First of all, BITCOIN IS NOT MADE TO REPLACE MONEY.
It has a set number of created or 'minted' coin, 21million. That immediately tells you that there will never be enough Bitcoin to ever be used as a transaction coin.
Not only is it they're not enough to use it as a transaction coin, but it wasn't designed as a transaction coin, therefore it has extremely high rates to send the coin.
Ergo, an ASSET coin.
There are cryptocurrencies however that are specifically designed to be transaction coins. No one cryptocurrency though could ever hope to replace fiat cash, because the value of having physical over digital is never going to be outweighed. The only value in a cryptocurrency they're truly is the value the users give it, in the value in which the encryption and the limited supply of the coin provide.
If you think of them more as specialized game currencies, and they are only used within a platform, but it can be used like real money.
Now we do know criminals are using this TRANSPARENT LEDGER, AND NO AMOUNT OF FUNDS SHUFFLING CAN HIDE THAT YOU ARE MOVING MONEY. THEY WILL BE CAUGHT INEVITABLY, THERE IS NO WAY ATOUND THAT. Cryptos that are made to hide the ledger, I know less about, but since all transactions have to exist in some sort of network where everything is being recorded, no bit of information is ever technically inaccessible.
Banks made Ripple. Bitcoins' creator is anon, and has never surfaced. Anyone could try to take that claim to fame, but there is evidence and records in forums about the creator, and conversations with the creator about its purpose which is to show that money could be decentralized.
Right now, miners all over the world have been COMPETING with CHINA to make sure they never gain 51% of the network! THEY COULD THEN CHANGE BITCOIN HOW EVER WAY THEY WANT!
Bitcoin is an open source project that can only have changes made when people agree on them! If you want to voice a change, you presented to the community, and it's up to the community to transfer over to that, if you fail to have 51% of the community follow after, that means you create a fork of the coin instead and it's value could be nothing.
I will do the best to answer questions, but I spent my time search Bitcon and cryptos in 2017, so I could be a smidge out of date with other replies, but what I say in this particular post is the core of most crypto and Bitcoin discussion in the crypto communities.
The stock market is (at least ostensibly) the purchase of a part of a physical company. A stock is backed by a real, tangible asset that has value completely separate from the piece of paper that signifies the stock.
Just like Gold and Silver.
Gold and Silver have real value that has nothing to do with them being currency. That is what makes them so valuable as an intermediary to barter. People will trade for them and make things out of them no matter what.
There are cryptocurrencies that are backed by real physical assets. There are even cryptos that are backed by real gold and silver. The reason why those cryptos aren't popular is because they are only worth the same as the asset that backs them.
Faith based assets though, like Bitcoin, or Etherium etc., those are as valuable as the amount of faith that backs them.
But how much is faith worth? Its worth a whole lot, all the way up until faith is lost. Then it is worth exactly squat.
What does it take to break faith? A fart in the wind if everyone hears it.
Thank you for an intelligent response. The point I guess I'm trying to make is this: I understand hesitation against crypto, I have some of that myself. What I get confused with is the "but I can hold gold" argument.....and by that I mean: Gold/silver are manipulated (in price) by the elite, so are stocks, so is crypto (example earlier in this thread by mean tweets). The value to these things are assigned by the masses. The second we all decide they're BS, they're not worth the space they reside in.
Your point is totally valid, but it leaves out important details.
If we lose this war, and go genuinely (not just a scare event) into The Great Reset, with full Cabal control of the world, it doesn't really matter what we do. Humanity is lost and every single means of currency (other than The Great Reset variant) is worthless.
I am going to assume that is not going to happen for this discussion. (Personally, I think the war is already won against the Cabal, and we are watching a show that involves the mop up of the underlings).
I see two likely futures (if we win or have already won).
SHTF future:
There may come a time, likely in the not too distant future, where the SHTF. In that time there will be things that have value, and things that do not. In that scenario only physical assets will have value. There will be a few crypto that are valuable, but their value will decline as fewer and fewer people will trust or use them (or even be able to contact each other TO use them). Gold, silver, bread, water, bullets; these things will have value. Tangible assets. Gold and silver are less valuable than the others in such a scenario really, but we are ingrained to understand that the 5000 years of history of using those assets as currency was for a really good reason. I think they will become the new medium of exchange in such a scenario, though direct barter will still be very common.
Trump comes back soon future
If Trump returns soon, I think the economy will stabilize quickly. I think he wants to take us into a PM standard. He said recently that he wants the US dollar to be the currency.
Per the Constitution of the US (original):
The Constitution states clearly that only Gold and Silver are legal tender. The US Dollar is made out of gold or silver. I have no doubt a crypto variant will be available for convenience, exchangeable for physical gold or silver at any time.
This will eliminate inflation, which never existed for the first 5000 years of barter until the coin act of 1873 which (against the US Constitution) divorced silver from the US dollar. Inflation got worse and worse until finally in 1971 gold was also divorced from the US dollar. Since then inflation has gone off the hook.
Perhaps a Patriot winning future is somewhere in between those two. In any case, I think a crypto backed gold and silver will be the medium of exchange eventually. Until then, there may be more fiat money to be made playing the crypto market, but no matter what happens, eventually people will lose faith in them and they will all be worthless (the faith backed ones).
Thank you for the effort you put into this analysis!