But instead it turned into a game of "hodl" to get rich.
Scams were openly perpetrated in the forums.
I became completely disillusioned. What exactly does bitcoin offer the world today?
I can tell you down to the day how many bitcoin there will be decades from now.
Can you do the same for any fiat currency for next week?
It offers stability and a mathematical escape from very fallible humans controlling monetary systems.
This sentiment models a correction to a complaint I first heard with people who tell us everything fell apart since we ended the gold standard. They ignore that we raised all boats rapidly when we didn't pin everything to governments ability to fight gold hoarders for small amounts of gold entering the market. Even gold hoarders are better off in terms of what the market has created to exchange for their gold because that exchange ceased to be limiting on market expansion.
One could say the US economy was exponential both before and after the currency change, but as with Moore's Law, it gets harder to remain exponential if as few as one limiting factor is emerging.