Crime and speculation

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are used for only two purposes. One is speculation and the other is a crime. Neither of these is useful in any sense of the word. Therefore, cryptocurrencies should be prohibited lock, stock and barrel. The rest of what you hear is a smokescreen put up by people who are benefitting from all this, either at others' expense or because they feel that the party will go on indefinitely. When you buy or sell some bitcoin, who do you think is the counterparty? Either another punter like you or if it's a real user then it's going to someone who needs to pay or has received crypto as part of ransomware or narcotics or terror funding or some such transaction. There's no other actual utility for these so-called currencies. If you go back and read the 2008 paper in which someone or something called Satoshi Nakamoto first laid out the principles