Hundreds of millions of people have lost their fortunes due to inflation.

That's a social problem which would be solved by cryptocurrencies.

I can also recommend this podcast on the topic of current real world applications of Bitcoin: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2017/02/jim_epstein_on.html

> Hundreds of millions of people have lost their fortunes due to inflation.

Do you have any links or can you explain how people lost fortunes due to inflation? I've read a lot of economics and this is news to me.

Actually, my fortune is increasing due to inflation! See, I have this huge loan (mortgage) and every year, due to inflation, this loan effectively becomes smaller and smaller.

Why not just gold?

Gold is hard.

It's hard to get a hold of, it's hard to store securely, it's hard to transport, and it's hard to get people to accept it.

If you're really considering gold or Bitcoin, you very likely care about many of those things, and you'll see that Bitcoin has distinct advantages for several of those problems, with a lot of potential to improve.

> a solution to a problem that doesn't exist

The problems are central banking and related problems: demonetization, devaluation, hyperinflation, bank bail outs from taxpayers, etc.

Cutting out middlemen out of a transaction is a very useful feature of cryptocurrencies which potentially broadly benefits society.

For example (in certain parts of Europe, and probably elsewhere too) merchants have to pay a fairly high fixed cost to have credit card terminals in their place of business, and also pay a cut of each transactions to Visa or Mastercard. This is a considerable cost to small business, which have to pass this along to consumers. Now of course most consumers don't use bitcoin or other altcoins to pay for stuff today, however the fact that there's even the possibility of eliminating these types of middlemen is very exciting, and unthinkable even a few short years ago.

Not to mention the very exciting possiblities offered by blockchains and smart contracts, even if the original projects that spawned them fail completely (bitcoin and ethereum).

The reason for why CC processing fees are high, is because of the cost of dealing with fraud.

BTC simply shifts all the cost of dealing with fraud to the customer.

> a solution to a problem that doesn't exist

What alleged problem do you think Bitcoin is trying to solve?

The Byzantine Generals' Problem.

Psuedonymous transactions.

I think many people are finding cross-border transactions to be the big draw for Bitcoin, especially in places like Venezuela. Ordinary people are using cryptocurrency to skirt government-imposed monetary controls. They don't care about the privacy angle and aren't trying to obtain illegal / harmful products.

That's not bitcoin's killer use-case. It's killer use-case is as a store of value.

We already have wire transfers for that, no?

Bitcoin is making value transfers cheap, fast and accessible.

You mean slow, expensive, and complicated.

It's been several days since I've requested a wire and the company debited that balance from my account. There is no sign of the wire anywhere. I assume, I will eventually get it. It will cost me $30 if there are no intermediates (international wire), but more like $45 I imagine.

The first two are so far from the truth that it's really hard to believe you're being sincere.

As for the third, you've clearly not dealt with wire transfers very much. Dealing with SWIFT for example is infinitely more difficult than using bitcoin.

I think many developing (and a few developed) economies would disagree with you.

Bailing out speculative investments gone bad with taxpayers money is a pretty big problem if you ask me.

Cryptocurrency came about as a direct result of a broken political / financial system which effectively rewarded failure and financially punished those who could least afford to be punished.