> Bitcoin's only real-world use case is illicit goods.

That's ridiculous, what about illicit services?

I use Bitcoin to buy from NewEgg. It's the only way I can buy from them as a Canadian buy from the US site (they decline my PayPal and Credit Card for some unknown reason).

I use it for buy Joylent for Europe, because I don't get screwed by exchange rate the Visa/PayPal give me.

These are real everyday uses of Bitcoin that normal people could engage in that to my knowledge are better provided by the Bitcoin network than by traditional system.

> Bitcoin's only real-world use case is illicit goods.

You have a lot to learn; I recommend starting here: https://medium.com/@lopp/the-multifaceted-nature-of-bitcoin-...

A deeper dive here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgETC2JMUBI

I know all the blogpost ones. To list a few problems:

* Bitcoin is not better for any of the consumer uses than existing financial systems, and is significantly worse for most.

* the only real-world use that we see happening is illicit goods (and, as noted in imglorp's comment here, the blockchain's utility as prosecution futures makes it not a great idea for that either).

* real-world consumers, who are at the powerless end of the financial power relationship, consider regulation a feature - the only people who consider a lack of regulation a feature are cranks and scammers.

* pretty much nobody actually wants smart contracts. Dr Strangelove is a movie about an unstoppable smart contract going wrong. Both consumers and businesses want the possibility of regulatory interrupt upon a bad deal. The only people who would want smart contracts are businesses looking to screw over customers with no choice (c.f. mandatory arbitration clauses).

Look, assume I know a bit about this stuff and have looked into the brochure version claims in detail. The possibility of a use case isn't sufficient; we've had six years of Bitcoin, and that's been enough time to see most of that blog post list has been tried and failed. You've had six years, it's time to show actual utility.

Also, this is a site for communication using words; expecting someone to watch a YouTube video when you could just write words yourself is probably not effective communication.

Your claims are the same that were made regarding "real-world consumers" at the dawn of the Internet. It takes time to build up a network effect and improve ease-of-use for revolutionary new systems.

shrugs

I spent quite a few hours developing aforementioned blog post and the presentation to my alumni Computer Science department - specifically to save me the time of typing it all out to every individual who wants to learn about it.

To clear a common misconception: BTC is not anonymous. The world knows where you got your coin, and where you spent it; it's there in the journal for all to see. It might not be tied to your name and social specifically, but if you want to give or get goods or services, you'll be interfacing with meatspace at some point and then it will all be tied to you.

So no, BTC is not much good for illicit goods.

From the article: "In the last few months there have been increasing runs of full blocks, causing backlogs for a few hours."

Yes, I covered that in the second point.

That doesn't sound like the same thing. A fuller quote: "In the last few months there have been increasing runs of full blocks, causing backlogs for a few hours. More recently, someone deliberately flooded the network with normal-fee transactions for several days"

It sounds like the full blocks happened spontaneously for several months before the stress test.

> Bitcoin's only real-world use case is illicit goods.

Please get up to date with things. Bitcoin is huge in the remittance world, and bitcoin-like technology is being tentatively explored in all realms of financial technology.

I really would like you to detail these cases for which Bitcoin is huge in the remittance world, because this would be new and useful information for me to update myself on. If I'm wrong, I'd like to know.

> Bitcoin is huge in the remittance world

Really, who with? I recall rebit.ph saying the problem was they couldn't actually sell enough BTC for PHP at the .ph end, for example. Bitcoin makes the transmission bit cheap, but that bit was cheap already.

Actual remittances startup company guy talks about why Bitcoin doesn't work for remittances: https://www.regalii.com/blog/the-bitcoin-remittance-myth

> Bitcoin's only real-world use case is illicit goods.

I think the 400 Million[1] in venture capital alone can disqualify this statement.

[1] http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-venture-capital/

That would surely be "speculation on future real-world use cases". Which isn't nothing, but isn't present real-world use cases.