This sort of "Once we've made everything perfect" reasoning doesn't really reflect reality all that much though; the point is that centralized systems will always be vulnerable to these problems; even if we temporarily fix them, that'll be an exception and sooner or later the systems will fall back into their broken state.

From that premise that the probem is universal, the deduction that the solution is also not just a temporary fix seems like the only reasonably conclusiont to me.

I'm not completely sure whether you're arguing that the bitcoin hype will pass once we've sorted out a few problems, or just that it'd be a nicer world if that could ever be the case; but either way, I don't think cryptocurrencies should be a last resort but instead become the norm. Offense is the best defense, after all.

I would argue that centralization is inherent in most humans instincts. To put it another way, many people like having a leader.

In fact people like leaders so much that exposed to a capricious and cruel world they'll invent imaginary and often cruel ones just to give the world a sense of order. Think the old testament God or lizard people conspiracy theories.

Given we're going to huge groups of people running around following leaders I think our best effort is spent trying to make the selection of those leaders pick non-evil people who run vaguely meritocratic and fair systems. Rather than trying to engineer ideal de-centralized systems _which will also have to be robust against the mob following their evil leaders.

Obviously this is a false dichotomy and we can do both, but please don't give up on good leadership, people need it and there's plenty of examples of it exiting.

This causes such a problem with governance though: Instead of voting for (or contributing to) ideas/policies directly, you have to translate your preference into a selection/ranking of the people who sound like they might support the ideas that you would like to see in your democracy. Sounds like a pretty crappy codec for that kind of signal tbh.

I would go even further in your argument and say that the escape-hatches are a requirement to keep the centralized system in check. This is a bit like the free market argument in the sense that it creates competition.

The point that you're missing is that there will always be Venezuelas and Zimbabwes, and Bitcoin, in its current form, serves as a baseline financial system that unfortunate citizens of failing states can fall back on. It has plenty of issues when it comes to buying coffee and small transactions, but perfect is the enemy of good and it has properties that make it much harder to censor than USD based services, which will just comply with the state.

I often hear the argument that BitCoin is unsuitable for small transactions. That's certainly the case (at least in recent years).

What I don't understand is why people don't then just use one of the literally thousands of other currencies -- most of which handle small transactions just fine.

For small transfers I use DogeCoin and the fee is 0.2 cents.

Bitcoin isn't so bad fees wise. https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/fee-calculator/ is showing 3c if you will wait 8 hrs or 72c for 40 min. It has other problems as a practical payment mechanism though - lots of people don't take it, it's always kind of slow, you have to have your passport scanned and pay fees to convert it to fiat etc. Some of those apply to other crypto too.

Bitcoin for me is a "savings account". The tx fee is certainly important, but more important is the long term value appreciation. I have changed btc to other cryptos to spend them, so I pay less fees, but Im not holding other cryptos long term.

a savings account that loses 50% of its value in a matter of days?

If anything, the crash last March has proven that BTC is not a safe asset and not immune from a global financial meltdown. Other way around - its very sensitive to it actually.

It's very volatile but usually you don't touch a savings account regularly so it doesn't matter what it does day to day, only long term.

It seems like the whole meaning of "savings account" has been lost in one generation..

In the old days, the very point of a savings account is that it keeps the value stable, and pays interest on top. The more long term you save, the higher the interest. Compounded.

In some European countries, your money on the bank was taken by the government due to the crisis. It's a bit worse than ups and downs in bitcoin, where you have a chance to get it back.

Yeah, that whole thing doesn't exist for my generation. We've never had savings accounts that beat inflation in our lifetime.

Savings accounts aren't meant to beat inflation.

> But as a solution for the institutional failures it still is not a replacement and obviously the solution in Venezuela needs to be repairing the system.

The point you seems to be missing, that the system cannot be repaired in a day and people need to eat, while they doing the repair.

> the lawsuits and IP-infringement will still haunt everyone involved.

I suspect donations are used mostly to keep the lights on.

It doesn't address the problem of Venezuela at scale: the initial distribution problem. If you trade BTC for Bolivars between people in Venezuela then the total number of Bolivars, hence welfare within the system, remains unchanged. If you trade Bolivars for things outside, you can trade outside the country, and are better off with literally anything you can get outside the country.

I don't doubt for a small handful of people who got their hands on some BTC they individually are better off. That doesn't change the fact it's not a reasonable solution at scale.

> But as a solution for the institutional failures it still is not a replacement

I don't think one can call PayPal an institution. As for an ability to transact - I don't see why shouldn't we replace institutions that prevent us from transacting.

Failing business models of Elsevier and likes are a problem of their shareholders. I, personally, want them crushed.

Also consider using a stable coin like DAI, USDC etc if your use case is to mimick somewhat of a bank account without crazy volatility.

They’re a scam. They have no real reserve.

> I think it's a reasonable solution at the margins

Reasonable solutions at the margins tend to be adapted in some major way by the masses in time, like bottleneck microstates can end up driving steady state long term behaviors of systems in glassy dynamics… technical solutions to make lawsuits and IP-infrignment have no teeth are being adopted more everyday but not as fast as some would like.