[wpietri]

Mining and trading do not create value. Like speculation in other commodities, it's basically gambling. Except that the markets for, say, oil futures let people buy insurance to mitigate risks in the underlying commodity that they don't want to take. But since Bitcoin doesn't have a similar underlying value yet, the speculation can't be justified as possibly creating value.

The one group I have to admit is getting value from Bitcoin is criminals. E.g., it's the technology of choice for ransomware. But that just doesn't strike me as a use case that will help Bitcoin cross the chasm.