CBs have gotten away with their abuses simply because they outlawed real money alternatives to fiat for long enough that the public lost memory of the very existence of alternatives to CB money. Everyone sees the dollar/euro/pound/yen as money because they use them every day, so no one runs away from these mechanisms no matter how they are abused. What would they run to?
As long as central banks have existed their activities have been subsidized via (government-provided) monolopy and via taxation.
Almost from the moment people stopped using gold coins and switched to gold IOUs for their daily transactions, gold has been a government welfare program.
There's no such thing as a free market reserve currency. To obtain what the crypto goldbugs want they'll need national governments to take control of most of the Bitcoins in circulation and use their taxing capabilities to support the price.