I wasted years of my life in crypto

I've never understood the initial arguments about Bitcoin, no matter how many times they've been explained to me.

The block chain is, and always was, an extremely inconvenient database. How anyone, especially many intelligent people, thought it was realistic to graft a currency on top of such a unwieldy piece of technology is beyond me. Maybe it goes to show how few people understand economics and anthropology and how dunning-krueger can happen to anyone.

Now the uninformed gambling on futuristic sounding hokum? THAT is easy to understand.

That being said, I'm sorry the author had to go through this experience, the road of life is often filled with unexpected twists and turns.

> I've never understood the initial arguments about Bitcoin, no matter how many times they've been explained to me.

Bitcoin has a great mythology associated with it. People over emphasize the technical aspects, i think its the "story" that made it succeed. Its about taking back "control" from the man. People love an underdog story, people love a rebellion story. Lots of people in the tech space are anti-establishment or libertarian. Bitcoin is the perfect fulfillment of the dream of that ideology.

When people try to sell bitcoin, they aren't selling merkle-trees, they are selling "freedom".

I think if it was actually just about digital currency, then chaumian ecash would have taken off. It technically has a central party but not in a way that matters. It makes so much more sense than bit coin. But it doesnt have the total freedom story.

> How anyone, especially many intelligent people, thought it was realistic to graft a currency on top of such a unwieldy piece of technology is beyond me.

I mean, it did work. It is a shitty currency no doubt, but you can buy and sell stuff with it. There are bitcoin atms in my neighbourhood. I think the bigger mystery is not how anyone thought it could be a currency, but how the hell something so silly actually sort of became one (albeit bad one)

You say bitcoin is "so silly". Please give me an example of anything better for nation states to hold as reserves and to transact with other nations with.

I'll even allow you an imaginary thing as long as it's constrained by the real world.

Fiat currency. (So-called petro dollar)

Gold.

There is a reason why no countries are using bitcoin as a reserve currency.

Fiat currency: Why would I hold a currency that another nation sucks the value out of by printing it? Even the dollar has half its value stolen every decade.

Gold stock above ground doubles every 40ish years, halving it's value each time. Think how difficult it is to safely move and assay billions of dollars worth.

The reason nations aren't publicly using bitcoin as a reserve is that it's still only the year 2025

> Fiat currency: Why would I hold a currency that another nation sucks the value out of by printing it? Even the dollar has half its value stolen every decade.

Because the entire point of a reserve currency is to spend it in emergencies. Store of value is second to liquidity.

You can also usually recover some of that loss depending on how you are holding it.

> Gold stock above ground doubles every 40ish years, halving it's value each time. Think how difficult it is to safely move and assay billions of dollars worth.

Sure, that's a potential issue (although you are overstating it a bit). The main point is that due to historical reasons it is generally really easy to sell gold even if the world is falling apart their will always be a buyer.

> The reason nations aren't publicly using bitcoin as a reserve is that it's still only the year 2025

Sure, and part of the reason is that bitcoin doesn't have a track record of providing the properties countries need in a reserve currency. Reserve currencies aren't the place to try radical experiments. A lack of track record makes bitcoin a poor choice in and of itself.