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.
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.