ITT: effective consensus that the utility of Bitcoin today is its popularity in the "gray" (or black) market.

How does anyone not believe this is a bubble which will burst as previous ones have, at the first sign of the next inevitable crack down?

Blockchain is here to stay. Bitcoin at its current value is surpassing poppy level speculative inflation.

I get the notion of accepting high risk of loss and incredible transactional friction when trying to move back to a fiat currency.... but only for people who are either desperate to exfiltrate funds etc.

For everyone else it seems like a comically bad time to be buying in. Beyond comical, really.