1 Bitcoin used to be with less than a dollar.

Now it's thousands of dollars.

It's also lost thousands of dollars in value.

It hasn't even been 2 decades.

There's never been ANYTHING that volatile and unstable aside from maybe fucking tulips.

Genuine question, is crypto good for anything other than gambling at the moment? I don't ever hear of anyone buying anything with crypto, only exchanging it out for USD. NFTs are basically a punchline now... what is it actually good for?

It's not untraceable, but it's way more anonymous for routine purchases than CC. Also with all the nonsense the CC companies are pulling lately, it's a nice example of why de-centralized, unbanked fiat has real value. Personally I use it for search engine subscriptions and paying VPN fees with at least a layer of "hey, you can't sell my demographic data or send me junk mail" privacy. Also if you want to send money to someone without using venmo type garbage, it's super easy and flexible even if you don't have the same type of crypto as the person you are sending to. It's huge for sending money internationally as there are big fees associated with international money brokers when involving traditional fiat.
The mantra of crypto as a scam is wrong. It's just seriously overvalued and has been turned into scam as an investment commodity. The technology itself, at least modern scalable versions that don't require AI level nuclear power plants to scale, is not flawed. The fact that the archiac unscalable bitcoin prototype is still the most valued is a great example of the mismatch between real world value and the fucked up crypto marketplace.

Assuming you can find a buyer who will process that crypto, without touching either of those payment processors. All the crypto evangelists seem to forget the major crypto payment platforms are in use because you can actually rapidly exchange your crypto for that thing you can actually pay your rent with - but those function largely on the backbone of big payment platforms to trade that crypto into cash for the merchant.

You can anonymously buy things on the dark web with monero. I've been looking to buy gift cards so I can purchase things anonymously. I believe you can even pay for Mullvad with monero

Wouldn’t it be funny if it got special protections because it was declared a religion?

Well, it should have went to some value from no value. So initial volatility was to be expected.

While the current volatility - I don't know, I guess it's because a transaction is expensive and takes some time. If transactions would cost almost nothing and were almost instantaneous, I'd expect the volatility by now to not be very big. And if there were no premined coins, of course.

And if there were inflation built into the system. BTC proponents boast how it having no such artificial mechanism is good.

They, 1) don't understand that having inflation stabilizes a currency, because there's a stimulus to spend practically and not as part of speculation, 2) don't understand that what they would want to imitate, gold, has inflation too.

So - inflation and cheap and fast transactions are what would make BTC less volatile. It would be a less lucrative speculative asset.

Genuine question, is crypto good for anything other than gambling at the moment? I don't ever hear of anyone buying anything with crypto, only exchanging it out for USD. NFTs are basically a punchline now... what is it actually good for?

Where tf do you order an assassin online? It's an FBI agent on the other end for sure.

Finally, some good fucking news.

I don't care how much you hate it, start stocking up on BTC and ETH now. $1,000,000 BTC, here we come!

Genuine question, is crypto good for anything other than gambling at the moment? I don't ever hear of anyone buying anything with crypto, only exchanging it out for USD. NFTs are basically a punchline now... what is it actually good for?

So - inflation and cheap and fast transactions are what would make BTC less volatile.

Yeah, and we have that...

It's called fiat currency

I believe you can even pay for Mullvad with monero

You can

Genuine question, is crypto good for anything other than gambling at the moment? I don't ever hear of anyone buying anything with crypto, only exchanging it out for USD. NFTs are basically a punchline now... what is it actually good for?

Well, it should have went to some value from no value. So initial volatility was to be expected.

While the current volatility - I don't know, I guess it's because a transaction is expensive and takes some time. If transactions would cost almost nothing and were almost instantaneous, I'd expect the volatility by now to not be very big. And if there were no premined coins, of course.

And if there were inflation built into the system. BTC proponents boast how it having no such artificial mechanism is good.

They, 1) don't understand that having inflation stabilizes a currency, because there's a stimulus to spend practically and not as part of speculation, 2) don't understand that what they would want to imitate, gold, has inflation too.

So - inflation and cheap and fast transactions are what would make BTC less volatile. It would be a less lucrative speculative asset.

In a Thursday speech, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chairman Paul S. Atkins announced “Project Crypto,” an initiative to modernize the country’s securities rules and regulations to move financial markets on-chain.

“Under my leadership, the SEC will not stand idly by and watch innovations develop overseas while our capital markets remain stagnant,” he said at an America First Policy Institute event in Washington D.C. His plan includes measures to reshore crypto businesses that have left the country and to ensure that “archaic rules and regulations do not smother innovation and entrepreneurship in America.”

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(qz.com)

Fiat currency is controlled by central banks and nation-states. Obviously.

It was great to trade and move value around. You could send to other countries, or do work for it. But Bitcoin fucked it all by basically being a ponzi scheme. People below will talk about it and how it holds or increases in value. Thats because most people are still buying in and hording it. Making it terrible as a currency.

I never bought crypto, I only traded, bartered, worked for it. I never put it on an exchange or used another company. Another sink of value and a stupid place to keep it. But that is the vast majority of people now.

So it is not good for anything anymore. Except speculation and hoping your are not the last holding the bag.

Monero is good for completely private and secure transactions. People often use it to buy drugs online... From what I've heard.

Bitcoin specifically was never meant as a currency. There is a reason why people call it "digital gold". I do find myself hesitant to buy it since people buy it with the goal of getting rich, it ruins the entire point.

In theory I actually love the idea of Bitcoin, something independent of resources. I know that sounds weird, but the moment asteroid mining gets big, traditional money storage will get rocked, hard. While something like Bitcoin, in theory, would be safe.

I see deregulation as generally a bad thing if you want any of this to be taken seriously and not be manipulated. At least, for most of them. In theory you could have a crypto that is very resilient to manipulation, I just don't know if that exists right now.