And when BTC Transaction fees climb to $30, like they did a couple of weeks ago, then what? We just stop transacting?
Centralized exchanges are a natural result of the absurd transaction fees that the BTC community refuses to fix. If it costs $30 to make a transaction, it makes more sense to centralize and perform off-chain transfers of BTC.
Even today, where the BTC Transaction fee has dropped to "only" $3.60 / transaction, many natural uses of BTC are simply priced out. At least... using a hardware wallet is priced out. A centralized exchange which performs off-chain transactions doesn't have to pay of course.
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The price of Magic the Gathering Black Lotus just keeps rising higher and higher as well. But no one actually plays with the card in practice. Similarly, since BTC transaction fees are denominated in... BTC... the higher the BTC price, the higher the transaction fee, and the less likely everyone is to use the base system.
Seems like lose-lose over the long term. The only ones who want to buy BTC are speculators. Everyone who wants to "use" it for transactions is priced out, or rug pulled.
It doesn't have to be like this by the way. But its like this because the community doesn't care.
> Price (in the long run) is all that matters.
The Yen is 1/100th, or less, than the Dollar. No one doubts that Japan is still an economic power.
As far as currencies go, I think people care about the number of transactions. How much trade occurs with the currency? There's also a desire to keep prices consistent, rather than going up or down over time (too much inflation, and too much deflation, is both bad. A balance of keeping prices steady is best).
With regards to the Stock Market, companies mostly care about IPOs and SPOs, how many $Billions they can raise by selling stock. Trade volume is kind of a side-show, and even price is a side-show and easily manipulated (see BRK.A shares, which are overpriced on purpose... by having fewer shares control a larger % of the company)