> Bitcoin could never replace a national currency.

That is the most grandiose goal a new monetary technology could possibly have. It doesn't need to replace a national currency to be useful/valuable to users.

Religion is just a ponzi scheme that still underpins most of the world's networks and hierarchies.

Care to elaborate? Or you mean christianity? There are quite a few other religions that are quite nice. Buddhism as practiced in Bhutan comes to mind...

Not sure about the lack of freedom of religion in Bhutan.

Has nothing to do with being bad or good, just value creation through coordination/cooperation, fueled by some hype.

Stop trying to incite a religious flame war.

FYI, Buddhist extremism has resulted in two (ongoing) genocides.

It needs to have demand to be worth anything at all. At that demand in aggregate assigns value to bitcoin.

The fixed emission schedule of BTC means that there is no issuer that can capture increased demand in the good, but the holders of BTC get that benefit. So the only thing you need to bet on is if there will be more aggregate demand for the 21 million btc in the future than there is today.

With fiat currencies, when there is a crisis like COVID and the demand for money skyrockets, the fiat issuer can print out the money and do whatever it wants with that surplus demand.

If BTC makes it so the aggregate demand in currencies is split partially from fiat into BTC itself, then it will be a great transfer of wealth from governments into BTC owners.

There's your value.

> If BTC makes it so the aggregate demand in currencies is split partially from fiat into BTC itself, then it will be a great transfer of wealth from governments into BTC owners.

And will quickly be banned by said country.

If this scenario happens, BTC will have demonstrated enormous power and value, and it is supposedly designed precisely to resist such attacks.

I also doubt on the feasibility of a global crackdown on miners in the entire world.

The enormous value being money laundering? Also the miners ultimately have to swap for some fiat, so they can’t stay in BTC “heaven” forever. Further buyers set the price, not miners. Especially given that using BTC is a luxury except for the underbanked, who also don’t have money and are selling their BTC to get some.

If money laundering is the only use case btc has, and it is the best way to do money laundering, it's going to make a lot of people rich.

«could never replace a national currency»

There are plenty of scenarios for Bitcoin to succeed and be useful without necessarily replacing national currencies.

«transaction times in the tens of minutes»

Wires take hours/days. Credit card transactions take 1-2 days before the seller's bank account is actually credited. Obviously speed isn't an issue for adoption given that people tolerate systems much slower than Bitcoin.

«maximal global transaction rate of 5-10 per second»

Bitcoin Lightning Network supports thousands/millions of transactions per seconds.

«Blockchain couldn't replace»

IMHO it shouldn't replace, but complement.

> Wires take hours/days. Credit card transactions take 1-2 days before the seller's bank account is actually credited. Obviously speed isn't an issue for adoption given that people tolerate systems much slower than Bitcoin.

Wires take hours, rarely, if ever days, and in my experience the money is in the receiving account before I hang up from sending it.

Also people tolerate this system because there is nothing else available, and much of it is not a result of lack of desire but anti money laundering. Countries are already moving to digital currency tokens.

Advice: only write sentences that are true.

> Bitcoin could never replace a national currency.

You can't predict the future.

> With transaction times in the tens of minutes and with a maximal global transaction rate of 5-10 per second. The Blockchain couldn't replace the banking system of single mid-sized town.

With millions of transactions per second, the Lightning network could.

> It's not money.

It's money. Here's an explanation of money https://powreach.com/crypto

To the people who downvoted: learn to distinguish expressing a fact from expressing an opinion. Don't be gratuitously negative.

To HN moderators: make it possible to understand why someone downvoted. This is an example of what makes HN off-putting.

> With built in and inevitable deflation. Why is everyone thinking deflation is a bad thing? "Oh no, how horrible, my money isn't loosing value over time so I dont't have to buy things I don't need and can start to save money without loosing value"

Lots of reasons, see e.g. [0] for a brief explanation of a few of them.

[0] https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/why-is-deflatio...

They are not really distinguishing between deflation in a national currency that people's wages and debts are denominated in which is a problem, and bitcoin going up which isn't really.

No one's taking out a bitcoin mortgage to buy their house with.

Because it leads to catastrophic economic crisis and starvation of millions. Anyone with half a mind has known this since the 1930s at least.