch of wasted energy.
Cryptocurrency is programmable money. People interact with each other using money all day, and this is a technology that augments human interaction. Just because the most vocal narrative are the unrealized fantasies you mention, doesn't mean there's not a benefit to this technology. Frankly, I'm shocked how the supposedly future thinking tech crowd on HN lacks so much creativity when it comes to cryptocurrency. Anyway, it's here to stay for a long time even if they legislate it to oblivion.
Thank you, my response would have been along the same lines. Regulation will come, but it's not going to be a united global front. From an economic perspective, stifling innovation is problematic, and countries that embrace the potential of cryptocurrency are going to reap rewards.
Even though there are a fair share of 'sovereign citizens' among cryptocurrency types, there are many who just see the potential for integration with existing infrastructure. Personally I'm more socialist-leaning, and want governments to embrace technology that will also empower them to provide sweeping social benefits for their citizens in a transparent way.
I'm not sure what you're responding to, but I wasn't merely suggesting that a benefit of cryptocurrency is the ability to fool the government, though privacy-coins certainly are an important tool in areas with oppressive governments.
At the same time, the leading crypto platforms enable an amount of transparency that isn't possible with traditional financial institutions.
The wasted energy argument has already been addressed, and is specific to proof of work platforms which are the minority of the top 50. After the ETH2 transition is complete, it's likely proof of stake crypto will have a larger market cap than proof of work crypto.
