How might cryptocurrencies affect AGI timelines?

That is a narrow niche but "I'll tentatively allow it".  I forgot about this - that in certain sectors, corporations have gained quasi-governmental powers.  Social media sites being able to ban entire ideas from being discussed, the entities able to provide DDoS protection (which requires very large scale, creating a natural oligopoly) can choose not to protect sites that are expressing unpopular ideas.  
I guess it was "first they came for the .." because I am not completely certain letting outright hate groups and conspiracy theorists coordinate with each other is a net societal good.  But yes this is a problem right now, like you said, it's not illegal under present law for someone to run a porn site that accepts user submissions, even if occasionally this means illegal content will remain on the site until reported.  This is also what Stormfront/etc are as well - technically the illegal content gets removed after complaints are raised.  (after giving the site viewers plenty of time to read it, of course)

To be honest, I think crypto is either neutral or even slightly positive for the growth of AGI.  The reason is that crypto mining is one of the major drivers of GPU and specialized ASIC designs.  While it does cause shortages in the long run it actually helps fund the development of more chip fabs and even more powerful GPUs.  It indirectly is making AI R&D cheaper because it is lowering the (long term) cost paid for powerful GPUs, and software stack improvements made to support GPU compute for the crypto market carryover to the inference and network training market.  

Moreover, one company that got it's start making crypto ASICs (bitmain) has used the money and chips it developed to get into the AI market.  

However, at least for the niche I work in, AI systems that "take off" seem very far away.  I think years of work are needed just to develop the platforms to make development and deployment of AI systems that do relatively well defined things (driving a car without crashing, maneuvering a robot to do manufacturing or logistics) reliable and economical.  

Once we have this kind of stuff working reliably maybe we can start looking into the higher level abstractions that artificial sentience would need.  But I don't think it will be simple, and I don't think it will just accidentally wake up from a random developers computer and eat the internet.  Probably.

Sure. But everything you said is illegal. Maybe not immoral but not legal. And maybe we would have a better world where people could do these types of illegal things without the government being able to stop them. But my major point is the government has to stop them - it can't permit widespread flouting of its authority - and it has a mechanism to do so. Just order banks to not allow funds transfers into crypto exchanges. You could get around this by finding a black market crypto seller and paying cash, but this would still basically kill crypto.

Regarding B: this is not true.  Someone who accepts crypto for their business can easily set up the system in a way that it is optional which transactions they report.  Sort of how cash only businesses - or at a lower level, people paid cash tips - probably nearly all cheat to some degree on their taxes.  Some of the cash can be spent on personal expenses without any records kept.  Crypto makes this way easier - no longer is there large sums of cash around, it's harder for the IRS to audit, and the same 'benefits' apply - someone can accept crypto for a transaction to a randomized new account they control, and sometimes they import that transaction into the books they show the government, and sometimes they don't.  

The government has to collect money to operate, it can't have everyone cheating.  It leads to failure of the state when too many people are cheating the system.  

It also allows for purchase of things that governments don't want citizens to have far more easily than before.  Yes, in any major city, you can probably find a drug dealer for whatever recreational drug you are seeking.  But can you find the parts for a specific model of machinegun?  A rocket or even guided missile launcher?  (ok I've never heard of one of those for sale on the dark web but it's possible).  A hitman who isn't definitely a cop?  (I've never actually heard of the dark web successfully being used for this, but combined with Smart Contracts for escrow it's at least possible ).  Can you get a data set of stolen credit card numbers, or a zero day for a major type of computer system?  

None of these illegal goods were easy to get before because they are so specialized.  It's the same problem where if you were doing hobbyist electronics and shopping at radio shack, you were limited to very basic designs.  The government being able to control access to weapons - which both heavy weapons and high end hacking tools count as - are part of their monopoly on the use of force and again a threat to them.    

Anyways I'm not disputing (A) but I can see a possible crash of crypto if (B) ever leads to a major incident, such as a major government VIP assassinated with a guided missile, all arranged through the dark web with payment through crypto.  Governments can regulate crypto, as mentioned - they merely need ban Western banks from knowingly allowing funds in the bank accounts from being used to buy crypto, or allowing the proceeds from a sale of crypto sale to be deposited in them.  This would pretty much kill crypto.

Why do you think that transactions are a poor proxy? I don't fully buy into the "store or value" idea. My uneducated opinion is something can only store value if it has an underlying use. Facilitating black markets is certainly an economically valid use. 

I'm confused by your second paragraph. Perhaps some of it is intended as a response to my answer to your first question? The primary argument which I can identify is that AI safety is not motivated by profit, but by saving the world. Saving the world requires money. Many people working on AGI probably think it will have an enormous positive impact on the world, so I can equally claim that they might not even ask for salary. 

I don't find you're argument convincing. It requires a lot of conditionals and appears to contain much room for error/oversight. You might be right but it doesn't serve me to speculate deeply into this topic, I'm content with not knowing.