[PragmaticPulp]

Sure, but why do we need a separate currency for all of this in the first place?

Once all of these cryptocurrencies and exchanges become fast, the price doesn't actually matter. If I can buy the crypto, transfer it, and exchange back out of the crypto to my target currency in seconds, it doesn't matter if SOL is at $0.01 or $100 per coin. If I'm only in it for a few seconds, I just buy and then immediately sell however many coins are needed to move my value from Point A to Point B.

The reason Bitcoiners don't want larger block sizes is that they don't actually want spending. They want Bitcoin to be an asset that only goes up in price. Spending and selling drive the price down, so those need to have high hurdles to discourage that behavior.

[brianvli]

> Sure, but why do we need a separate currency for all of this in the first place?

I might be answering the wrong q, but the separate currency represents the cost of a transaction in the network. I.e. the amount you're willing to pay to send a transaction in the network and the amount a staker is willing to receive in exchange for validating your transaction

How else would you represent that cost in a crypto network? Some kind of currency needs to represent the transaction cost.