Interesting how you jumped to that conclusion, just like many other bitcoin skeptics since 2009.

Think about this: with bitcoin, you have a highly-secure, trustless, immutable distributed ledger that anyone can pay a fee to get in to, with no restrictions. Let's say we take a hash of a huge Wall Street swap contract worth $100M and embed that hash in the blockchain. Now both parties can verify the integrity of the contract without involving lawyers or governments, and nobody else knows any better than "there is 32 bytes in the blockchain." How much is it worth to those parties to verify that contract?

How about this one: I'm a wealthy businessman in China, and I don't like how the economy feels. My government imposes strict limits on how much foreign investment I can do, since the state and the banks are in partnership. I can use bitcoin to move money across the imaginary borders imposed by governments, even if I trade it back for dollars as soon as it moves out of China.

Or maybe you're a gold bug, but you want something that's actually useful ;-) It's very hard to spend gold or move it around.

What about the global foreign exchange markets? Companies are moving trillions of dollars daily through the interbank network. There are fees and counterparty risks associated with those moves, especially if you're doing business in a developing country. Bitcoin may eliminate some of those risks. And the fees are agnostic to the transaction value, which is why high-value use cases crowd out low-value ones. I pay the same fee whether I'm transferring $1 or $1M.

It's not exactly trustless, unless you completely ignore that people expect their bitcoins to be worth something. But many people see bitcoin as a kind of money, and that unavoidably means they will have to trust its value. And in bitcoin's case, trust in the network and community behind it, and that seems to be the thing that a lot of people don't really trust anymore.

I'm not entirely sure what the point is of your first example. How will bitcoin help to varify the integrity of a contract without lawyers? If it's a contract, you still need lawyers to interpret it (if it's complex enough to require lawyers) and a government to enforce it. Without that, it's an agreement, not a contract. Maybe I don't get it, but I don't see what it has to do with bitcoin.

The second one is an example of crime. You may think that this shouldn't be illegal, and it certainly seems victimless, but it's still a way to circumvent the law.

As for more useful than gold, that depends a lot on context. Both of them only have value because of the trust people put in them, but at the moment, a lot more people trust gold than bitcoin, which means gold's value is far less volatile than that of bitcoin.

Companies and banks certainly move enormous amounts of money, but if they move bitcoin instead, they still need to convert it to money somehow. And companies don't really need the anonymous and decentralized features of bitcoin, unless they are trying to circumvent the law.

So I'm still doubtful about the usefulness of bitcoin in the face of these higher fees. Except for criminal/illegal transactions, where the use case is fairly obvious.

Don't get me wrong; I would like bitcoin to be a good idea, and I used to believe in it, but I've lost my trust in it.

You're confusing trust in the integrity of your coins with trust in the value -- whatever that means. By trustless, I mean that you can verify that you control your coins without having to trust anyone else. This is as opposed to the banks that wink and say, "trust us, your money is safe."

> I'm not entirely sure what the point is of your first example.

Contract integrity in my case is the cryptographic hash of the contract document. Neither party can tamper with the document's wording and maintain cryptographic integrity. As for enforcement, there are "smart contract" features enabled by the Bitcoin scripting system that do not require lawyers or governments for enforcement. These are more interesting to me than simple transfers of value.

> a lot more people trust gold than bitcoin, which means gold's value is far less volatile

Yes. The deeper a market, the less volatile.

> The second one is an example of crime. ... unless they are trying to circumvent the law .. Except for criminal/illegal transactions, where the use case is fairly obvious.

Quite a stickler for money transmission laws, aren't you? What does it matter to you if someone wants to move money across a border? Do you think those laws make any sense?

> So I'm still doubtful about the usefulness of bitcoin in the face of these higher fees.

Yet the system continues to process >300k transactions per day. And users continue to pay the higher fees. So maybe you are priced out of the system but many others continue to see utility in using bitcoin.

> I've lost my trust in it.

The bitcoin system has operated with almost perfect uptime for nine years. It has never been fundamentally compromised. It has never censored economic activity or blacklisted "dirty" coins. It is not susceptible to coercion or corruption. There are no haircuts, bail-ins, or bail-outs. It does not impose imaginary barriers on the free flow of value. Yes, the exchange rate fluctuates, but the underlying technology is far more reliable than the banks and governments when it comes to money.

I'm not a stickler for money transmission laws, I'm explaining to you what a law is and what the word 'crime' means. I also said: "You may think that this shouldn't be illegal, and it certainly seems victimless, but it's still a way to circumvent the law."

If you then say: yeah, that's the point, then you confirm that circumventing law is indeed the purpose.

By all means argue that those laws don't make sense. I won't disagree with you. But then you are confirming that circumventing the law is an advantage of bitcoin. And I'm arguing it might be the only true advantage.

To refute a few of the other advantages you're claiming:

> By trustless, I mean that you can verify that you control your coins without having to trust anyone else. This is as opposed to the banks that wink and say, "trust us, your money is safe."

But this is no different from normal money. If you keep that entirely in your own control, it's just as safe. But if you keep your bitcoins in MtGox, they're significantly less safe than in a bank.

> Yet the system continues to process >300k transactions per day. And users continue to pay the higher fees. So maybe you are priced out of the system but many others continue to see utility in using bitcoin.

Absolutely. But do you have any data on who those others are, and what they use it for? The fact that you can be priced out of the system when it becomes popular, seriously reduces its usefulness to a lot of people. Those who stay in the face of rising prices, will be those who can afford the fees, people for whom the stakes of that transaction are high enough, and for whom the benefits of bitcoin outweigh the costs.

Everything still sounds like money laundering and other criminal transactions might be the most important killer application of bitcoin. It would be different if it was actually far and cheap to use, but for most people, regular bank transactions are far more effective.