this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2023
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Money has value basically because people need to pay taxes. The shop owner sells things for Euros or USD partially because eventually at the end of the year they need to turn over Euros or USD to the government as taxes. If they sold things for bitcoins, they'd eventually have to convert those bitcoins to USD to pay taxes.
Other than speculation, the only reason bitcoin has any value is that sometimes people need to pay ransomware ransoms. That means they need to buy bitcoin somehow. And, even the criminals who receive that bitcoin will launder it and change it back into real assets because it's not useful to them as bitcoin. Eliminate ransomware and suddenly the only value for bitcoin is people who hold it hoping there's a greater fool out there who will buy it from them for more than they paid.