Bitcoin exists precisely to enable monetary sovereignty & bypass any of these stupid fiat rules.
It remains to be seen whether that ever actually happens. The way Bitcoin is used today it is predominantly nonsense, given that most usage is exchanges which are all regulated by fiat rules (except, somewhat, BTC-E which also seems to have issues with fungibility anyway), Coinbase/Circle, and Bitpay. The rest is negligible.
I agree with you about the original stated goals, but it hasn't worked out that way at all after 6 years. I don't rule out that it may still evolve in that direction but it seems a bit of a long shot given the high degree of influence that the pro-regulation crowd has in the ecosystem. It also seems plausible that the next adoption surge, if it happens, will be Wall Street money which will also be very pro-regulation.
It seems to me the predominant use of Bitcoin today is holding. Then I guess it's a toss up between general black market activities and speculative trading. If we're to believe Trace Mayer the notion that Bitcoin is already used worldwide to escape capital controls is understated. He himself suggests that a OTC trading desk in Switzerland trades more BTC on average than most major Bitcoin exchanges to help clients circumvent FATCA regulations.
All of this to illustrate that the amount of Bitcoin that moves through Coinbase/Circle/Bitpay/Bitstamp is, in fact, negligible if we are to account for the whole of Bitcoin's economy. At the very least we can be confident saying that what is publicized and readily available to the naked eye is
not the "predominant" way Bitcoin is being used.
Therefore I'm very tentative in putting any value into the rest of your statement. Yes, I recognize that your average bitcointalk & reddit users might not be privy to actual legitimate use cases of Bitcoin at this stage of the game. That is where the figurative attempt to put round bitcoin pegs into fiat square holes creates such confusion and this illusion that Bitcoin's success is impeded by "blacklists" and "tainted coin". Of course this illusion did not spawn on its own and it is the careful fabrication of fiat institutions and banking parasites interested in either capturing Bitcoin and its users or straight out perpetuating FUD in an attempt to undermine the users faith.