>nobody uses it for the kind of decentralized transactions for which it was originally pitched
You're misinterpreting absence of evidence as evidence of absence which is a logical fallacy. clearly there's enough of a market for trustless wealth storage enough to support a $100 Billion dollar market cap. Maybe you think that the world will need less and less trustless wealth storage in the future and you're short bitcoin; it looks like the market is betting against you though.
1. Before accusing other people of logical errors, check to make sure you’re not making one of your own, such as assuming that the current market cap of something is completely backed by real value. Pets.com and Webvan had plenty of market cap right until they didn’t - and a pure fiat currency like Bitcoin has a floor of zero because the only value is the network of people who continue paying to operate it.
2. If a significant number of people were using Bitcoin to replace currency usage, as per the original manifesto, they’d leave evidence behind. You’d see retail transactions, it’d show up in financial reports, the network having problems would make the news because of the inconvenience to businesses, PayPal and western union would be reporting lower usage, etc.
Pasted from another thread:
If you think that Bitcoin's value is $0 long term, why not go short and make reams of money? After 10 years the market has shown that owning 100 btc has preserved more purchasing power than owning 100 USD, What's your call for the next 10 years?
You're misinterpreting absence of evidence as evidence of absence which is a logical fallacy. clearly there's enough of a market for trustless wealth storage enough to support a $100 Billion dollar market cap. Maybe you think that the world will need less and less trustless wealth storage in the future and you're short bitcoin; it looks like the market is betting against you though.