| I respectfully disagree with your assertion that "the fundamentals are all wrong". I can't really think of many reasons why you would use crypto to pay for a coffee or a sandwhich if you live in the West (or frankly, even most developing nations).
On the other hand, I can definitely see the utility in a censorship-resistant digital medium to store wealth. To me, this latter use case has much, much more potential to serve the unbanked (as well as the banked). Some use cases I can think off the top of my head: (1) You are from Syria and need to flee war and escape into Europe – however bank transfers into Europe are almost impossible if you are a common Syrian. Bitcoin allows you to take your wealth with you, in your brain, as you escape across the border, by just memorising your twelve word private key. (2) You are from Venezuela or Zimbabwe – The government has issued capital controls and is devaluing currency by the day. You transfer your wealth into Bitcoin in order to offset capital erosion due to hyper-inflation. When the situation stabilises, you transfer your Bitcoin back into fiat. (3) You are Saudi billionaire Al-Waleed bin Talal. The government freezes all your assets in a political coup. If you have a portion of your wealth in Bitcoin, you could protect them from government expropriation and anonymously transfer them to associates or family members abroad. (4) You are whistleblower Julian Assance and have been cut off from the financial system as a way to censor your speech. Bitcoin allows you to have an unbreakable digital "Swiss bank account" that the authorities are not able to reach. This reminds me of Peter Thiel's recent words about Bitcoin: "it's like a reserve form of money, it's like gold, and it's just a store of value. You don't need to use it to make payments." Reference [1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/26/bitcoin-underestimated-peter... |