"The facts on the ground show the reality: 15 years after Bitcoin was created, no-one uses it as a currency. It’s an asset. It’s still far slower and more expansive even for complex international money transfers than the “old world” financial system.

Bitcoin and the other currencies around it are barely even useful for criminals: online drug markets proved much easier for law enforcement to infiltrate than traditional organised crime networks, and the traceability of crypto transactions has brought down crime kingpins across the globe.

The failure of Bitcoin – or any other cryptocurrency – to actually get used as a currency has led to people searching for more outlandish explanations as to why is might have value, rather than just a high price. It was once claimed it would topple the existing financial order, but its embrace from hedge funds, big tech, and other financial world staples make those ring hollow.

There is a deeply confused claim that because Bitcoin mining requires huge amounts of energy, that means that Bitcoins are themselves a store of energy – almost like a digital battery. This sounds clever to a certain sort of galaxy brained young man, but incredibly dumb to everyone else. The latter group are correct: a forest fire might incinerate a huge number of trees, but that does not make fire a store of wood."

https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/thanks-to-trump-bitcoin-is-booming-but-it-is-still-useless/

#USA #Trump #Crypto #Cryptocurrencies #Bitcoin

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Someone doesn't understand what the monetization of a new asset looks like...

The first use is as a savings vehicle & escape from inflation. Monetary debasement is largest financial problem in the world, robbing the economy of trillions per year. Bitcoin has a provably fixed supply, which makes it an escape from that.

Retail layer software is still not fully mature, but it obviously is used as money on a day to day basis by many people (myself included). There are also situations like the early donations to Wikileaks, and the trucker protests in Canada where all other avenues of donation were blocked & bitcoin was the ONLY money suitable for the job because it couldn't be censored. Many have raised money to help the Appalachian areas damaged by the hurricane. Bitcoin gets used every day on Nostr. There are services that allow people to buy giftcards at a discount which makes it a modern digital coupon clipping tool. Just being able to move significant amounts of money without anyone's permission, outside of banking hours, without having to wait days, & the ability to pay people internationally are such dramatic improvements that having to dsal with a bank at all feels like a massive burden in comparison.

Nonsense like this "bitcoin is useless" article will just be added to the hundreds or thousands of others like it as proof of just how uninformed & resistent many people chose to remain even 15 years into Bitcoin's success. It's probably good though. People who aren't smart enough to even be curious don't deserve it. They should probably trust their govt & get another covid booster on their way to a lunch full of corn syrup & seed oils. While they slowly kill themselves, bitcoin is money for people who want to live 😊