That something wrong with fiat, in my country all political parties battle for control of the national bank that issues money, why, well there are stories of powerful political leaders, kicking the door and just asking for money.
What a US-centric mindset, bitcoin doesn't give a shit about US, the volume is low in US, I would tell you a use, replace the dollar as a global reserve currency, which is why the the fed can print money like crazy and export inflation in the whole world, another thing you can't do with money is save on medium term.
in every thread there is a tulips idiot, tulips didn't happened, is just propaganda of those times, was no crash, meltdown, whatever, there are landlords that will take bitcoin, especially younger ones, hell, I could even find escorts that will take bitcoin and give me a discount, bitcoin is fungible, why would not take bitcoin, with all the quantitative erasing.
for now, but in 2-3 years, you won't, with lighting and schnoor, etc. same as cars eg. there are no roads, are noisy, cost more than a horse, are just a fad, etc.
you have a nice argument overall, but gets invalided because you don't know that tulip mania didn't actually happened, is just propaganda of those times, was a raise in prices then a fall, nothing dramatic how you try to portrait, happened in crypto space many times, your argument is oh, if humans were so stupid back then to go crazy for flowers, they must be as stupid now, so is just that, but no humans weren't that stupid.
Interesting that you didn't used the dotcom example, but that's easier to debacle because it is just a small blip on the chart if you look at the whole picture, not to say that there are counter examples too, eg. cars being just a fad, the internet being just a fad, so anything could happen, I would rather loose some money, then miss on 100k bitcoin.
Coinbase makes money out of bicoin, I tought this site is against taking open source work for granted, also there are other exchanges that implemented segwit.
ponzi schemes have no utility, bitcoin is a hedge against inflation, against corupt goverment, is bitcoin is a ponzi scheme, same is gold, and yes, i know about industrial utility of gold, but that's just 5% of its value, everyone that buys gold in india buys it as store of value due to inflation, corruption, etc.
if Gold can be irrational for 2k years, I don't see why not bitcoin can't, the only think gold has going for "longer history", yet HN folk love to say "past performance are not an...bla bla", yes it also has the 5% - 10% industrial use, but bitcoin has that too by being able to transfer it without third party, so will also not go to zero because will be useful as transfer of value.
If you look longer term the 1999 is just a small blip, so what if bitcoin crashes, bitcoin will replace banks, which are crocked and make money out of nothing.
yes, this is what hold bitcoin back but is getting better, the amazon device can be software signed, also you could encrypt your keys and upload to all cloud hosts.
if you keep a ton of gold in your house, good luck.. keeping it safe, there are safe ways to keep bitcoin, cold storage, etc. is not like is impossible.
Except the industrial value of gold which is around 10% of its use and not the quality/pure one, how is gold better than bitcoin? The favorite argument and the only argument is its history, yet when someone tries to use the same historical argument of bitcoin going up and up for 7 years, the elitist, NY folk will quickly follow with "Past performance is not an indicator of future outcomes".
I think people here are just salty because they think they are smart yet didn't saw the value in the crypto/blockchain, especially that is up their geeky alley.
Gold real life use is a myth, around 10% of the demand, copper is much more valuable from this perspective.
When the US constitution was born, I don't know, democracy? BTC/BTH, ETC/ETH, crypto is even more democratic as the other side can go on their separate ways, as oposite to countries.