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Comment by tomhallett | Hacker News Reader

When most people say "crypto is useless", that is rarely about BTC being used as a currency, and is more about everything else in crypto (NFTs, web3, smart contracts, decentralized apps, ICOs, etc). The idea of a currency which has value because people give it value makes sense, regardless of how speculative it is.

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People have been saying "crypto is useless" for wayyy longer than the time since NFTs were first popularized (which didn't become a mainstream term until 2020/2021).

sure, but there are many other things in that list i made, right?

People were saying Bitcoin was useless when it was just Bitcoin and not anything you listed

Totally - the conversation definitely has shifted in general in Bitcoin's favor since it's launch.

My only point was, whatever comments people are making in the past few years which fit under the umbrella of "For those saying that crypto is useless", it feels like those have been directed at all the other stuff in the eco-system - while "moving their property across borders" is something which was solved by Bitcoin along time ago.

Just total moving of goal posts

People pretty regularly say its useless in this sense as well. But even if it were true, as soon as you accept crypto is useful as money, DeFi smart contracts are pretty obviously useful as financial infrastructure on top of it.

It's not the feature set people react to, it's the speculative bubble and the hordes of grifters.

Which isn't exclusive to crypto soooo....

> The idea of a currency which has value because people give it value makes sense

As a BTC proponent, I just want to say, I don't think this is what gives BTC value.

Sorry, I was being a bit quick when I typed that out. I wasn't trying to define why it has value per-se, I was trying to make the distinction that someone who says "BTC is very speculative, therefore its too risky for me" (ie: a hater) is not the same as "it's useless".

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