As with everything crypto this was a huge scam. Besides the obvious profiting from gullable idiots, the other use case is to illegally funnel money.

Not absolutely everything in crypto is a scam, though 99% of it is, and I will definitely agree with you there. But there is 1% that is actually trying to do something useful, and you’ve got to be able to find that 1% and not throw it out with the bath water.

I’d wager even the 1% is the stereotypical “solution in search of a problem”. Seems to be a reoccurring theme as of late in the tech industry.

Having a currency not backed by a government or different currency is actually something the world could benefit from. Iranian currency was backed by USD, the US caused a shortage of USD there, and their currency value dropped to under 3% of it’s former value. 90 Million people.

That said, I think most of us have only ever used crypto to buy drugs off the internet.

Yeah, but a currency practically needs a military and an economy to back it.

Who is going to stop me from fucking with the bitcoin supply if I own the US economy?

That’s the point of crypto - unless you can alter 51% of the blockchain, you can’t.

You misunderstand, if I own the GDP of a world power, what’s preventing me from buying a ton of Bitcoin and fucking with the supply that way?

Crypto nowadays looks like a pump and dump free for all.

How is buying the asset fucking with the supply?

If you mean hoarding it, that’s pretty much all Bitcoin is good for.

The supply of an asset is the volume of that asset available for purchase.

If I buy all of that, supply becomes zero.

The price goes up as you buy it.

You could attempt to corner the market, but in doing so, you’re also going to be massively enriching the current holders.

What point would taking the entire supply do - especially since you can easily just start another blockchain?

You buy enough to raise the price, announce that you’re buying it, schmucks try to get in on the wave, you dump while tweeting diamond hands.

Repeat.

Again, why?

To make money

The government you’re talking about can print money at will.

But that increases the money supply. This way they can take money from other people. For example Russia can get USD without printing and inflating RUB.

That’s just FOREX with extra steps?

If Russia controls the entire supply of Bitcoin (which is what you’re saying) then why would anyone with USD want to buy it? At that point, being owned by Russia entirely, it’s just a Russian currency.

The whole supposed attraction of Bitcoin is that it’s not a government currency, and the supply isn’t controlled by a central bank. Ethereum has additional uses to that, but that’s still one of the prime factors as well.