Bitcoin is actually just a database. It makes no promise about money or value. But it turns out that those qualities mentioned above are also important qualities for good money, and so humans assigned value to the system.
If you don't think the network is useful, don't use it. Short it. But don't act as if there are no tradeoffs between security and convenience. Don't act as if negative interest rates and infinite quantitative easing are normal things.
The network is completely traceable. Anti-censorship is worthless without protection. I do something on the network my government doesn't like, they track me down and put me in jail. Great system. The failings of political systems are not overcome by changing the financial instruments used.
It is traceable when the appropriate dataset is overlaid on top of it. Ie. IP addresses, known public keys associated with people/organizations. Within itself, you don't know who is sending or receiving.
Anti-censorship is worthless without protection.
Protection comes from anonymity/pseudonymity.
I do something on the network my government doesn't like, they track me down and put me in jail. Great system.
Yes, its almost as if you need to take steps and precautions to ensure that your government cannot track you down. You know where its even easier to trace your transactions and freeze your assets? Your bank account.
You mean the kind of information governments readily have access to?
> Yes, its almost as if you need to take steps and precautions to ensure that your government cannot track you down. You know where its even easier to trace your transactions and freeze your assets? Your bank account.
Ever heard of cash?
Ever hear of a VPN, Tor, or BitTorrent? How's the war on movie piracy going?
Ever heard of cash?
Yeah, I've also heard of civil forfeiture where the police take your money without cause or ability for remediation.
I've heard of authoritarian governments who scan your face and keep your social credit score, and will prevent you from making transactions and opening accounts, making your life much more difficult.
I've heard of a house fire, and cash burns pretty easily if I recall, even if its the new stuff made of plastic polymers.
I've heard of counterfeit bills too.
The FBI, or any government entity, cannot seize Bitcoin from an address otherwise. To do so would demonstrate the ability to break the encryption underpinning Bitcoin's opensource key creation protocol.
Put another way: there's a billion dollars sitting at addresses right now for you to steal. If you can crack the keys, go steal that money and make it public. That would destroy Bitcoin quickly. The open market bet is that you (or anyone else) can't.
How much did you lose?
it's also one of hottest superstition social study ever.
Pitching Bitcoin: "Imagine a currency... that doesn't materially change the status quo (and taken to the end game more-greatly enriches fewer people), is somewhere between 100,000x and 1,000,000x less energy efficient, slower to transact, more volatile, 100% traceable, easier to scam, harder to teach to laymen, causes supply shortages to other markets, whose production is owned in majority by our greatest geopolitical adversary, is treated as an asset and incentivizes saving over spending, and will continue to waste more and more energy for at least the next 100 years."
Absolutely insane invention, and the fact that people think this is worth money only tells you that they've bought in.
Bitcoin proponents like to pretend it circumvents government interference, as if Bitcoin exists in a vacuum. In reality, the moment the government does a double take of Bitcoin, the market blinks. Everybody knows the pitch of decentralization is just a gimmick, even if they aren't willing to admit it.