Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. Ultimately cryptocurrencies are a negative-sum game in that they take in real money and just move that money around, while spending some on overhead. In contrast, imagine investing in, say, a new fast-food franchise joint. They money you put in there is used to acquire assets that are used to produce goods that people will pay to consume. If it's a well-run business, the value of the outputs will be more tha…
You could make the same claim about any kind of money though. Whose to say the USD or GOLD or CAD or tree bark is real money? A productive asset is an entirely different thing. It's not easy to convert an asset for instance or walk across a border with it. People make the fundamental mistake thinking these things are investments, they aren't, it's just currency or forex speculation that we are doing here.
This is one of the things I find hilarious about cryptocurrency discussions. When I point out it isn't a good asset, people argue it's really a currency. When I point out it's a bad currency, people argue it's an asset. I'd love it if you all could get together and agree on what it's supposed to be good for and just leave the rest of us out of it.
But addressing your point directly, it's bad as a currency. It was launched in 2009 as e-cash, and for a while people argued it was going to be a great medium of exchange. Now, more than a decade later, Bitcoin is doing what, 100m transactions per year? Most of which are not real economic transactions for goods and services. Venmo, which started around the same time, does over 2 billion. M-Pesa, a "digital money" solution the same age does 15 billion. US credit transactions? 45 billion. Debit? 75 billion per year. And unlike Bitcoin, most of those are what people would call real transactions. Bitcoin's real use as a currency/payment system is a rounding error.
Anyhow, as others point out, actual major currencies are backed by very sophisticated organizations dedicated to maintaining the value of those currencies. Which are in turned supervised by national governments, most of which are democratically elected.
For Bitcoin, at best you have a set of shadowy organizations manipulating the market to their own advantage. E.g., reasonable people suspect that Tether is behind quite a bit of Bitcoin price appreciation. They have been proven to be liars about what they're doing and how much money they have. This is great for creating hype and volatility, but it's very much not what you want in an actual currency.