Aedilred's Athanasiac Random Banter #241

[Aedilred]

Here's the thing though, the more successful a coin is the worse at being a currency it is. The smallest unit of Bitcoin is one bitcoin, so let's take a wallet and do a weekly food shop!

I mean we could. But bitcoins are scarce but valued enough that I'd have to buy in the region of 240 weeks worth of food, plus spend more money to actually get a transaction slot. The very systems baked into successful cryptocurrency stop them from being used as practical currencies.

That's not getting into the philosophical disagreements some of us have against cryptocurrency and blockchains.

I mean, you can trade fractions of a base currency unit. You don't have to spend a minimum of one bitcoin on any transaction, just as you don't have to spend a minimum of one pound on any transaction.

As to transaction time, that is an issue, but it's one that also affects regular currencies and they've got round it without the need to wait for cleared funds every time. As to the fee, from what I understand, these do create friction but they're not that different in proportion to the transaction charge you often get for using a debit or credit card online. Or in some cases, the charge for a plastic bag from a supermarket.


Overall, I do entirely agree that people should stay well away from crypto unless they really know what they're doing (and chances are, if you're asking about it on a forum like this, you don't) and have enough financial security elsewhere that you can afford to lose everything you put into crypto. I do, however, think that the underlying principles have validity and I don't think that they or NFTs are inherently a scam. (Much of the reason for this is sufficiently political that we can't really discuss it here). It's just that that's the way it always works out because the only people willing to put serious time and money into making it work are functionally scammers.