You seem to be arguing against positions I'm not taking, so perhaps I didn't make myself clear. I don't dispute that orders of magnitude more people care about

You seem to be arguing against positions I'm not taking, so perhaps I didn't make myself clear. I don't dispute that orders of magnitude more people care about weed and porn than care about bitcoin, but the reason I mention weed and porn is the same reason "lawn" did in the comment I linked: There are people who wish to buy or sell these legal (in some jurisdictions) products but who are limited in their practical ability to do so due to a lack of financial freedom. For such people, crypto-currencies are a possible solution. https://news.bitcoin.com/indospace-io-cannabis-merchants-accept-bitcoin/ https://news.bitcoin.com/indospace-io-cannabis-merchants-acc... https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/vbqwwj/patreon-suspension-of-adult-content-creators https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/vbqwwj/patreon-su... https://bitcoinist.com/librepatron-btcpay-patreon-bitcoin/ https://bitcoinist.com/librepatron-btcpay-patreon-bitcoin/ The fact that bitcoin is used in these situations (even if for a minority of purchases) shows that it is a useful technology (assuming you think that these products aren't inherently illegitimate, even where legal). Similarly, I accept that bitcoin is completely different from curing a rare illness, in terms of the effect it has on its beneficiaries, but that was not the comparison I was trying to make. I was trying to point out that just because only a minority of the population benefit from a technology (whether a medical technology, or a financial technology), that doesn't make the technology useless. To pick, perhaps, a better example, suppose there were a new financial technology that helped only the poorest people (and I'm not claiming that bitcoin is such a technology). A wealthy critic of the technology might claim "almost nobody is using it", and they might be correct, but they would be missing the significance of the technology. Full disclosure: I have never bought any crypto-currency, and have no intention of buying any in the next 24 hours. :-)