While cryptocurrencies are mostly seen as speculative assets—get rich quick schemes—they have valuable properties and valuable use cases. For example:

Excellent monetary properties Cryptocurrencies have better monetary properties than anything else in history. In contrast to the fiat money we use today, cryptocurrencies have a limited supply and compared to gold cryptocurrencies are much more portable and it’s easy to divide coins into very small parts. At first glance this may seem insignificant, but money affects everything and even small improvements can have a massive effect.

Cheaper payments Merchants have to pay a 1–4% fee for every credit card transaction, while cryptocurrency transactions only come with a small fixed fee.1 1If you’ve heard about the ridiculously high Bitcoin fees then don’t worry—it’s the exception not the rule. Please read the chapter If you’ve heard about the ridiculously high Bitcoin fees then don’t worry—it’s the exception not the rule. Please read the chapter Cheaper & faster for more info.

Irreversible digital transactions You receive money in under an hour and after that the money is yours, while it may take days to receive other digital payments and they can also be reversed weeks or months later. This means merchants don’t have to worry about having a purchase reversed, which usually means they have to swallow the loss.2 2This is known as This is known as charge back fraud or friendly fraud and is a big problem for merchants.

For anyone and anything Cryptocurrencies can be used by anyone. It’s for businesses who cannot accept credit cards, for people without a bank account and people in dysfunctional countries. You can use it for truly uncensorable donations and not having to worry that your payment processor or bank will freeze your account. Nobody can prevent you from sending or receiving cryptocurrencies.

Financial privacy Banks, credit card companies and payment processors have all your financial transactions on record. Cryptocurrencies allows you to reclaim some of your privacy as they work like a swiss bank account in your pocket.3 3Please note that Bitcoin (and most other cryptocurrencies) are only pseudo-anonymous. There are others—like Monero—that improve the situation. Read the section of Please note that Bitcoin (and most other cryptocurrencies) are only pseudo-anonymous. There are others—like Monero—that improve the situation. Read the section of the privacy and fungibility challenge

An alternative financial system The traditional financial system rewards behavior that caused the 2008 financial crisis and relies on being able to predict the unpredictable. Cryptocurrencies represent an alternative where there’s no central authority that can manipulate the money supply, and they can be used to truly separate money from state.