[brownbat]

> Credit and debit cards are just a way of shifting dollars around

A credit card is shifting a line of credit, an intangible promise to pay, a form of trust, that happens to be denominated in dollars.

We can pretend it's just a balance of dollars, even though it technically isn't, because it makes conversations easier, and in practical fact that's how it appears to work. But that's just a shorthand.

We can use the same shorthand to say someone bought something with bitcoin.

There's no reason to demand perfect technical precision with bitcoin and no similar pedantic precision with lines of credit.

> you can't walk into a store and give them some gold flake or a quart of Texas crude in exchange for a candy bar

I think this is the best test. Here the guy has done that. He walked in with bitcoin and walked out with tacos. When you say that's not really what happened, it feels like a no true scotsman response.

[wpietri]

It did not. He gave them dollars, not a quart of crude. That he might have a side deal with somebody else to trade beanie babies for dollars does not make beanie babies a currency.

Bitcoin is not a currency. Plenty of other things are true currencies, so there's no fallacy here.