Crypto's value is derived from its usefulness as a currency. It has many advantages over current fiat systems. You can expect if it's practical adoption expands then it's value will go up.
A bitcoin is as real as anything else. It's ones and zeros stored in a distributed ledger on computers around the world. I'm sorry you're having trouble predicting the price, look up supply and demand. Either way it doesn't make it any less real.
When you put money into blackjack you're not buying an asset. A crypto coin is an asset that can be held. Just like a share of a company, or a dollar itself.
Wooo this is awesome! Robinhood gets it :) I already use Robinhood for trading, so this would be a one stop shop. Plus the fact that it integrates with TurboTax means there's zero work to pay taxes on trades. Keeping track of the taxes is my biggest hassle trading crypto.
For Go and/or C# lambda support would it be worth even running the garbage collector, or just allocating a block of memory and cleaning it up when the function ends?
Side note I think that should be an option for web servers as well for languages with managed memory. Light isolated non-threaded api endpoints shouldn't be interrupted by garbage collection.
Different cryptos are not compatible with one another. And the value is each is determined by a myriad of intrinsic properties. At the moment I'd say LTC is the most attractive.
History has shown us that relying 'prudence of a central banker' is a really bad idea. Eventually shit hits the fan and they go on a spree printing money. The huge advance crypto has brought us is a solution to this very problem.
'if people agreed it had value' - That is a big if, don't trivialize it. The value of a currency is dependent on a ton of the properties I listed above.
I pay my friends for drinks in crypto, they pay me (usually ltc, ether, or doge). It's quick and easy with a wallet on your phone like Jaxx. No venmo, no paypal, no bank account necessary. I use crypto to store and exchange value today. It will only get more popular as it becomes easier.
I encourage everyone to try it. Send $100 of crypto to a wallet on your phone and use it to pay people you owe for small stuff. It's fun and easy. It also gets your friends bootstrapped with crypto without needing to use coinbase or gemini or whatever.
Also wallets like Jaxx are deterministic, meaning you can use 12 unique words to recover your wallet anywhere - even if you lose your phone.
Tulips can be created by anyone with some dirt. Mineable crypto is super difficult to create yourself. Tulips are also hard to distinguish, difficult to transport, ephemeral.
Understand that and you'll understand why most of your arguments above are poor.
Mineable crypto is not fiat because it cannot be created or destroyed at will. That is what gives it value over a fiat currency. You don't have to worry about a central government devaluing it or inflating it artificially.
Crypto is already being used as a currency. And governments have no ability to depreciate it. I don't know what will happen next, but that is the reality today.
What I do know is a lot of people find value in a currency that cannot be depreciated at will.
Go outside and yell out, "Hey world, I'm good! You can stop evolving now, thanks!"