> A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.
If I wanted to do that, I would ask my bank to do it, because they're better at it.
> And it is. When you pay Coinbase, they send you BTC. Then you're free to send your BTC around if you decide the $20 transaction fee is worth it.
The response when somebody tries to do transactions off-chain:
> That's why you don't store assets on coinbase...the whole point of crypto is that it allows you to be in exclusive control of your assets. Why is that so hard to understand?
The important thing is to make sure that no matter what anybody does, they're wrong, and that way bitcoin cannot possibly have any flaws.