How is it becoming more useful? Arguably it is more difficult to use for buying selling, plus if I spend it I'm taxed as if I sold an equity.
It's value is pegged to the dollar so we can see massive shifts in its "value" constantly happening.
There are almost an infinite number of cryptocurrencies and new ones still being created. Each is a different currency, so how should we determine which of these fake currencies actually have value and which don't?
I mean that the set of systems that you can build which require neither custodial trust nor have single points of failure is increasing.
To name a few instances of this: This is old news, but I remember when zcash introduced halo and got rid of trusted setup--that's a legit increase in what's possible. NFT's as ownership of digital assets is maybe a silly application of the tech, but the sort of uniqueness constraint that they enforce is useful in centralized databases and I expect it'll find a similar niche in the distributed systems of the future. TCL's that use token price to encourage curation appear to be a non-starter, but coupled with a web of trust I think we can use the same concept to have consensus on a wide variety of useful things.
Their use as money? Sure, wildly inconvenient. But like... duh. Emulated systems are slower than ones running on bare metal because you have to embrace the constraints of both systems--it's the same with the use of cryptocurrencies within the existing financial system.
The point was never to make something that's just as good as traditional money--why bother? The point is to make traditional money obsolete in favor of something else. Something whose rules matter not because the guy who wrote them own has a gun, but because people consent to participate based on their merits.
> how should we determine which of these fake currencies actually have value and which don't?
By their side effects. If you value the endless consumption of electricity and zero sum games, you should value bitcoin. If you value politicians playing chicken over the debt ceiling, you should value USD. As it stands, the options are all pretty bad, but the ability to craft new ones is getting better and the cancer that our current one has is getting worse, so eventually there will be something worth switching to.
It's value is pegged to the dollar so we can see massive shifts in its "value" constantly happening.
There are almost an infinite number of cryptocurrencies and new ones still being created. Each is a different currency, so how should we determine which of these fake currencies actually have value and which don't?