People are asking a pretty basic question on a supposedly technological forum. It would be like me asking what's the point of Linux, the OS problem was solved by (D)OS(X), or something similar. I'll admit the reply is heavy handed but there is a reason Bitcoin exists and people are using it so when do these questions stop?

Let's say you have a side hustle of selling shoplifted Tide Pods via Craigslist, and you want to use digital payments. In that case it's easy to understand the value of bitcoin. But for the millions of people who have no problem whatsoever making digital transactions via PayPal, Zelle, Venmo, CashApp, ACH, wire, or one of numerous other formats, why go to the trouble of making a whole new currency with corner-case issues (price volatility, potential cryptographic weakness, energy cost, early adopter advantage, and so forth) when the dollar is fairly stable? It's not a basic question, IMO it's a deep one.

The dollar works plenty good for digital transactions, and with the right bank I can withdraw money anywhere in the world at a reasonable exchange rate without paying additional fees. Credit cards work worldwide. If you pay your taxes and don't partake in illegal commerce, it seems like a fairly good system. I can get around the inflation risk to some degree by buying commodities, securities, or property, and convert to cash when I need it.

I don't think the questions ever stop. We're questioning the dollar and yet we've used it for centuries. We're questioning gold and yet we've used it for millennia. We don't know what the world's cryptocurrency of choice will be in the long term, we don't know who we're helping by bidding up bitcoin (Musk? Cartels? Nerds from MIT and CalTech?), and we don't know the impact that future energy and computing technologies will have on cryptocurrencies.

It also appears to me that anyone who buys and holds bitcoin would make money in a global system that uses bitcoin, because (A) money cannot be created beyond a set limit but can be destroyed/lost, (B) the marginal cost of use goes up as more participants get involved, and (C) inflows to an asset with limited supply always bid up the price because of basic economics. What makes a currency good is that its price stays stable relative to the commodities for which it is used to transact. When the time value of money far exceeds the time value of human activity, you get deflation and that's a poor characteristic for a currency because it punishes those economic participants who are active.

First, you have a bunch of ideas that you're trying compose into an argument, you were not successful.

Second, Bitcoin solves the problem of digital exchange between non-trusting parties, this is a very hard problem that didn't have a solution before Bitcoin came around, that's why it exists and it's useful.

Above, you do weave U$ Dollar throughout, let's use it to explain Bitcoin. Currently the trust-less exchange is solved by holding assets which others trust. This means that if you have $100 you can show it other people and they can see that you have it and test that it is really $100. The reason $100 is $100 is because USA makes sure that is true. Now, non-US people are not the happiest that the US dollar is effectively the world currency. This has roots in WW*, Bretton Woods, etc., beside the point for our needs. The biggest problem is that US controls the dollar supply, just in the last year the supply has increased by ~25%, making everyone else'$ cheaper. If instead the world currency was Bitcoin or some other cryptocurrency, one entity would not control the supply, the supply would be controlled by algorithms, which are easier to understand than some old white men. To me the last point, about algorithms, is enough to make bitcoin useful. No matter how much we fight it the world is going digital, and why would money be an exception?

> First, you have a bunch of ideas that you're trying compose into an argument, you were not successful.

This is where I stopped reading your reply.

Side hustle of shoplifting tide pods? What possible idea can that further?