> What's your evidence for this?

I've used it for that. People use it on darknet markets for value transfer. I have seen many people claim to use it in Venezuela, though I can't confirm that (one of them posted in this thread [1]).

> Bitcoin's total TPS is circa 2-3. [1] And presumably a small fraction of that is actual money transfer. In contrast, M-Pesa, a digital money system that started about the same time and has millions of users, has 100x that volume and is growing rapidly. [2]

That's no longer true. The lightning network increases that to effectively infinite TPS. The infrastructure of nodes isn't that great yet, but it is now possible in principle for Bitcoin to scale to an essentially arbitrary throughput.

> So I'm entirely skeptical that it's better for any significant market than even legacy money transfer methods, let alone trying to compete with newer tech.

That's a fair skepticism. Though not due to slowness/throughput, as that problem is solved. And not due to environmental concerns, because that problem will be solved (in Ethereum, not Bitcoin). The legitimate objections to cryptos I see are:

1. It's not clear that decentralization, uncensorability, and irrevocability are really properties that people need. provides a value anyone really need.

2. Deflationary assets are subject to boom/bust cycles that can be toxic to modern economies. Crypto assets tend to be deflationary, and as such may not, over the longer term, serve effectively as global currencies.

I think those two points are the core of any serious objection to crypto. I believe that in the case of #1, the architectural change it would induce in our financial system is worthwhile, and consumers will feel the effects of that rather than the benefits currently stated for crypto. As for #2, it's a legitimate concern, and it may ultimately make them untenable, but we'll just have to see.

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17495476

I appreciate your willingness to at least contemplate that Bitcoin might have flaws, which is better than most Bitcoin advocates.

But you share one of the habits that makes these discussions so frustrating. You substitute marginal examples and handwaves at the future when asked for clear present evidence.

The Lightning network might possibly one day increase capacity to infinite TPS. It doesn't yet, and reasonable people think it never will. E.g.: https://reddragdiva.tumblr.com/post/175418385308/why-the-lig...

I am saying that based on the evidence I find, despite 10 years of enormous free advertising, approximately nobody uses it today for money transfer when compared with other money transfer options. Do you have clear evidence otherwise? Not anecdote, not what it possibly does, but actual evidence?

> You substitute marginal examples and handwaves at the future when asked for clear present evidence.

Such is unfortunately the nature of all predictive discussion. I don't think i'm being any more speculative than anyone discussing say, autonomous cars, or similarly 'somewhere on the horizon' technologies.

> It doesn't yet, and reasonable people think it never will. E.g.: https://reddragdiva.tumblr.com/post/175418385308/why-the-lig....

There's a decent bit going on in that link, but point by point:

> 1. it doesn’t work. the software is absolute dogshit. buggy as hell.

This is just saying the current iteration is buggy. That's no counter-argument to the concept.

> 1.5. it can’t work. the mesh network problem

The difficulty of this problem depends on the number of relevant nodes, and the way you structure the network itself. He even cites a good example - BGP. He claims that BGP works because the nodes trust each other, but regardless of them trusting each other, they solve the mesh network problem. That trust is not integral to the solving of the mesh network problem.

> 2. the whole idea is dumb. nobody wants a network of prepaid channels.

Now this sounds like a decent argument. Except that, one could argue that your bank account and credit card are simply prepaid channels. If the LN gets up to scale, and if it achieves sufficient node liquidity that you can pay essentially anyone...then I don't see how this prepaid channel differs in any way from a traditional bank account.

> 3. the LN solves a problem that doesn’t exist. the idea is to make transactions fast again

The LN may or may not cause merchants to adopt Bitcoin for payments. But it definitely solves the more narrow "Bitcoin doesn't scale" problem.

> 4. the LN is coin-agnostic - so it isn’t an excuse for bitcoin’s unscalability

This doesn't even logically follow. It's just a complete non-sequitur. The LN is an excuse for Bitcoins not scaling yet. The LN can also be used to scale other coins. It may be that people prefer those other coins once they've achieved scale.

> Do you have clear evidence otherwise? Not anecdote, not what it possibly does, but actual evidence?

It's extremely hard to get data for something like that. But the clearest cut case is darknet markets. Cryptocurrencies are definitely actually used there for real commerce.

That is not at all the nature of all predictive discussion. Handwaves suit for a seed round, for example. But when you're looking for an A or a B round, you need significant evidence for your forward-looking statements. Bitcoin is years past the point where it deserves to get away with handwaves.

Also, "people use cryptocurrency for value transfer" is not a forward-looking statement. It's a statement of what people do now. And this comes out of you saying, "blockchains are useful now".

> That is not at all the nature of all predictive discussion. Handwaves suit for a seed round, for example. But when you're looking for an A or a B round, you need significant evidence for your forward-looking statements. Bitcoin is years past the point where it deserves to get away with handwaves.

You're handwaving right now. You can't know which part of the distribution you're in until it's over. I've provided quite a bit of evidence, as well. There are some forward looking statements for which there is no hard evidence, but only because there cannot yet be any.

> Also, "people use cryptocurrency for value transfer" is not a forward-looking statement. It's a statement of what people do now. And this comes out of you saying, "blockchains are useful now".

They do use it for value transfer right now.

I am definitely not handwaving. I'm saying that the normal evidentiary standards for business evaluation should apply to Bitcoin. It's no longer novel, so the novelty exemption doesn't apply.

> They do use it for value transfer right now.

Money launderers do. KGB agents do. A variety of other criminals do. But I have yet to see evidence that a significant portion of ordinary people use it for value transfer in preference to either traditional means or modern, non-blockchain digital ones.

So yes, you are technically correct on a narrow interpretation of a single sentence. But you are so far wrong in terms of the meaning of that sentence in the broader discussion. For the purposes of evaluating Bitcoin's commercial utility, effectively nobody uses it. If you have data otherwise, let's see it.

The same applies for comparisons with the early Internet. Pre-web, lots of non-technical people used it for practical purposes because it provided superior utility over other options. That doesn't appear to be true for money transfer for Bitcoin. Even prominent Bitcoin advocates have given up on that. E.g.: http://avc.com/2017/08/store-of-value-vs-payment-system/

It's useful for cross-country transfers of money, and in-country if the alternative would be very annoying (or you just happen to have some cryptocurrency around and not regular money). I do use it for that and I've found it useful. The biggest downside in my experience has not been all the abstract figures and numbers and stories floating around, but the exchanges. Turning cryptocurrencies back into regular money is very annoying and the US ones are even very shady (locking your money in, etc). It's what's keeping it inside of the fringes for me.

Turning cryptocurrencies back into regular money is pretty easy and efficient with Kraken.