@huju
It’s pretty silly to give a financial system it’s be-all-and-end-all judgement based primarily on a false narrative like “its primary users are … drug dealers, smugglers and tax cheats”.
Besides for being silly, it’s also completely incorrect. The vast vast majority of its users are law-abiding, tax-declaring people. In fact, on the contrary, any institution you use to acquire, trade or recoup BTC require way more identification and regulation than almost all other financial resources. More so, the whole basis of blockchain is that every single transaction that occurs is traceable. Even the most complex mixing scams were all caught.
And more on the contrary, if your “respected economist” is troubled by some financial systems being used as a tool for anonymous laundering and shady deals, then he’ll have a real problem with… CASH – the number 1 choice of anonymous, underground, shady launderers, far more so than crypto by any metric (@Yserbius123).
While I’m at it, @akuperma , BTC bears ZERO resemblance to the Tulip Mania of 1637, and it’s poshut stupid to try to compare them.
Bitcoin ATMs have been around for years. Not sure about NY, but in other places you’ve been able transact in and cash out using them easily.
Also @Yserbius123 et al. BTC is primarily a currency. Not a betting mechanism, not an equity stock. And it is traded, invested in, AND SPENT as such. Any currency, and gold itself, only has value because there is general mass consensus that it does.
And depending how you spread and shade the graphs, it is not really any more volatile than many US stock market indices, and even quite a bit less so over most of the period of 2018, 2019, 2020.
I’m not saying it’s perfect, or won’t eventually fail. But the world needs one international, standardized, verifiable digitized currency. And BTC has laid the foundation for whatever that may be.