It's unquestionably both.  A motorised vehicle can be used for both legitimate purposes and illegal ones.  A knife can be used for both legitimate purposes and illegal ones.  It's all about how people choose to utilise the thing in question.



But Monero can also be used for illegal purposes along with legitimate ones.  You could absolutely launder money using Monero if you chose to.  The only difference between Monero and coinjoin/mixing services is that Monero is far more resilient against regulatory takedown.

It's not that people think illegal activity should be an integral part of their privacy, they merely want privacy any way they can get it. 

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I suggest, going forward, the solution to this problem is to stop forming crypto companies. 

• Have an independent dev team, not a company with a CEO who can be arrested and company assets which can be seized
• Have a fully peer-to-peer architecture with no single-points-of-failure, not a main server which can be deactivated to cripple the service
• Have unpaid contributors, not paid employees

The moment you have a trading name, a head office, any reportable income, a primary company server or any kind of business expense, you become subject to all the regulations of the jurisdiction(s) in which you operate.  You can and likely will be shut down if the government don't like the service you are offering.

To create the kind of economy we want to create, there can be no perceivable connection to their economy.  For now, that is the only way to remain private.