[carshodev]

Although it was originally intended to be cash it actually now is used as a "store of wealth" It allows people to build up wealth and be able to preserve it from government intervention and inflation. If you have stocks the ownerhsip and registration is controlled by a government and can be taken at any time from you.

Look at china where if you have a large company and take a stand against the government all your equity will be wiped out and you will be either imprisoned or banished to another country.

Cash in a government bank account is the same way, you can wake up one day and all your assets will be seized, your credit cards will stop working.

Bitcoin works because you can technically have your wealth memorized. You can memorize a string of charcters that allow you to bring money with you no matter where you go. NO government or other human can steal it from you (except through torture) but you can also easily not memorize it and instead distribute the keys throughout the world in opposing countries meaning even if you are attacked by one country you still have some wealth kept in another.

A store of wealth is what bitcion allows. True freedom from governments stealing your money because you have ideas which they do not agree with.

This in my mind is the main usage of bitcoin.

Other coins like stablecoins, or the btc lightning network have high value because they make transactions much cheaper as traditional banking systems are complex, error prone, and costly.

[wpietri]

> Although it was originally intended to be cash it actually now is used as a "store of wealth"

It's also terrible at that. Bitcoin is down by something like half off its peak. The odds of me losing money to "government intervention" if I'm not actively criming, are quite low. Certainly well under 50%.

> Bitcoin works because you can technically have your wealth memorized.

If you are having to reach for increasingly absurd fantasy scenarios to justify something that was supposed to have thoroughly quotidian users, maybe you should take that as a sign?

> because you have ideas which they do not agree with

Oh, that's who's using bitcoin the most? Philosophers and the like? I had no idea.

[grim_io]

This is not a common man's dream, but one of privilege and wealthy background. The oppressed masses don't need Bitcoin, they have no wealth to "memorize" and jetset around the world.

[slopinthebag]

It's precisely the opposite actually; If you're wealthy you can switch citizenships, hide your assets in tax havens, and afford property and other assets to store your wealth. For the debanked, or those living in unstable or authoritarian countries it gives them a more stable way to store and transact, especially with massive inflation.

Pretty much everyone I know who talks shit about bitcoin is wealthy and privileged.

[carshodev]

Look back in history and there have been many cases of poor people being pushed out of their homes, stripped of their valuable goods and forced to relocate, in that case it would apply to those who were not wealthy.

[grim_io]

I don't see how a blockchain would help there. Put the house on the blockchain or what?

[throw0101a]

> Although it was originally intended to be cash it actually now is used as a "store of wealth"

For some definition of "actually", given how much it has dropped recently. When he was still a just a candidate, the current Opposition leader in Canada was very excited about Bitcoin:

> As Poilievre campaigned for the Tory leadership on the way to a landslide victory, he spoke positively about decentralized finance and cryptocurrency. At one point, he argued that crypto would allow Canadians to "opt-out" of inflation, which was soaring at the time. And he famously used Bitcoin to purchase a shawarma at a London, Ont., restaurant in March 2022.

* Nov 2023: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cryptocurrency-political-co...

> In 2022, when Pierre Poilievre was a Conservative leadership candidate, he said he’d make Canada the crypto capital of the world. According to him, the Bank of Canada was “ruining” the Canadian dollar, printing money and ramping up inflation to fund COVID-19 relief. His solution? Give Canadians crypto as an alternative currency.

* Apr 2025: https://macleans.ca/politics/who-stands-to-win-in-poilievres...

Given the noise that was made about inflation at the time and the (alleged) devaluation of the CAD, I'm curious to know what the inflation rate equivalent would be now (Feb 2026) if Bitcoin is used as the monetary base.