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Comment by munksbeer | Hacker News Reader

> Bitcoin is money for enemies. If my enemy and I can transact in an adversarial environment without relying on some subjective truth, this is valuable.

What are you transacting? Ultimately, you're going to be transacting in a real world "thing", rather than just something on the chain. So you haven't actually solved anything, there is still a layer of trust involved. You still rely on your enemy to either make the transaction after you deliver the "thing", or you rely on your enemy to deliver the "thing" after you make the transaction.

Sure, you can stand there with guns to heads, but then you could just do it in cash, no need for bitcoin.

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You should appreciate that the trust assumptions in your example have been minimized to a point not before possible for digital transactions; in principle removing all possible third-party interference in remote transactions.

If you're going to argue about failures in practice, I'm not interested, because I agree (likely in a way more open-minded to moving forward than your mindset of giving up).

Yes, I agree, bitcoin (I'm using bitcoin as a proxy for others here) does that. But it turns out that most of the world doesn't value that property all that highly when combined with all the downsides of bitcoin.

The vast majority of transactions are from people buying and selling crypto, not for real world cases, just trying to make a profit in fiat.

We've had 15 years now, and we can still ignore crypto. Most people do. I chose not to, in case it made me rich, and it seems to be working ok towards that goal.

I don't see what you mean by "giving up", because that is still presupposing that there is a real problem that the technology is solving, that people are ignoring out of laziness or spite or something.

I'm not going to argue you or anyone should find the value aforementioned.

But I think the "it's been 15 years" argument is hollow. Clearly Bitcoin has an every-growing community of dedicated holders, and Bitcoin has surely increased the general skepticism of the monetary system.

I think you are conflating a speculative vehicle with an inflation hedge. Bitcoin is surely great for both depending on your timeline, but you strawman it a bit by appealing to the lowest common denominator who doesn't get and doesn't hold it.

It's provably scarce, it's highly locally securable (big job, but possible for most) and as a scarce asset, it's relatively cheap and easy to transfer. Yes, it failed as money (on the base layer), and that was its stated goal, but I'll readily give credit where it is due.

Thousands of cryptocurrencies are scarce. I can create a new one tomorrow which will also be scarce. That is necessary but not sufficient to create value.

It isn't cheap and easy to transfer. Tech nerds find it so, but get out the bubble and almost no-one else does.

The things I like about bitcoin is that it is indeed a trust free transaction mechanism, and provided you evade the law, there is no inbuilt mechanism to sanction anyone from using it. And yes, in theory it presents an alternative to traditional finance. I like that we have this now, as a threat so to speak.

Fantastic.

But now what? In reality, almost no-one cares. That is just the raw reality. It is too complicated, too insecure, too risky for most of society. I personally do not see any of this being overcome, and I never expect it to become anything other than a speculative vehicle in which most chain transactions are just people buying and selling it from each other for fiat money.

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