Why Bitcoin is worse than a Madoff-style Ponzi scheme

That is a very fair criticism.

> * In countries with unstable currencies they are useful stores of value (Venezuela, Turkey and Zimbabwe right now). I was in Zim back in 2010 and visited someone's house. It was filled with petrol because he had been paid and had to spend the money before it lost its value so he bought what was available. Bitcoin would have been a lot safer and less likely to cause shortages of goods (and more inflation).

It'd only be true if Bitcoin was actually stable and a store of value. At the moment is a highly speculative and volatile asset, fueled by a mania, not a stable supply of value and liquidity. It's liquid until the next big crash, for people who actually depend on having a stable store of value for their survival, a crash of 20% in a day can be devastating, less than a crash of their own currency but still not stable enough to warrant it as a safe way to park money.

Just buy USD or another powerful currency, if one of these currencies crash to the point where it's mostly worthless then humanity has a much, much larger problem and having some bucks saved somewhere won't really help you.

And yes, even in Venezuela, Argentina, Cuba, etc., there is a black/grey market for other currencies, it will be more expensive than the official exchange rate (if those are manipulated by the government) but is still doable, even more given the technical knowledge required to properly use cryptocurrencies, it's easier for the general population to hoard cash in a better currency.

> * They offer a much cheaper and simpler way to move money between countries both for ordinary people and small businesses.

Much cheaper? TX costs are really high, the solution to this has only been talked about and implemented as Proof of Concepts. The solution is either a L2 network (I've been hearing about Lightning as "the next big thing" for almost half a decade now) or moving away from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake, this move has been much harder and slower than any proponent of it has publically pitched.

Small businesses are not sophisticated enough to be able to hedge against huge price fluctuations such as the ones cryptocurrencies experience, small businesses relying on crypto at this time would be just a major risk to themselves, with the only benefit being "it's fast to move money abroad". Very few small businesses really care about moving money as fast as possible across international borders with no legal checks, usually they are illegal businesses.

> * By making online retail anonymous they've allowed the circumvention of all sorts of prohibitions. Sometimes that might be a bad thing, but I think it's a part of the reason we've seen weed legalised in so many US states.

Quite a libertarian take that anything should be free of controls. I agree that governments seem to be getting more draconian lately in the West, at the same time protections against prohibitions will mostly fuel and incentivise exactly the behaviour that was prohibited (financial scams, anyone? or drug trade?), enabling that without discussing the merits of such prohibitions is just inviting and incentivising the worst kind of behaviours, the ones most prohibited and more taboo.

I would like to know where are you drawing the parallel of weed being legalised to cryptocurrencies, I don't remember seeing anywhere an explanation of this link and I believe it's wishful thinking from your part.

> And remember: we don't ban things because you or I don't see the point. If someone else thinks they see a point, and they're not hurting anyone, they have every right to pursue what interests them.

Just the sheer amount of electricity being consumed to run this system is hurting societies, energy is probably the single most valuable resource for modern societies, spending it so some people can play around to inflate some numbers is a huge waste, even more if energy is coming from fossil sources.

In Argentina you can only buy 200 USD per month and even that isn't guaranteed, you have to make appointments with banks in a lot of places. And even if you get them, you can't use them outside of the country because such payments are mostly blocked. You can pay online services or internatioal shippings by converting to crypto first and trade it with a foreigner to deposit USD in a foreign bank account, and then make the actual payment.

I think crypto "investing" might be here to stay, for quite a while at least.

Not that I think it should: it's a non-productive asset valued almost totally based on the greater fool theory, and there seem to be very credible indications that there may be large-scale price manipulation going on. But it appears to have managed to become entrenched in culture to the point that my non-tech-savvy colleagues talk about it like a normal thing, and financial media personalities comment on the price movements alongside securities and other asset classes.

But to be fair, in some ways securities are quite disjoint from "true value" as well. If I buy a share in AAPL from another investor, the minuscule dividend and voting rights I acquire do very little to justify the price of the stock. I am really buying it in hopes that the market value will increase in time to make my retirement a bit more comfortable.