One of the major selling points of BTC was to be decentralized. I wouldn't put it past any government to buy up as much BTC as possible, centralize it, and render it worthless. If I had to guess though, a lot of g-men have their fingers in the crypto pie for all the reasons we do. If governments, regardless of size/sovereignty start digging around in crypto asking where they can get their slice of the pie, I think everyone should be concerned.

P2P lending is a great back alley way of shorting Bitcoin if my understanding of it is accurate. Normally with a bank loan, a bank can either secure the loan with someone's house or their car, or provide an unsecure loan that will normally come with a much higher APR. That and banks have government to assist in getting their money back. I think that's the biggest problem with P2P lending.

I would like to see P2P lending lead to actually fixing peoples lives where it mattered most. The ideas behind moving away from a centralized currency are all the reasons I would hope that P2P would be successful. But if there's nothing to tie a borrower in place to ensure they pay back what they owe, I don't have much faith in P2P at this time.

I'm new here and I apologize if I'm randomly butting in but I would like to argue the case that all currency is in some way worthless. Currency is inherently worthless on its own. That's a given. The fact that we use a supply and demand model to describe the value of Bitcoin is the point to be made. When we speculate on the spot price of BTC, that "magical hand of the market" has an effect on what we collectively think its worth.

In a philosophical context, if I have an amount of fiat currency that I gave my time to acquire, presumably I did that to use that fiat currency to make a demand on what a supplier would have to offer. How much of my effort is worth what I want from someone else. I would say the same holds true for BTC and any alternative currency out there.

However, considering that money supply can be measured the same way using supply and demand for say something like the US dollar or a Euro, it's absolutely appropriate to apply that logic to Bitcoin. The monumental moment for Bitcoin to stand completely on its own, in my humble opinion, is when someone goes to sell something at a fixed BTC price. I.E. I see a supplier. I want what they have to offer. Instead of thinking what the spot price of BTC is in US dollars, I'm instead thinking how much effort I gave for Bitcoin to acquire what a supplier has.