[Currencies]

I've been annoyed by the application of the term 'cryptocurrency' to Bitcoin.

There is a distinct difference between Currency and Money and these terms are not interchangeable:

Currencies do not have intrinsic value (i.e. fiat paper money, promissory notes) and by extension, are poor stores of value.  There have been thousands of currencies in existance, all have become worthless because there is no intrinsic value to support the price, instead currencies rely on its users to give it value.  As a consequence many currencies may have fallen with their empires succumbing to regulatory bans, some have died simply because its users did not deem it worthwhile to use and I have no doubt a significant portion are hyperinfalted by their central authorities out of existance.

Money on the other hand has intrinsic value (i.e. gold and silver coins), a gold coin from ancient Eygpt still retains the same purchasing power today.

Bitcoin falls into the category of money, its intrinsic value is supported by its scarcity, verifiability, fungibility, portability, durability and divisbility.  While it might not be 'tangible' and useful for physical use cases like jewerly, it also has benefits Gold does not offer, for example, instant settlement of any amount of 'money' over long distances. Further, no central authority can print bitcoins into existance.  Bitcoin has also become a legitimate store-of-value which can be attributed to its supply cap and emission schedule, its been profitable for 94% of its existance and has not lost its purchasing power which would be consistent with the traditional definition of 'money'.

All-in-all I think it is incorrect to call Bitcoin 'cryptocurrency', it should be 'cyptomoney'.

Thoughts?

After 4+ years in the space and countless hours of research, it is becoming increasingly apparent that BTC is the only worthwhile project.  Also by the thread title, you can probably tell its not my first rodeo.

Some of my strongest reasoning is specified below, it is by no means comprehensive.  While I may have typed the below with conviction, I am openminded to other views (my wallet compels me so) - please put forth your opposing views.

• PoW is the only true Byzantine Fault Tolerant consensus mechanism.  PoS is not BFT at this point in time and I do not see how it gets there.  At the end of the day, under PoS and the many other consensus mechanisms, one needs to trust a third party to relay them the correct data and that is assuming that one can be certain that the delegated node holds the majority of the voting power – this is not trustless and re-introduces third parties.  With PoW, I can verify the hashes and the longest chain is the correct one.

• Bitcoin as a base layer focuses on censorship resistance, immutability, security and decentralisation.  Second layer solutions (scalability/escrow) can be built on top.  Claims by other ‘cryptocurrencies’ to be ‘better than bitcoin’ are ignoring trade-offs involving BTC’s key features.  Any appreciable increase in throughput will reduce security, decentralisation, immutability and censorship resistance.

• There cannot be a ‘next Bitcoin’ and the paradox of replacing a store-of-value (SoV) applies.  Any successful replacement of BTC will forever undermine the credibility of any successor.  We are instead made to forever question the replacement of a SOV.  How is an investor to know it won’t happen again?.  Any other attempt at digital money ‘fails by succeeding’, it fails the eco-system by replacing Bitcoin and ultimately fails itself.  By way of example, Gold is the precious metal SOV of choice, most governments/institutions warehouse little or no silver.  If silver supplants gold as a SOV, then I’m all out of precious metals because one cannot trust silver will maintain its SOV dominance.

• Medium of exchange(MoE) aside, I can’t think of another legitimate use case for ‘decentralisation’.  At a stretch illegal marketplaces may benefit from decentralisation given the risk of censorship or seizure of assets.  All these other uses cases like smart cities, record keeping, supply chain, fundraising etc are far better managed through centralised databases where it is not unacceptable for the user/operator to bear some of the risks cumbersome decentralised platforms seek to eliminate.
  

• If (and it’s a big if) smart-contract enabled platforms finds widespread commercial use, the ‘utility’ basis for value for many of these smart-contract enabled platforms acts as a ceiling to price.  An increase in fees to use the network will result in competitor chains becoming more attractive.

• For smart-contract enabled platforms, infrastructure limitations decrease the ability of users to run fully validating nodes (compared to a cryptocurrency targeting a MoE use only).

As we can see with the new FATF rules, exchanges are scrambling to comply with mandatory KYC set to be introduced for anyone wishing to transact over $1,000 worth of crypto.

When a true decentralised exchange is invented (i.e. something that boots up like a bittorrent interface with no centralised server), having centralized exchanges with KYC is redundant.

Someone can just buy crypto off a centralised fiat exchange, and exchange it for moneros on a dex destroying the audit trail.  They will be able to do as they please with the crypto (laundering, terrorist donations etc).

Can anyone explain to me how crypto/fiat exchanges won't get banned when a true dex is invented?

Market ATH was $825b. Currently, it is $365b so a drop of roughly 56%.

Here are the drops from various Chinese projects from their Jan/Feb ATH to current figures:
CPChain - down 56%
Achain - down 84%
IOT Chain - down 80% (using $4.85 not the telegram pump ATH)
Bottos - down 69%
Neo - down 59%
INT - down 85%
HPB - down 77%
Aelf - down 75%
Nuls - down 66%
Matrix - down 66%
WTC - down 58%

Better performers:
Elastos - down 50%

Does anyone have an explanation as to why the more prominent Chinese projects have dumped harder than the market average? Some of these coins are actually quite promising too.

IMO the one big thing that stops Bitcoin or any decentralized cyptocurrency from being the reserve currency is the human desire for physical assets:

Essential physical assets:
-Food
-Shelter (House + land)
-Infrastructure (sewer, water, gas, electricity, internet connections).

Luxury physical assets:
-Luxury cars (lambos)
-Toys and accessories
-Waifus
-etc

Physical assets are centralized by nature, for example that dream house you crave is fixed on a large plot of land, its easily locatable and any centralized authority will have the power to influence whether it can be acquired for a bitcoins or not (if you disagree, it may well be seized).  Obviously smaller and more transportable goods (i.e. drugs) are harder to control but it can still be controlled rather significantly compared to decentralized assets.

The above leads me to believe that as long as humans require and desire physical assets, fiat is here to stay.  Cryptocurrencies may play a role alongside FIAT but will never truly replace it or even become the dominant currency.  Perhaps in a post-singularity world where everything is digitalized but obviously there would be no need for a blockchain as every conscience can be programmed to live in its own dream world 'infinite tsukuyomi' type scenario.

So my question to you is how physical assets, which are centralized by nature, be overcome?