Your two main arguments seem to be that fees are high, and people are only here because of speculation.
First of all, if you paid 25% fee, then you overpaid A 1-input-2-output transaction can be made for 140 sats, which would work out at less than 1p in GBP. I make 1 sat/byte transactions pretty much daily. The longest I've waited over the last 2 weeks is an hour. Most of the time I'm waiting only a couple of blocks. Bitcoin is faster and cheaper than fiat methods. You've mentioned contactless cards - these have a huge fee associated with them, its just that the merchant eats the fee rather than the consumer, so you never see it.
I can't disagree with the point that there are plenty of people in the space who are only here to try to make some easy money. They frequently only use bitcoin as a stepping stone to buy alts, though, and often leave the space after losing out on alts as they frequently do. The people who are here long-term are still passionate about the future of bitcoin, and bitcoin's development is still going strong, with plenty of new features in development and on the horizon:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5207455.0.
You also seem to be big on shilling NANO. NANO isn't anything at all like Satoshi's original vision given that it is centralized.
NANO is not centralised, don't talk utter nonsense please. That's like saying Bitcoin was centralised when it first started out because there wasn't a diverse range of miners yet. There are multiple nodes which users can use and have voting power, just like ANY cryptocurrency, the more people that use it the more decentralised it becomes, every project is faced with this.
People in crypto really need to grow up in general, you praise or say anything slightly positive about a coin you're called a SHILLER say anything slightly negative and you're called a hater or accused of shilling for a competitor.
How can I be shilling when I said that I can't see NANO succeeding in the long run, the better technology doesn't always win, currently BCH/LTC are beating it and seeing more daily use regardless of NANO being cheaper (as it's free) and much faster (as it's near instant) yet it still can't beat these two.
I also pointed out NANO has it's flaws, such as the lack of privacy as well as a wide ranger of other issues. I'm not shilling, I'm just stating a fact, the original concept of Bitcoin that was set out in it's whitepaper, Bitcoin is doing it better, had NANO and Bitcoin been released at the same time, which do you think would be the market winner?
Am I suggesting others invest in it? Am I saying it will flip many of the other coins? Hell no! But I will give it praise where it deserves. Anything can happen in this space but if NANO has not succeeded after a couple of years of trying, it's not going to now as there's not much in terms of innovation and development, like I said it has it's issues.
Let's stop with the petty insults calling people a shill just because they have something positive to say, you're putting words into my mouth. I'm not encouraging anyone here to pickup NANO, they can do what they want, I'm making simple observations and drawn on one of many good and inspiring projects!
Also, I loved the way you used the fact the longest you've had to wait for a payment to clear is an hour, as some sort of redeeming factor! Let's see how people would feel if they had to wait 1 hour for a PayPal transaction to clear or 1 hour for their payment for coffee at Starbucks to clear etc etc.
As for the fees on cards being passed on to merchants, what's your point? We accept these across the bored, as a business owner myself I accept them, they're practically insignificant for the most part. Not to mention with crypto it's just the reverse, now the sender is paying a fee to the miners so the merchant / receiver may not get the fee but flipping roles doesn't make it any better!
Not to mention the fees (if you want a fast payment) can be extortionate and much more expensive than any CC processor.
You know I am from India. Our constitution makers way back in 1950 made our constitution to make India Republic they dreamt of a visionary India with low corruption and no caste system due to reservations but here India is standing in front of you after 70 years facing much bigger issues of caste system and in altogether different way that our makers thought but does this mean we aren't justified?
What I want to Convey is that it hardly matters that how the creator visioned things the vision needs to be updated with time due to circumstances not prevalant at the time. No one thought that btc could become so valuable one day even if it gains so much popularity. I think it's really interesting to see that how will Crypto evolve over the upcoming years. So you could really forget about what satoshi thought of bitcoin. Satoshi might be the creator but after all he is not the owner.
What's your point? OK, let's re-envision what Bitcoin is, it's now a store of value, great, but what's the value in, it's based in pure speculation, when it hits a ceiling and fails to make the % gains people want then what? What direction is it destined to go in?
Your right, it is a people powered project, that's the point of decentralisation. That doesn't mean people always make the right decisions, in fact, you only have to look through history and see where democracy has often got it wrong or disastrous events occur, Hitler wasn't a dictator you know, he got to where he was through a democratic process.
It's obvious from all the changes made to Bitcoin over the years that profit and ensuring it's success as a store of value is prioritised over everything else, which is fine, the people decide that and it's clear people will put their personal profits and gains before anything else.
The issue is, that can't last forever, the analogy I gave previously about the stock market still stands and I've not heard one single valid rebuttal. You can have something infinitely increase in value, companies that stop providing innovation, that stop bringing new things to the table, that stop offering a service, they crash and burn. Bitcoin can't just be a 'hold it forever and it will keep increasing in value infinitely' asset, there will be a ceiling and without adaption and change it will eventually crash and burn.
We will see who ends up being right, history will tell.
Do I ever think Bitcoin will go to 0? No, very unlikely, do I ever think it will still be as valuable as it is now? Not a chance.
At the moment and on a scale of 10 i would rate it as 4/10 because bitcoin is being used by most people as a store of value other than spending it in their daily transactions. Also, there are some factors that are also hindering the fulfillment of Satoshi's vision. Some Governments have made strict rules concerning the use of bitcoin and this is really making global usage of bitcoin very delayed. Let's not give up hope yet!
This is my point though, even IF people wanted to actually USE it as a form of PAYMENT it's incredibly ENEFICENT, if people were actually trying to use it to pay for stuff they'd wake up and realise that they're holding onto something that's basically useless, the only use it has is it's VALUE which is incredibly volatile, you may be able to make a good % profit from it but that's about it and how long does that really last. Nothing is infinitely scaleable when it comes to price, no stock or commodity is infinately scaling, when it levels out or when gains become the same or less than what you get from average stocks and it stays like that for a number of years, watch the price decrease and then once that starts it will plummet.
There's just no actual USE for it, when you try and USE Bitcoin you realise it's incredibly ineffective. I don't want to wait silly amount of times for a purchase to go through, look at digital purchases now in the market section, got and purchase an instant delivery, digital product and pay with Bitcoin. You will be waiting forever and a day unless you pay extremely high fees to have near instant confirmation, why would anyone use that when you can pay with PayPal or an alt and have it basically instantly.
Maybe Bitcoin can hold it's value just being a digital version of gold, possibly, but I just feel when it gets to the levels of regular stocks / commodities or drops below them levels, people will start to leave in favour of safer and more tangible assets.
I admit, I could be wrong about everything, who knows, time and history will tell guys. Like others have said, Bitcoin is powered by the people so maybe the community that maintain it wont let it come to that and maybe in the future changes will come into play that make it like it originally was in the early days and maybe that will revive it.
If I was a gambling man though, I'd put Bitcoin on the same road as MySpace was on, far too confident that nothing could come along and defeat it and while MySpace still exists it's nothing compared to it's former glory days, I feel Bitcoin faces the same fate.
