Gestures broadly at the behaviour of basically every crypto subreddit, YouTube channel and forum; to say nothing of the advertising by crypto businesses.
Excepting darknet commerce, cryptocurrency has no other purpose besides speculation, so it's pretty obvious that speculation is why most people are buying it.
I know that controlled substance e-commerce was a key market for bitcoin ~10 years ago, but given crypto's current volatility, transaction fees, settlement times, and vulnerability to forensic accounting, is bitcoin still a viable way to buy drugs?
Has plenty of purpose when you see people being deplatformed from their banks, inflation at all time highs, and the dollar possibly losing de facto monopoly in world trade.
Cryptocurrency is not practical without access to a bank.
> inflation at all time highs
Cryptocurrency's extreme volatility means it's a poor hedge against inflation, especially compared to other assets that are known to be reliable without the volatility. For example, if you bought BTC a year ago hoping to hedge against the alarm bells that were sounding for inflation, you are now doing much worse compared to havin done absolutely nothing.
> dollar possibly losing de facto monopoly in world trade.
This is not a real use-case. Could this happen? Perhaps, but there's no reason to believe that this wouldn't decimate the cryptocurrency markets, if anything, the new reserve currency would be the more desirable asset, not cryptocurrency.
> Gotta hedge your bets, you never know what is going to happen.
This logic could be applied to anything.
> Also, BTC has been used without a bank since inception – not sure what you mean by "practical".
Acquiring bitcoin without a bank is not practical, without a bank you essentially have to orchestrate an in-person meetup to exchange cash for cryptocurrency, and this raises many safety concerns besides being a very inconvenient burden. You also need a bank to turn BTC into spendable money, same problem applies.
I want a currency that I can take anywhere, that doesn't take up space, that can't be frozen by anyone. For example, if I was a Ukranian fleeing a warzone.
[citation needed]