> For some people sure, but not all, and I would even go as far as to say not the main intention of the original product.
It certainly wasn't the "main intention of the original product," but Bitcoin failed at that. A big part of that failure was the peculiar ideology that got baked in through many of its design decisions.
what makes you say that? I use bitcoin to conduct private transactions regularly and its pretty darn solid for that purpose. Doing such a transaction over the internet, before bitcoin, required you to use permissioned rails.
> what makes you say that? I use bitcoin to conduct private transactions regularly and its pretty darn solid for that purpose. Doing such a transaction over the internet, before bitcoin, required you to use permissioned rails.
Just because it can be used like that doesn't mean it actually succeeded. The vast majority of Bitcoin is held as a speculative investment, and the deflationary aspects are a strong disincentive to regular circulation.
AFAICT, the main intention of the original product was to undermine fiat currency, and by proxy, the institutions that are built on and support it, primarily governments and central banks but extending beyond that to broader societal institutions that use taxes and monetary policy as their tools.
I'm not so sure it's done with that yet.
The financial FOMO that fuels that goal just seems like a means to that end, and the climate damage from it's energy consumption seems like an (unintended?) second order effect whose problematic nature needs to be rationalized post hoc.
> Everything else is basically woo that's needed to fuel the speculative roller coaster.
For some people sure, but not all, and I would even go as far as to say not the main intention of the original product.