But Bitcoin saved Venezuela!

Periodically, there will be a rash of news stories claiming that  Bitcoin  has become popular in some country suffering economic…

The supply is limited! The price can only go up!

Bitcoin  is  an  imitation  of  the  gold  standard;  the  supply  is  strictly  limited. Advocates tout this as an advantage as…

Economic equality!

Bitcoin offered “equality” in that anyone could mine it. But in practice, Bitcoin was substantially mined early on – early…

Bank the unbanked!

There are over two billion people in the world who have no bank account or access to even basic financial…

Remittances!

Bitcoin is put forward as the obvious replacement for Western Union for people working in rich countries to send money…

Better than Visa, PayPal or Western Union!

There is no way on earth that Bitcoin could possibly scale to being a general utility. At 1 megabyte per…

Be your own bank!

“Secured by math” means the cryptography is strong – but it says nothing about everything else you need to use…

No chargebacks!

Transactions are irreversible, and no human can intervene to fix mistakes. You might think this is obviously bad, but the…

Instant! No fees!

Nakamoto’s original 2008 white paper notes that Bitcoin will naturally progress to a transaction fee-based economy to pay the miners.…

Anonymous!

Bitcoin was widely touted early on as anonymous – on the blockchain, nobody knows you’re a dog. Of course, with…