Basically my point is that if you are an individual or a company who regularly exchanges money over national borders or deal in lots of different countries and currencies then it makes sense to think about having some of your financial assets held in Bitcoin and see how open your trading partners are open to it. You should at least investigate this rather than dismissing it outright.
No way should anyone go all in and have all of their assets in crypto, let alone in just one crypto. In the same way that a company probably shouldn't have all their exposure in one FIAT currency or one national economy. Diversification is key. Because one country could experience an ecomonic crash or a 'black swan' event and a FIAT currency could also experience a big drop.
Clearly Bitcoin is more volatile than the dollar or the pound and is different from a FIAT currency. So unless you are trying to time the market then you are going to have to deal with the swings. Obviously some people prefer the stability of dealing with pounds, dollars or euros and that's fine. That's what you are paying your fees to banks and currency exchange brokers for - stability and piece of mind. Established financial institutions have monetised these feelings very well.
As an aside, a theme that has developed from a few posters seems to be that because crypto doesn't have any relevance in their everyday life right now it should just be described as useless or called a scam,pyramid or ponzi. I just think that is very closed minded and short termist. Many young people are living more of their life online and since the pandemic and lot more older people are too. With that in mind there is no reason why digital art through NFTs and crytocurrency shouldn't thrive or be as succesful as FIAT currency or physical art.
Personally I don't trust the state and the government very much, so I think having some decentralised assets is a good thing as a protection and hedge against the world going completely tits up and the global economy collapsing.
Bitcoin is not the same as the 200th ranked coin in the crypto rankings on Coinmarketcap. In the same way - shares in Apple are not the same as a penny stock or the US Dollar is not the same as Argentinian Peso.
You shouldn't use a broad brush to lump all crypto in together. Some cryptocurrencies will fail. Some companies will go bankrupt. Some FIAT currencies will devalue.
Bitcoin is established now, like it or not. It has provenance. Large financial institutions are getting involved and dipping their toe in. It is being legitimized.
.... If you want to change pounds to dollars, you can shop around but you are going to lose a few % everytime you change it. Perhaps not a big deal for a few trips to the Rhino in Vegas, but if you are a business then this kind of thing adds up.
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But - unless all your suppliers are using BTC then at some point you need to convert BTC to $ (or £'s or whatever)
If you did that on the 21st Jan 21 you'd get about $22,500 per BTC
But if you did it on the 21st Feb 21, you'd get nearer $41,000
on the 21st May you'd get $26,000
and on the 21st June you'd be down to closer to $22,500 again
All the upswings are good for profit - but how could any reasonable company cope with that volatility?
Surely the few % lost from standard banking transactions is going to work out less in the long term than the massive chunk that could be lost from BTC suddenly halving in value just as you need to get FIAT currency to pay a supplier?
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