| "In practice, most people dealing with Bitcoin are dealing with it through ~banks~ exchanges which gave them a Bitcoin denominated IOU; and which may or may not be engaging in fractional reserve banking." You're not wrong. Most people do it with IOUs, ie exchanges. But most people, don't have most of the bitcoin. "Crypto Exchanges Hold 6.6% of Bitcoin Supply – One of the Lowest in History" https://bitcoinke.io/2021/09/percentage-of-bitcoins-on-excha... I'd like this number to be even lower. And as more exchanges (and governments) default, I expect it will be. "* hard to store securely - I'd class this as a point for Gold." fair to debate, a lot does get lost because people lose paper backups. but is this really harder than gold? I think it's largely unfamiliarity that will improve with time. "* expensive to transact with at a distance - As opposed to Bitcoin, which is just expensive to transact; and gets more expensive the more people use it, as there is a finite amount of transactions per unit time." if you don't understand how lightning works, of course you will believe this. lots of fud right now. encourage you to kick the tires here, and actually install a lightning wallet and see. as a retail guy, you can start selling slurpees via lightning, today. https://medium.com/coinmonks/strike-partners-with-shopify-bl... no it's not perfect, but it is non custodial. now imagine you are in venezuela or weimar germany. |