[wikfwikf]

That's not the whole story. When Bitcoin started it was used more as a currency than it is now. Firstly by evangelists who tried to establish a BTC economy, and secondly in the illicit economy.

Bitcoin miners and devs took the project in a specific direction a few years later, optimizing it for use as digital gold, while making it much harder and more expensive to use as a currency.

[SkipperCat]

100% agree. The early days of Silk Road showed the true value of Bitcoin. It was a great untraceable currency. Perfect for buying drugs (no moral judgement, just saying what happened). Then, around 2016, CNBC “discovered” crypto and so much investor money and mania jumped in. Now it’s just a value store for dreamers. The fact that the word HODL exists kinda proves that point.

[2muchcoffeeman]

Not just dreamers, it’s an identity. Someone else on this topic is calling themselves a “hodler”. Not just an investor. But a “hodler”, a “True Believer” I suppose.

Your investment is there to make you money, not to provide you with an identity.

[cool_dude85]

Personally, I like for my untraceable currency not to have a permanent, public ledger showing every transaction I make.

[ridgered4]

Yes, my understanding of bitcoin is that it is not untraceable at all since the transactions can be followed back to their source, but it was widely perceived as such by dark markets for a number of years. I guess maybe if you mined it yourself (no longer really feasible for an individual?) or somehow purchased it with cash it might be.

[pessimizer]

> That's not the whole story. When Bitcoin started it was used more as a currency than it is now.

I still reflexively think of bitcoin primarily as the way you buy abstract board games from Spanish libertarians, because of https://nestorgames.com/