When it got to 17k, I thought it was circling the bowl. I don’t understand it, that’s why I don’t own any.
It sounds similar to having a Ted Williams rookie baseball card worth $60,000. That's nice and all, but if I want the $60,000, I will need to go find somebody willing to pay me the $60,000. Am I understanding that correctly?
In a nutshell here’s why bitcoin has value and the dollar is circling the drain, not the reverse:
1. Bitcoin is scarce. There can only be 21 million total and the release schedule is known. By contrast dollars are not scarce and they are created at the whim of the Federal Reserve (however well intentioned).
2. Bitcoin is impossible to counterfeit, unlike dollars. The ledger makes it clear who has how much bitcoin and only the holder of a private key can send bitcoin from one address to another.
3. Bitcoin does not need audits due to the robust cryptography underlying it, unlike the centralized ledgers used by banks.
4. Bitcoin is free of censorship - you can send payment anywhere and to anyone with their public key. No middleman or government can stop you from sending/receiving it (short of hauling you off to prison).
5. There are no barriers to entry with cryptocurrency besides having a smartphone/computer. By contrast fees and minimum balances and so forth keep much of the planet unbanked or paying heavily to transact.
6. Layer-2 solutions and other methods allow bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to keep transaction fees down to a microscopic level (or free, re: NANO), no matter where in the world you are sending your funds.
7. Transactions take only a few seconds (or less) to minutes, again, even if crossing national boundaries since those don’t exist in crypto.
We could go on, but these alone make it clear that bitcoin is simply better money. Critics who think dollars/euros etc. will survive are delusional.