They're afraid of it because it removes all their power in the world. Governments and banks control wealth around the world, and can extract small amounts from every person millions of times over and over. Bitcoin and other altcoins threaten that power. I don't think it should completely eliminate banks or fiat currencies or anything like that, you still need to be able to pay to build roads and schools and things like that, of course. But the banking industry should not have the power to basically tell you what you're allowed to do with your own money. Bitcoin is the answer to this, the banking industry needs to be innovative to compete with it, and hopefully their fees and other bullshit will fall in line with cryptocurrency as the years go by.