If anything a crypto exchange is a misnomer as it's not even needed. The only reason it exists is because smart contracts didn't exist when they first started.
Calm down. That is not true. Smart contract based exchanges do not let people exchange real money into crypto. There will always need to be offchain exchanges for trading USD for crypto. Additionally, trading off chain is much cheaper than on chain.
Centralized exchanges will always exist because people want on / off ramps, people want low fees, and because people are willing to trust others.
How this does not wake up all the idiots, I will never understand.
How come your superior technology is inferior in one of the crucial axes of trading technology???
It's inferior in a lot of ways, which is why it never took over the way its proponents thought.
But if you're the type of trader who makes a trade and then forgets about it for a while you're at risk of losing the funds left on the exchange - like with Paypal.
As a bonus, Ethereum's scaling roadmap is coming along pretty well, with a pretty clear path to 100K tx/sec within the next few years. That should make transactions quite a bit cheaper.
BTC is barely used as an actual currency to buy things with. I could be wrong but I thought the idea was that you'd be using BTC in daily life so that you wouldn't need to go "off the ramp".
There are people, even today, who have no better choice but to use BTC for transactions or for storing value.
The point is that if you want to (or need to), you can do it. So people now have that option, which they didn't have before BTC was created.
As an example, it might be the best option for doing transactions and storing value for large amounts of people in some area, in times of crisis (e.g. financial crisis, war, oppressive governments, etc). You might not be able to use a fiat currency in such cases without significant downsides, such as extreme inflation, confiscation, blocking of bank withdrawals or transactions, going to prison, etc. Bitcoin is available and can be used whenever such events happen.
In fact, if you ever run into a situation like this, you might even desperately need BTC and will be very glad it exists, so don't discount its value so easily.
That said, sure, it would be better if there was more adoption. I think there should be and hope there will be.
But it's not exactly a flaw, in the same way as you not being able to use the currency of some obscure country in your daily life is not a flaw with that currency.
> Bitcoin is available and can be used whenever such events happen.
Except the fact that bitcoin needs continuous internet access and electricity. The first can be blocked by oppressive government. The second can be hard to come by in times of war.
Bitcoin is a first-world solution to imaginary problems.
First of all, bitcoin users don't need continuous internet access. At best, they need intermittent internet access.
It's also possible to use Bitcoin without internet access. Nowadays you can send and receive Bitcoin transactions over satellite, SMS and I think even over radio, no Internet required.
There are also ways to get around Internet blocking.
> The second can be hard to come by in times of war.
There are ways to produce your own electricity. And using Bitcoin (as opposed to mining it) doesn't require much electricity. You just need to be able to charge your mobile phone with a small portable solar panel.
There are also many, many, many examples of such crisis where people have access to both the Internet and electricity.
> Bitcoin is a first-world solution to imaginary problems.
You really are completely oblivious to the many crisis around the world that have happened in recent decades, aren't you?
You might just eat these words one day.
All of these mean: continuous easily available connection at any point. And to send anything through SMS or radio? Again. First. World.
"To send Bitcoin (or any cryptocurrency) over ham radio you need to download the apps TxTenna and Samourai wallet, sync your phone with a goTenna mesh device, and then you’ll be set up to send and receive Bitcoin via a mesh network "
Ah yes. Apps. And readily available proprietary mesh devices.
> There are ways to produce your own electricity.
And all that is surely available and instantly accessible to people living with oppressive governments and in times of war. Instead of, you know, actual cash, barter, and storing valuables in actual valuables.
> You really are completely oblivious to the many crisis around the world that have happened in recent decades, aren't you?
It's precisely because I know of these crises that I find "generate your own electricity to just charge a mobile phone to just send bitcoin transactions over satellite or radio in times of war/oppressive government" laughable.
> You might just eat these words one day.
See, I lived through at least one of these crises in the 90s [1], after the fall of the Soviet Union. The idea that your bitcoin fantasy would survive a single brownout (or a blackout) when you need things like potable water or food now and not when "intermittent internet access is available" shows how much you understand about "the many crises around the world".
And that's without war or an oppressive government.
[1] Now delegated to a single paragraph on Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_independent_Moldova...
What good is a book on gardening when you're hungry right now? What good is a herd of cows when you need to put out a fire? You sound like an anti-second amendment person asking if we intend to use our guns to shoot down an f35 fighter.
No, bitcoin and crypto aren't going to be the savior for someone who wakes up in Mosul in the middle of the fighting.
But they might be a way out of the country with wealth intact, the difference between being a penniless refuge and a valued citizen.
> Again. First. World.
You're using first/second/third world incorrectly labels, and you're wrong. Even in the poorest places in the world, and the most war torn, we see people with their mobile devices and tiny solar panels, or charging from a merchant with a larger panel.
> continuous easily available connection at any point
No, you really don't need that. You could produce a signed transaction alone, disconnected from everyone, on your phone, and represent it as a QR code with bushes in your backyard and I could scan it from a satellite photo, decode it, and submit it to the blockchain.
This is far fetched but the point is that the transaction can be made alone and offline, transmitted to the blockchain by any means even over months or years, without risk of being modified on the way. You could hide these in letters overseas, or boxes of goods, etc.
> Instead of, you know, actual cash, barter, and storing valuables in actual valuables.
If I was you I'd list all the ways that cash and valuables can be taken and that barter might be for broken or worthless goods. Instead I'll summarize as "there are risks in everything".
> Calm down. That is not true.
It pretty much is. Bitcoin's solution to scripting exploits was to weaken scripting. It would have been impractical to use BTC for defi and more work was undergoing to fix those problems. The weasels snuck in at the beginning and now that we can do without them they're already in the walls.
> Smart contract based exchanges do not let people exchange real money into crypto.
For trading there are a couple of options (aside from Tether, which is a scam) for pegging a trade to USD.
For on/offramp, you are sorta right. If I want to trade for strawberries I need someone holding strawberries, and I have a risk he'll give me raspberries.
> Centralized exchanges will always exist because people want on / off ramps, people want low fees
On/off ramps don't require centralization, they only require one legally bound actor, and we can all pick our fave. You may trust a lawyer near you, I may trust my local gold bullion store for up to $5k at a time, etc.
Low fees are far better achieved by a channel or rollup based solution, where the assets are essentially on-chain the entire time.
> and because people are willing to trust others.
This is bad argument. You're trying to make trust virtuous even though removing the need for trust is far better for society - removing risk and friction for everyone.
Oh, you mean the "smart" "contracts" (which are neither) that routinely have trivial exploitable errors that even their authors are unaware of?