Yes, except of course the fact that Bitcoin/Eth without the ability to convert it to fiat is functionally worthless, except for the people with their heads in the clouds who think that at some point the entire global economy will move to Bitcoin (which can't even handle a fraction of the transactional throughput of MC or Visa). Crypto, while nice in theory, has proven to not work in reality, time and time again. Centralization is necessary for a lot of niceties in order to make crypto a functional currency, and yet centralization is also counter to all of the values of crypto. Anybody still hanging onto crypto is probably latching onto greater-fool theory and hoping they aren't the greatest fool, although at this point, they likely are the end of the line.

Your first statement is strictly false, it is not difficult to find places to spend either of those currencies. (Thereby disproving your third statement)

Your second is a strawman, the "entire global economy" need not moved to crypto for it to be useful.

The entire rest of your post is a stack of shallow, dismissive tropes that contribute nothing to the discussion.

> it is not difficult to find places to spend either of those currencies

I beg to differ. There's a reason actually paying with Bitcoin/ETH/crypto somewhere (anywhere) is celebrated on crypto twitter, /r/bitcoin, etc.

After 14 years it's still a novel and rare enough experience people feel the need to record videos of it and post them online to celebrate "adoption".

Imagine sending a tweet in 2020 (14 years after founding of Twitter) being noteworthy. Ridiculous, right? That's what crypto looks like to those of us not trapped in the bubble/echo chamber.

Then why do “we” celebrate every little thing happening on Mastodon? Ridiculous right?

Mastodon is at best seven years old. We're talking about 14 when it comes to crypto. Mastodon also doesn't have the "get rich quick" user adoption lure that has driven the majority of crypto "adoption".

On that note, I once again point to crypto twitter, /r/bitcoin, etc where you see "what's your retirement plan with crypto?" posts constantly.

> the "get rich quick" user adoption lure that has driven the majority of crypto "adoption".

Source?

The frontpage, every single day:

https://old.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/

I look at the past month top posts and see a grand total of three posts that even mention the price history, and precisely 0 that say anything about future performance or "getting rich".

This is exceedingly poor-quality evidence for your claim.

And yet you don't directly provide any evidence to the contrary, highlighting that the person who is providing nothing is actually you and your comment of unsupported contradictions.

Does your utility company take crypto? Mine certainly doesn't. Therefore, in order for me to use crypto as a currency, I need to be able to convert it to fiat. Point out where exactly this is incorrect, or in what way crypto can address it without making some dreamy assumption that the world shifts to using crypto as the global currency (which will simply never happen). Did I say nobody accepted crypto? Nope, never said that.

>it is not difficult to find places to spend either of those currencies

There are literally no services I use or products I buy that take bitcoin.

From weekly groceries to my car insurance or, well, anything... none take bitcoin. The overlap between businesses that accept bitcoin and the things 99.9999% of people need to live their lives on a daily basis would not be distinguishable to the human eye on a venn diagram.

You appear to be arguing that a payment method is completely devoid of utility of any kind unless it works on absolute necessities for you and/or the lowest common denominator?

I don't think that is a useful definition of utility.

I wouldn't exactly call it "working" when the largest trading platforms turn out to be fraudulent, the value is highly volatile, the whole "immutability" thing is thrown out as soon as people are inconvenienced by it, and transaction volume always remains negligible. The only people for who Bitcoin is working is those using it for ransomware extortion.

I wonder if Coinbase could steal all the volume from Binance if they would offer 0% fees on spot. I bet most other markets would implode.

Is a public company not working of the exchange it's traded on is fraudulent? No — it can still offer governance rights and potentially dividends.

Does gold not work if the exchange it's traded on is fraudulent? No, it can still be held and traded peer to peer, and it can still be used in manufacturing.

You're conflating the market with the actual network. The Bitcoin network works just fine.

People looking to buy Bitcoin unfortunately often end up at Binance.

They have long offered low trading fees, while heavily inflating on-chain withdrawal fees and duping users into accepting "wrapped bitcoin" instead (that is, a layer of misdirection and nonetheless custodial bitcoin, held by Binance or some other third party).

If what the SEC allege is proven, that they moved customer coins to a separate legal entity, I don't think it's a leap to assume the coins users think they're buying perhaps don't even exist - that the exchange have been selling paper coins banking on that users won't withdraw en masse.

This is what FTX were doing too - selling paper bitcoin; bitcoin that was not backed 1-to-1 (or anywhere close, they actually held a relatively small number), instead funneling customer money into the hundreds of other coins FTX had invested in.

This could reveal the apparent mass susceptibility for VC backed "cryptos" - that the masses are not so dumb after all, or at least not in the way you thought, that instead they've been fleeced.

Bitcoin may still suffer reputational damage in the short term, but surely the elimination of such schemes is, to use an overused phrase that seems very apt now, good for bitcoin?