The thing is, I’m not referring to the philosophical debate about the intrinsic value of money, rather I’m talking about what is mine, regardless of medium.

My house is mine. I’ve got a title of public record that demonstrates such ownership. Nobody can take it away from me without my consent (excepting the government under whose jurisdiction I live, and only in extremely exceptional cases). Nobody can rob my home without everyone knowing about it and it ultimately being restituted. The same goes for anything I own – stocks, bonds, a car, a boat, etc., etc.

Whether or not the faith and trust in the intrinsic value of the legal tender under question is well-founded is another matter completely.

I basically agree with your trust versus trustless dichotomy, and I definitely prefer the latter. That having been said, I prefer the latter with public record status, which is to say that I would prefer every cryptocurrency coin I buy to be legally linked to my person in a public manner, i.e. coin X purchased in Y Txid on coin X’s blockchain is marked as being mine with my name and national identity number. Any coin I spend would also be duly marked as having been transferred to the buyer. In that kind of a cryptocurrency world, I would always be able to ultimately gain restitution for theft or even a mistaken send.

The "bearer token" archetype is incompatible with that, and is precisely the reason why I postulate that mass adoption, other than to have some “spending money" in crypto, won’t happen until buyer and seller information are “time stamped” into each and every transaction. I also suspect that governments will ultimately force this on the cryptocurrency world in order to protect the unwitting, or at least force the noncompliant to post a warning that their money is not protected and that they could lose it at any time, even with the most innocent of mistakes like not having a backup when their disk drive crashes.

What’s more, if I can’t legally demonstrate having paid for something (like something I buy using BTC), how can I legally demonstrate that what I’ve bought is legally mine? I could easily be accused of not having paid and be sued for the amount due – I received it and signed for it as would be shown by legally admissible evidence like shipping records, but I have no proof what-so-ever of ever having paid. Oops.

This is what I am putting up for debate. Is the road towards anonymity a dead end? How many people have bearer token cash, or even gold or silver, hoarded at home? Yes there are a few, but that group takes us down to a very niche market, and not mass adoption.