> Digital transfer of the US Dollar is similarly slow and expensive
And with ACH, wires, swift, the slowness is a feature not a bug. It's one of the ways fraud is combated, for example. I seriously doubt it's fundamentally a technical limitation of the technology used, but rather a choice.
But as you said people aren't doing this with BTC -- and if they're not, then this removes one of the use cases that would warrant it's value, so you're only arguing my point.
> The benefit of BTC over USD is that there is a way to "mail someone a briefcase of cash" without having to actually mail them
You also seem to forget about checks -- no one ever sends bricks of cash in USPS unless you're a drug dealer running a YOLO life. But you also ignore ACH/wires/credit cards and all the ways most money moves today. What is the fundamental issue there that Bitcoin solves?
> Again, you want to compare BTC/ETH to the actual currencies, rather than the institutions that engage with those currencies
You're right, however regulations exist that enforce institutions use USD. Those are largely good things.
> With Bitcoin, you ... can? Like if the endgame for Bitcoin was “universal adoption by corporations and institutions as a digital store of value,” then that sounds like a good and permanent and somehow fundamental result?"
But is/will that happen? These issues that I point to make it a less good option.
> I won't pretend that there's an objective answer, but neither should you; the fact that it removes the tool you describe can both be described as a feature or a bug, depending on your political leaning.
It's a tool that gets removed. Being global means there's no local way to adjust things to current circumstances. Just look at Greece in the EU -- because they went on the Euro, with a totally different economy than Western Europe, they got all of the deflation with a GDP that couldn't keep up, and as they piled on the debt they didn't have any levers to pull. Unifying global currency is a terrible idea when you have very uneven economic realities around the globe.