"Bitcoin is the greatest fraud in the history of mankind." Thus, his former attitude to the crypto currency was characterized by the former CEO of the PayPal payment system Bill Harris: he believes that the first crypto currency still exists only due to "misinformed buyers".

According to Harris, bitcoin has no real use cases and is not able to become a reliable store of funds. In addition, the first crypto currency will never become a common means of payment due to high commissions and rather slow confirmation of transactions.

The real cost of bitcoin is zero, and its price is extremely unstable (as it can change by a dozen percent per day) and is greatly overestimated due to the fact that it is not backed up absolutely with anything. It can not be called fair in the face of speculative actions: in general, the price is artificially overstated, so that speculators can sell the asset at an unreasonably high price. And in general, bitcoin pricing is carried out according to the pump-and-dump scheme.

In addition, bitcoin is a very convenient and extremely reliable tool for money laundering, criminal fraud and tax evasion due to its anonymity, and this is one of the reasons why bitcoin is almost never accepted.

The former CEO of PayPal summarizes his reasoning with a rhetorical question:

In what reasonable universe is it possible that someone will release a script (or just announce a release) and thereby create millions of dollars out of air?

But we've already heard all this. Bill Harris, of course, is largely wrong, but, to be more precise, he is not right to read anything. (Or so: many will disagree with such statements.)

The legendary crypto journalist Kyle Torpy wrote a column for Forbes, in which he denied the opinion of Bill Harris. We'll sort it out in order.

Cases of real use bitcoin
At present, there are countless shops and services that accept payment in bitcoins and other crypto-currencies. Among them is the famous London gold dealer Sharp Pixley; a huge number of travel agencies, such as Expedia; the largest auto dealer of Japan accepts for payment of a crypto currency since December 2017, and even Uber since 2016 takes bitcoin as a means of payment. And this is not taking into account the growing number of payment cryptosystems. Even in Russia, bars and restaurants that have adopted crypto-currency have long started appearing.

High commission and low transaction speed
There was a time when the average commission in the bitcoin network almost exceeded $ 50, but those times are long gone: developers are not idle, they are working to solve the problem of scalability. So, since the end of February 2018 SegWit protocol has been activated in the bitcoin code, and now the Lightning Network network is being rapidly developed. But even if this is not enough, there are other crypto-currencies with less commissions and faster transfers.

By the way, the conversation about high commissions of bitcoin with the general director (albeit former) of PayPal is very ironic, especially against the background of changes in the financial policy of the payment system itself.

The real cost of bitcoin
There is an opinion that bitcoin and crypto-currencies, unlike traditional (fiat) money, are not backed up. But we should not forget that representatives of the traditional financial system, like crypto-currencies, keep only on the faith of their community. However, the community of fiat banknotes is many times larger, and often many of its representatives keep in mind that the wallet papers still have a basis in the form of a standardized amount of gold (or anything else).

In the meantime, bitcoin itself has a chance to get its "gold standard" in the form of electricity, which goes to create one coin. And the volatility of bitcoin is a consequence of the relative youth of the market. With the stabilization of trading volumes and capitalization close to the stock market, the situation may change.

Bitcoin and crime
The parable of the anonymity of bitcoin has lost popularity in informed circles many years ago. Each user can even accidentally or unconsciously bind the address of the bitcoin-wallet to his personality. Ordering the goods in the online store for bitcoins and specifying the delivery address, you can easily deinonize yourself.

If you go deeper into details, even by the IP address from which the user goes to his wallet, you can easily calculate the location (to be honest, it's not so easy, but if government agencies have chosen to search for an IP owner, they are quite capable of finding it) .

About buying drugs for bitcoins, for example, five years ago, now you could already regret several times, because for four bitcoins, then spent on hallucinogenic mushrooms, in December 2017, you could buy a home. In addition, Qatar University and Hamad-bin Khalifa University staff published research results at the end of January 2018 showing how easy it is to link bitcoins-transactions of many years ago with real people:

About buying drugs for bitcoins, for example, five years ago, now you could already regret several times, because for four bitcoins, then spent on hallucinogenic mushrooms, in December 2017, you could buy a home. In addition, Qatar University and Hamad-bin Khalifa University staff published research results at the end of January 2018 showing how easy it is to link bitcoins-transactions of many years ago with real people:

The retroactive operational safety of bitcoin is low. If something was recorded in the locker, you can go back to history and find this information to reveal the identity of the user.

A well-known example - the story of the creator of the black market Silk Road Ross Ulbricht, who in February 2015 was sentenced to life imprisonment.