If it makes you feel any better, numismatists and coin collectors are not happy about the coopting of the word “coin” either. For millennia a “coin” was a physi

If it makes you feel any better, numismatists and coin collectors are not happy about the coopting of the word “coin” either. For millennia a “coin” was a physical item (usually a metal disk) which served as a medium of exchange in commerce. Coins are typically accepted everywhere within the jurisdiction of the issuing authority, and sometimes even beyond if the coin is minted out of a metal with intrinsic value such as silver. (For example, Spanish silver coins were heavily used in the colonial US for more than two centuries. Europeans lived in North America since 1492 but we never minted our own coins until the 1790s.) Coins can also be used to pay taxes to the issuing government which helped maintain these physical coins as acceptable legal tender even when made from base metals carrying no inherent value. I’m not a cryptocurrency expert, but from what I know it seems like cryptos don’t have any of these useful properties of money. Hoarding and manipulation by speculators coupled with limited opportunities to transact with them make cryptocoins a poor medium of exchange for most people most of the time. Proliferation of competing “coins” reminds me of the wild west early days of paper money where every local bank was printing their own paper but it probably wouldn’t buy you much in the next town over.