Many who were even pro-bitcoin like Peter Thiel gave up on the idea that it is a good platform for transactions, and instead argue that it is like "digital gold." A wildly volatile digital gold, of course, given that it has no other uses beyond speculation.

But you are correct. It is bad at transactions but not incapable of them. Just as it is bad at storing value. As for being a unit of account that seems more theoretical, but in theory anything could be a unit of account.

Although to be fair, gold is quite volatile. Over last 9 years - Gone from $1800 an Oz, to $1000, to over $2000

Not something I invest in, but (for example) I'd no idea it was now worth more than platinum and has been for a very long time. Nor platinum seems to be on a slide currently, as gold spikes. Aside from you explaining novel industrial uses, it appears speculative.

If we knew in advance that the price of BTC would gradually decline from $16K to $100 over the next 5 years, nobody would ever talk about it again. It's an obfuscated Ponzi scheme wrapped in a clever (but extremely wasteful) proof of work algorithm.

I'll take a shot at least at refuting the claims in the first bulleted point:

"they are deliberately incompatible with the rest of the financial system"

so is the north korean won (or the venezuelan bolivar, or, on the other side of the "good faith" spectrum, the brazilian real at its inception), but you wouldn't claim that they aren't currencies.

"Most merchants who accept cryptocurrency aren’t actually accepting cryptocurrency, they’re using a service that turns it into dollars"

Arguably the same would be true for certain types of bank notes in the 19th-20th century (like 5k, 10k, notes). Still currency.

"they are provably inferior to alternative payment mechanisms."

this is basically a concession that it is a payment mechanism, if a poor one.

So theoretically it may be a currency, but pragmatically it is not.

Only a medium of exchange. Too volatile with no source of trust to be a store of value or a unit of account.

Fiat money relies on the trust generated by the central bank. Non existent in crypto.

So is not money.

No, it (specifically BTC) is not a medium of exchange, according to the author. And, really, how many people out there are actually buying and selling things using BTC? From the article:

> The major original claim for Bitcoin was that it would soon become widely used for buying and selling goods and services, the “medium of exchange” function, which might in fact have justified calling it currency. That claim has in every way failed to be realized.

> Especially without further explanation than a wall of citations that I'm not going to bother chasing because I know the claim is false

If you refuse to read the evidence cited, how could you possibly validate or refute your position?

Read carefully: I'm refusing to read it unless you give me a compelling short synopsis. Why? I'm not going to read just a bunch of links that you throw at me. I want you to at least show me some indications that you have spend some effort thinking about it, especially after you've made a claim that is trivially refutable by personal experience.

If a flat-earther just gave you a wall of links, would you read it? No. You would demand at least a short synopsis of why these are compelling reads.

Isn't the article and points made within, the short synopsis?