I've never understood crypto, however I'm long term Bitcoin fan and user, and don't consider it "crypto". I think Bitcoin is pretty much opposite what the typical crypto project is.
There's a reason people still use USD, EUR etc. and not fractional ETFs to pay and get paid.
There is a reason people still have things like checking and savings accounts and CDs.
That’s exactly my point.
Bitcoin is a speculative asset: it has very high price volatility. It is not a store of value in the proper term.
Bitcoin lost 10.8%
Gold gained 60.0%
You just proved his point. In this example, bitcoin's volatility is closer to zero than gold's. Thus, by the quoted definition of "store of value", then in this particular time frame (it would be very different going back 5, 10, 15 years), bitcoin is the better store of value.
Most of it is tax and sanctions evasion.
It completely ignores the benefits of Monero. Crime exists. Its not going anywhere. It is not societies job to make the crime fighter's job a walk in the park. Crimninals use cars to commit crimes, we don't outlaw cars. They use masks, the store sells masks.
The benefits of a global, decentralized and truly private and free medium of value exchange would be massive to the average person, but deterimental to those in power so they must use FUD to squash it.
Even Bitcoin though is not a panacea though, as without REAL transactional use-cases, it is also prone to sudden major drops. Until people in your home state can buy a car, house, and groceries using bitcoin directly (WITHOUT a Visa bridge), the real value will be highly subjective to the whims of the market.
The post mentioned the idea of casually sending a billion dollars. Was that ever possible with Bitcoin? AFAIK it's less ergonomic to send money using Bitcoin than it is using traditional banking.
The hard part is that for day to day things you still need an on ramp and off ramp, but that is changing as merchants accept crypto directly.
For the most part all I need is an address. That’s it. Then it takes a couple minutes to transfer - done!
If I can solve that problem with another simpler, older technology it doesn’t count as useful. I don’t care if you can pay for things using ethereum when I can just use my credit card instead.
if there was a real use case it would have manifested itself at this point
i think the abstraction needs to be much higher to end user for this stuff to have value. having to manage your own wallet doesn't make sense.