i would expect this kind of technical ignorance from the news or my mom but not "hackernews". there is real value in exchanging value/currency P2P globally relatively quickly and cheap. you know "internet money" people dreamed about decades ago...
The overwhelming majority of users are holding it as an asset. Which it’s also poorly suited for in the long run: it generates nothing in and of itself and requires constant feeding of money and energy to keep it going. The only way to see a return is to trade it to a greater fool.
Yes. The size of the money-laundering, exchange control evasion, and tax evasion industry was way underestimated.
What surprised me is that after China banned cryptocurrencies in 2021 [1], the price didn't drop.
Outside of Bitcoin and Ethereum, almost everything in crypto eventually tanks. The entire NFT market has tanked. Even the big names, such as BAYC, are down. BAYC is down 80% since launch. In memecoin land, "eventually" can be measured in days. Check out TRUMP.
Even Ethereum peaked back in 2021. Bitcoin has had 75% drops. If you bought and held anything other than BTC, you're probably under water now.
Then there are the constant collapses and "rug pulls".[2] US$76 billion total so far.
There is some value for those without access to stable currencies in their home country, but that use case is absolutely dwarfed by the other use cases out there at the moment. Perhaps this will change if the US goes through an economic collapse due to bad tariffs or something.
Compared to what?
Let’s say your goal is to get some wealth out of Tibet into India.
Is it “quick and easy” to do that with dollars? Or Yuan? How about gold bricks? Maybe goats?
I’m not sure what the Chinese authorities at the border would have to say about those things.
With Bitcoin you can memorize a phrase like “witch collapse practice feed shame open despair creek road again ice least” and with that information in your brain you can move any amount of money anywhere your brain can go.
That is one _utility_ of Bitcoin. Just like one _utility_ of a dollar bill is I can put it in a Coke machine.
The first thing that many governments will do when a protest of any kind starts becoming too effective is to make it a crime to participate or support the protest. I think we should all keep this scenario in mind when discussing what the future of our financial system should look like.
It's foolish to gloss over the word "crime" like it only describes human trafficking and international drug trade, especially with everything going on in the US. What was "going to the doctor" yesterday could be "committing a crime" tomorrow.