My struggle with it is mainly that it doesn’t seem to accomplish any of its goals very well, while having really big downsides. A few examples:
It’s difficult to use it for circumventing government controls, since so many of the on and off ramps are subject to regulation and it’s difficult (and expensive) to transact truly anonymously.
It sucks as a store of value since it’s so volatile.
Similar to the point above, it’s increasing subject to government regulation (namely the US) in a de facto sense.
The UX sucks, and mistakes can be super punishing. If you make a mistake then you have no recourse and everyone will applaud the code working as intended, unless the mistake is really big in which case the “code as law” folks will fork the network to rollback the mistake.
In the same vein as the item above, scams are rampart and there is very little recourse once scammed. As a result, it’s tough to see actual widespread adoption as a currency (and not just a speculative asset sitting in a brokerage account somewhere) since the level of technical sophistication needed to use it as a currency without risking wiping yourself out puts it way out of reach of most people.
It sucks for transactions, since the fees are so high and make small transactions bit feasible.
Proof of work sucks and is super wasteful.
There are probably plenty of other ways it misses the mark I’m missing as well. It frustrates me because it feels so fatally flawed, but people take it so seriously. If popular sentiment was that BTC was just a fun thing to speculate on, in the same realm as TSLA or buying short dated calls on the VIX, I would be totally on board! But trying to act like it’s a serious currency that can compete with USD or whatever just seems somewhat delusional. I think blockchain and ETH style smart contracts are super cool tech, and could have super productive applications that legitimately make the world a better, more efficient place, but BTC in its current form doesn’t check that box for me.
It’s difficult to use it for circumventing government controls, since so many of the on and off ramps are subject to regulation and it’s difficult (and expensive) to transact truly anonymously.
It sucks as a store of value since it’s so volatile.
Similar to the point above, it’s increasing subject to government regulation (namely the US) in a de facto sense.
The UX sucks, and mistakes can be super punishing. If you make a mistake then you have no recourse and everyone will applaud the code working as intended, unless the mistake is really big in which case the “code as law” folks will fork the network to rollback the mistake.
In the same vein as the item above, scams are rampart and there is very little recourse once scammed. As a result, it’s tough to see actual widespread adoption as a currency (and not just a speculative asset sitting in a brokerage account somewhere) since the level of technical sophistication needed to use it as a currency without risking wiping yourself out puts it way out of reach of most people.
It sucks for transactions, since the fees are so high and make small transactions bit feasible.
Proof of work sucks and is super wasteful.
There are probably plenty of other ways it misses the mark I’m missing as well. It frustrates me because it feels so fatally flawed, but people take it so seriously. If popular sentiment was that BTC was just a fun thing to speculate on, in the same realm as TSLA or buying short dated calls on the VIX, I would be totally on board! But trying to act like it’s a serious currency that can compete with USD or whatever just seems somewhat delusional. I think blockchain and ETH style smart contracts are super cool tech, and could have super productive applications that legitimately make the world a better, more efficient place, but BTC in its current form doesn’t check that box for me.