Is Bitcoin in any way valuable?

[BlueStreak]

34. Bitcoin is a scam. But let's talk about the real problems.

The problem is a banking industry that is completely out of control. Most people use very little cash these days. That means the bulk of the consumer economy is passing through credit and debit cards. And the banks have monopolized that to the degree that they can keep cranking up the fees to merchants and there is nothing most of them can do about it. Banks are now grabbing something like 5% of every consumer dollar spent. That's a huge drain on our national productivity.

The argument behind Paypal, Bitcoin and other alternative payment systems (and Mondex before them) is that using technology we should be able to do these transactions for less than 1%, maybe less than 0.1%. It is a valid goal. The problem is that con artists stepped in and found there were millions of suckers lining up to hand them their money, no questions asked.

No look at Paypal. Most of the Paypal transactions now run through credit cards, so in practice Paypal is not a low cost system. It is actually a HIGHER cost system because you get the bank fees PLUS Paypal fees.

We need a better solution. But we can't have something that is so easy for crooks to exploit.