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Comment by Pungsnigel | Hacker News Reader

Still has usage as a potential store of value and a means of cheap global transfers. My mother in law use it monthly to transfer money to her home (third world) country, which is crazy easy and cheap compared to traditional means.

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Any legitimate use of cryptocurrency will never materialize as long as people are gambling with them.

The intrinsic value of Bitcoin is nowhere near the current price. When the speculators all sell and the only demand comes from people looking to actually use them, the price will drop by a lot.

But, when that happens, the speculators/grifters will simply move to another coin. That other coin will see a similar bubble, and bitcoin’s value will drop even further as people perceive it as “dead” or worthless (as maybe it should have always been perceived)

So until this shit gets under control somehow, cryptocurrency is going to remain the exclusive domain of the speculator/gambler/criminal/grifter/gullible. And of course, the world will suffer increased energy usage, pollution, and GPU shortages.

Cryptocurrencies and their markets are anarcho-capitalist by design and intent. The entire premise of crypto is that only the free market determines legitimacy through profit and market share.

If gamblers and thieves dominate the crypto market and cannot be outcompeted by honest actors then by definition the market has decided it prefers gamblers and thieves to honest actors. If someone wants an economy with rules other than "lol Caveat Emptor" they shouldn't get into crypto.

Increased amounts of speculation actually in theory should decrease volatility and bring the price to the fair value more quickly.

What I think you are not considering here is that you can speculate both on the upside or the downside. Speculators are only trying to predict the future price, speculation is not the same as a "pump and dump scheme".

> When the speculators all sell and the only demand comes from people looking to actually use them, the price will drop by a lot. ... bitcoin’s value will drop even further as people perceive it as “dead” or worthless (as maybe it should have always been perceived)

Like you said yourself, if it is true that Bitcoin is overvalued then it would be a good thing for every Bitcoin user if its price dropped to the fair value. Why are you describing that situation like a bad thing here? I expect users would be happy that they can now afford more of the coin for practical use cases, and adoption in those use cases would probably go up more than anything.

It’s easy and cheap because it is bypassing all the money laundering, KYC, and other money movement rules.

You say that as if it's a bad thing.

I can rent a moving truck to get groceries, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea. There might be narrow use cases, but that doesn't mean it's the best realistic way to solve every problem, and it doesn't mean it's worth the cost.

I hear what you're saying, but it's not nearly as "narrow" as you suggest. Remittances from the United States total hundreds of billions of US dollars each year [1]. Even with what I feel are bloated fees associated with Bitcoin, it is vastly cheaper than other services like Western Union.

1. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/interactives/remittance-f...

The concern here is power use vs. utility relative to other options, not price. By cost I meant the cost under discussion: environmental and health. How much energy do remittance services use to move an equivalent amount of money? What about the cost to health and the environment?

The utility isn't solely measured by the amount of money a financial service can move, or the amount of transactions it can process.

If that were true, Western Union would obviously have less utility than Visa. But actually, WU and Visa solve totally different problems with different risks associated, so it doesn't make sense to compare them in that way.

Who is claiming that Bitcoin is the right tool for every job, besides hype artists?

And how do we judge whether the market price is "worth" the use cases or not? Isn't that exactly what the market is doing in pricing the asset?

Please stop those myths - cheap global transfers is not something that needs cryptocurrencies for it to happen, this can and will work within the current rails.

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