What does "handful of people acquired a speculative digital asset" have to do with the market need of "send and receive money digitally"? There reason people w

What does "handful of people acquired a speculative digital asset" have to do with the market need of "send and receive money digitally"? There reason people want to send and receive money digitally has many sources. The cashless society change that Swedish governments and bank started a while back created a need for digital alternatives for activities that previously used physical cash. Transactions between individuals, flea markets, collections at church services, fees for clubs, sale of drinks/food at events. Credit cards are costly, includes minimum fees and use systems that tend to be slow and hard to use. A church collection does not work if a 1$ donation cost 1$ in credit card fees. Even donation services today like patreon currently looks down at such low donations as all the money get eaten by the credit card fees. The benefits that people who advocated for Bitcoin in the early days talked about was mostly those. Ease of use. Cheap. Physical cash alternative. It was a time where paypall was the only alternative to credit cards and for many places the only way to pay unless you used direct bank transfer that take a minimum of 1 weekday transaction time. Smartphone penetration is a relevant factor, but it was not the only one. The new bank service fulfilled a need which credit cards and paypall both did a poor job with. The question is if banks/government are willing to continue support what the market needs, or if systems like bitcoin will utilize the hole that remains when physical money is phased out.