It's reliable enough actually (people are currently doing this). You also don't need it up all the time to move value into BTC.
> Sounds like a great way to get rubber hosed to death.
There isn't a way for them to tell that you've done this, and in the case in the Ukraine it allowed him to get out with his wealth intact: https://www.forbes.com/sites/tatianakoffman/2020/06/13/why-b...
> Deflationary, for consumers, is bad. I am also not convinced bitcoin in nearly divisible enough to actually be world currency. (And that's ignoring the fact that it would need something like 7 orders of magnitude improvement in throughput)
I don't think it'll be used for frequent transactions unless they actually can fix the time/throughput issues, but that doesn't mean it's useless. There could potentially be a future where you move BTC to some other currency with faster transaction times in smaller amounts for immediate or frequent use.
Just because a lot of blockchain tech is filled with people running ICO pump and dump scams, speculators, and an enormous amount of bullshit in general doesn't mean there isn't also some cool stuff going on too. There's a lot of nonsense, but there are also some real current applications, and I think, some real future potential.