> Broadly speaking, you can’t live on commodities alone. Most people aren’t able to buy food and shelter with it.

> So the goal, in those majority of cases, is to buy in low for the exact purpose of waiting for a “greater fool” to purchase it from you for more.

Feel free to substitute with your preferred non-monetary asset.

there's plenty of offramps and onramps from crypto to trad finance.

You can earn your money on crypto, get a debit card, and pay for your food and rent with it.

I've done it.

No one buys stocks for the hell of it, it is 100% a financial instrument used to profit by the buyer and the seller. If you couldn't sell to someone for a higher price, no one would buy them. If that's your bar, then cryptocurrencies are as legit as stocks as far as a financial tool is concerned. Stocks may arguably have more utility, but for the buyers/sellers, they aren't much more that a speculation instrument.

If someone will take Pokemon cards for a pizza, or a house, whatever, then it has some utility. If someone collects pokemon cards, and has enough for a house, they might (probably) need to exchange them for some real currency to complete that transaction. But pokemon cards are not inherently a scam.. just because the price can go up and down.. they are probably considered a collectable.

Now cryptocurrencies are not collectibles, and they are not currencies, but they have attributes of both I'd propose. They are entirely speculatory in nature, but can sometimes be used as a currency. So, in some ways, I argue, they should be treated like pokemon cards, in other ways, regarding regulation, they might need to be considered a currency to be able to regulate the industry in such a way that protects investors, just like private transactions (selling collectibles) and financial investing (trading stocks/etc) have regulations.

Although this is nuanced, and cryptocurrency is not currency or a collectible entirely, it is not inherently a 'greaters fools game' any more than trading stocks or Pokemon cards.

It's just another thing that needs to be regulated, and if people didn't use it for something, it would just go away, and we wouldn't be having this discussion.

On another note, there is a lot of fud on cryptocurrency right now.. and let me say this.. there are farms of individuals, soon to be llm's, flooding the Internet with all this negativity on crypto in every conceivable public forum.

100%, this is politics now, when you see people online with a certain perspective, you tend to at least consider it. This is the psychology of influence on the net, everyone's brains are connected to this same network, and business and government know it. If they can even suggest that individuals give any credence to a random post online, they will make that post, and to their ends. So now, we have entire buildings of people filling the net with their 'opinions', in the name of influencing.

There are so many 'people' online that totally call cryptocurrency an inherit scam (which is pretty much impossible, inherently so, that the idea is itself a scam, and not just able to be used to scam.. cmon, the distinction is there), that I'm convinced that many of the anticrypto posts are simple persuasion,because either the riches want to buy in, or they are scared of what it can do (as far as replacing the status quo).

Now I'm sure I'm that crazy internet crypto dude all of a sudden, but listen closely, cause we will all see in the next decade or two, and neither you nor me know the future. Remember me either way. :)