Due to blockchain's architectural shortcomings, you need to do the transactions off chain. Fine...
But crypto-"currencies" are actually highly speculative assets (as South Africa declared today [1]). No bro will spend them - the ideology is to HODL for 100k remember [2]? Earnest patron saints like Laszlo Hanyecz bought two papa john’s pizzas in 2010 for what would be worth today roughly $200,000,000 [3]. They wanted a new currency, but today the purpose is speculation. The whole point is not to be the greater fool.
Bitcoin was never meant to be gold, it was meant to be spent. But that hasn't happened.
what's wrong with this comment?! that it's anti-crypto? currency needs to be a medium of exchange, unit of account, and store of value. Given its volatility, Bitcoin could only ever realistically be useful for the latter, and only then as a risky speculation.
A "store of value" when talking about the properties of a useful currency implies that the value is largely stable so that it can be "stored" over the medium- and long-term. So that's actually the property BTC is worst at due of its volatility. Actually, no, 4 transactions per second globally means "medium of exchange" is the property of money BTC is worse at.
Your point that BTC was supposed to be a currency and has turned into a speculative asset is true though, and BTC proponents often dislike it when someone points that out. LN is just an attempt to make BTC better as a "medium of exchange" which is fine, but it still doesn't address the fact that BTC is a terrible store of value, it just reduces the volatility of the transaction fee (in theory).
But crypto-"currencies" are actually highly speculative assets (as South Africa declared today [1]). No bro will spend them - the ideology is to HODL for 100k remember [2]? Earnest patron saints like Laszlo Hanyecz bought two papa john’s pizzas in 2010 for what would be worth today roughly $200,000,000 [3]. They wanted a new currency, but today the purpose is speculation. The whole point is not to be the greater fool.
Bitcoin was never meant to be gold, it was meant to be spent. But that hasn't happened.
[1] https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-not-a-currency-south-...
[2] https://www.wealthsimple.com/en-ca/magazine/laser-eyes-crypt...
[3] https://www.the-sun.com/news/2935660/bitcoin-pizza-laszlo-ha...