Except USD is the medium by which you acquire your crypto. If you control a majority of the crypto asset then you control who gets to have, and who gets to have not. Thus, you're able to artificially block people out of the network.
You've missed my point about how the price of the crypto increasing causes the cost of communication to increae along with it. Hence, it's not viable as the basis of a decentralized communication infrastructure.
I believe you're speaking about crypto in the purely financial sense. I am talking about the intended use of DLT's as the backbone of future decentralized infrastructure.
As a financial asset, it's good for the price to go up. If you're trying to use the crypto network for anything else, it's very very bad.
Bitcoin doesn't solve the distribution of wealth problem. There is no way to solve it. Different people have different intelligence, work ethic, and luck - all 3 contribute to varying amounts of accumulation of wealth. What bitcoin does do - is it creates a fair set of rules by which everyone must adhere. Whoever currently has a large amount of stored value is able to use that to acquire a larger amount of BTC than someone with less stored value. This isn't a manipulation of Bitcoin, this is a consequence of the manipulation of fiat. And it doesn't block anyone. You can buy $1.00 USD worth of bitcoin if you'd like. And in 10 years the purchasing power won't be what it would have been if you kept it in USD...
USD is also not the only method to acquire crypto, its just one of the most obvious and with the least friction because money is good at buying things and people have USD. Bitcoin is mined all over the world, anyone can do it, they just have to overcome the barrier to entry, which has gotten significantly higher since so many people want bitcoin now. There are also jobs that pay in bitcoin. Obviously this is rare, but bitcoin is still young, we're very early.
I didn't miss your point about how the price of crypto increasing causes the cost of communication to increase, I just didn't see how that was overly relevant. That's one specific use case that may not be well suited to use bitcoin based on where bitcoin currently is in its evolution.
I don't think bitcoin is even close to fairly valued. I think we're still in a price discovery phase. During this phase, we'll have wild swings. During this phase, I believe its going to go up wildly in the future, so I hold onto my bitcoin and I spend my fiat. If I'm right and it goes up wildly, it would have been pretty silly spending a bunch of this incredibly valuable finite asset on decentralized infrastructure when you can just spend USD on it instead. Once bitcoin reaches maturity, I believe the Lightening Network will be better equipped for that use case than USD. But I fully acknowledge it isn't there yet.
So yes, I am mostly considering bitcoin as a financial asset right now. It needs to become a rock solid financial asset first. Build a strong foundation, then build on top of that.
Just because its not ready for this doesn't mean its a failed project. There was a time when Satoshi said Bitcoin wasn't ready to be used to donate to Wikileaks.
I advise WikiLeaks not to try to use Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a small beta community in its infancy. You can only get change, but the heat you carry will destroy us at this stage
But that doesn't mean it would never be a good fit for that use case.
Its not done maturing, but its on the most solid path.
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