Quoted from cooked71:I see BTC like gold which really doesn’t have much value as a currency now either but is just used for value storage
The only problem with that, as I was saying to a friend of mine, is that gold has intrinsic value as a metal. It is used in whole or in part in innumerable ways, beyond just jewelry. It has thousands of years of use as ornamental displays of wealth, and everyone - including people who don't even possess it - accept that it is valuable and aspirational.
BTC on the other hand, has no intrinsic value. It is more aptly described as a piece of art that exists in 21 million pieces. It's value is entirely derived from the agreement between holders and speculators that it is worth a corresponding amount of fiat currency. This consensus is self-sustaining, but it's an artifice, which is why mere "bad vibes" result in double-digit percentage losses in no time at all.
It is not a currency in any meaningful sense. Aside from the transaction limitation (I'm aware that the Lightning network aims to solve that) the nature of it, and other cryptos as vehicles for extreme speculation, means that anyone with any sense just holds on to it indefinitely, which is the antithesis of any functional currency. Why would you spend any of it in a mundane transaction, when fiat is an option, when it has the potential to be worth 10%+ more by the end of the day, or 100%+ within a month? Equally, outside of an immediate exchange of goods or services - how could any supplier rely upon the amount of BTC you were giving them being worth the amount of fiat they actually want?
Even Tesla - who made a big fanfare out of taking BTC for their cars - when you actually dig into it you are quoted a variable amount of BTC for the initial deposit and final payment. The fiat they desire remains fixed, but the BTC amount they require changes every 30 minutes. You are not buying their cars IN Bitcoin, you are buying them WITH Bitcoin - it is a subtle but important distinction. More tellingly, if you read their T&Cs, they point out that should you back out of buying the car - at any point - they will refund you in either fiat or BTC, at their discretion. So, you spend 1 BTC buying a car but then decide to cancel. If BTC has "mooned" in the meantime, they keep your BTC and refund you the purchase price in fiat, pocketing the gains. If it has cratered they give you your 1 BTC back. Either way you lose, and in fact the only way you win is if BTC tanks and you have a car you didn't have the liquid fiat to buy, but if you have 1 BTC in the first place then you probably are "all in" on cryptos anyway, so are probably not doing that well after all.
Now, Ethereum, on the other hand, as the "base" for a number of projects, and other utility tokens and indeed blockchain, I can see as having some potential.
It is a minefield though, and being unregulated it is easy to lose the shirt off your back if you go all in on some pump and dump crypto that your "trusted source" has pumped on YouTube whilst-totally-not-having-skin-in-the-game-honest. Part of me struggles to rustle up too much sympathy for people just chasing mad gains with no due diligence whatsoever, though.