I'm a little surprised you're getting downvoted so much, but I suspect it has to do with: > the entirety of the current bitcoin ecosystem is built on and aroun

I'm a little surprised you're getting downvoted so much, but I suspect it has to do with: > the entirety of the current bitcoin ecosystem is built on and around fraud. If we are to remove fraud and clearly currently defined as illegal activities from this ecosystem bitcoin and its value will collapse through the floor. While I agree with pretty much everything else you've said about BTC being somewhere on the not-so-good end of the "insanity" spectrum, and I've had similar experiences talking to technologists regarding PoS vs. PoW (heck, finding one who could coherently explain either was an exercise in futility). You sound like someone who probably knows the difference and it's also been my experience that those who do, generally believe the state of BTC (with regard to its current price) is overvalued[0]. I disagree that the ecosystem, as a whole, is built around fraud, or that the technology/purpose of BTC is generally for fraud. I look at BTC the same way I look at paper money. The same kinds of fraud can be performed with paper money. The same kinds of problems, such as permanent loss due to failure to secure it, can happen with paper money. The one, major thing, you can't do with paper money (easily, anyway) is buy something online with it. You can do that, in a lot of places, with BTC (and to a lesser extent, other cryptocurrencies). You can buy illegal drugs with cash and BTC but your local drug dealer doesn't take Visa (or maybe they do, now ... I don't buy illegal drugs). I fully subscribe to the belief that we're going to see a large crash happen, probably in the near future. Any time you have something that looks like an investment that's skyrocketing as much as this has and the "investors" can't tell you the first thing about "what" it is they're investing in, that's the pretty much the secret formula for a crash. And I don't think (outside of the large amount of lost money) that a crash would be a bad thing. The fact that the price continues to soar is hampering the ability for the BTC and other cryptocurrencies to be used as anything other than as something to hold onto hoping for it to grow in value as it has for the last year. There's another side to this, though ... I've been saying BTC would/should crash since it was about USD$100 and I've been wrong. I'm willing to accept that I'm wrong here, but unwilling to bet my own money on that chance. [0] Where by "overvalued", I mean, more overvalued than anything in the history of the known world.