You don't need to have a numeric way to measure two things against each other to say one is greater than the other. You don't need quantitative data to back every statement you make in your life. I can say that Mozart was more talented at writing and performing music than Kirk Cousins is at playing quarterback in the NFL and there is no way to measure this, but everyone would agree that it is true. It's not an unreasonable statement to make at all.
But what you said is more in line with:
You- Kirk Cousins is not worth $20m/year contract!
Me- How much do you think he's worth then?
You- Hurr durr what kind of question is that? You can't put a figure on skills!
Me- wtf??
You really don't believe me? Transactions were costing insane amounts of money in November/December last year and taking weeks to process. They were stuck sitting in mem pools forever. Here is the ID, although I don't think there is any way you can see when I submitted it: 7345a9bc63c1532082414d1849ff908a18f4dbdc0859959197fa022c66a2dd3e
Yes you can. Your tx took less than 5 days, not 8. You paid $20.43 worth of fees (at that time) not $40. You exaggerated by a factor of x3.2. With $40 fee, standard sized tx would likely get included in the next block (even during peak congestion time), that's why I called you out on that.
I never claimed they were settled, that is irrelevant. It just has to be confirmed for a credit card transaction... you can't just accept that a bitcoin transaction will be all set when it enters the mem pool... in the case of bitcoin, you NEED to wait for it to settle.
You could before RBF was implemented and blocks weren't full. The risk was there but it was far lower than the risk of fraudulent credit card chargeback (btw, merchant can consider cc payment fully settled when chargeback time limit expires), so perfectly fine for small/mid transactions. You can still do that with BCH, you have other coins with near-instant confirmations (or instant non-blockchain coins) and you have other solutions like LN in a making. Wait, why am I feeling like I'm repeating myself...
If you build a payment system on top of bitcoin then you are taking something decentralized and improving it by centralizing it. Coinbase can do instant transfers because they control all of the bitcoin and know all of their private keys are valid. You can't transfer into or out of Coinbase instantly. If you want all bitcoin payments to be controlled by a sytem like Coinbase then why even use bitcoin at all? What is the benefit of that over credit cards?
There is always a tradeoff between decentralization/trustlessness and speed/scalability. Nobody is SOLVING the pitfalls of crypto without sacrificing decentralization and trustlessness.
Relying on 3rd parties on top of blockchain is hypothetical dark scenario when everything else fails. Even then you have benefit of having control over majority of your funds and only depositing smaller amounts to the 3rd parties. Having to trust someone with your $200 is not the same as having to trust someone with all your money, all the time, isn't it?
I'm sure even you put at least a tiny value in having an option in life (to use crypto if you ever feel like it), it's better than not having such option.
The difference between bitcoin and mcdonalds is that mcdonalds has a book value. They have stores, inventory, etc. They also have sales, and earnings... income... bitcoin has none of that. It has no intrinsic value, which is why it cannot exist in this limbo state you described forever.
Bitcoins also have book value. You didn't address the point. Can you explain, precisely at what tx/sec capacity rate BTC moves from being completely worthless to being worth something. What's the magic number?
No, you are saying that Swift and others investing in private non-trustless blockchains means they have value.
It's a strong indicator that they find the technology useful. I don't expect Swift is spending shitloads on blockchain solutions just to bump their stock price, because they are a Society and don't even have a listed stock + probably they would be the first to debunk the blockchain tech if it was indeed useless (as it's a direct competition to their service). Just as I find it hard to believe that Blockstream would manage to sell their private blockchain solutions to any business if it was indeed inferior to the existing tech etc.
Yes, I find it more credible than word of an anonymous forum "expert", with no history, saying "they're all wrong/they're a fraud".
Second of all, I don't see any real connection between BTC's worth and usefulness of private chains, so couldn't care less.
Creating a new crypto and automatically assigning it value is exactly what is happening every day! Look at all the IPOs everywhere. This is literally what bitcoin is... creating value out of nothing. If it worked for bitcoin, eth, bch, ltc, iota, xrp, doge, etc... why would we think this will stop?
So if I create my own premined shitcoin and assign its value at $1m/coin, I'd be instantly the richest man in the world? Or, could it be, I actually need someone to buy from me at that price?
USD has intrinsic value because every person and organization in the US is required by law to accept it as payment for debt. It is legally guaranteed value by the US government. I would argue that this is intrinsic value. This differs from bitcoin, which nobody is required to accept anywhere.
What's guaranteed is USD acceptance, not its value. Zimbabwean Dollars were also a legal tender and how did that work in terms of retaining the value? There's no intrinsic value in USD. What's funny, it can get worse than that, in some cases being legal tender can prevent you from extracting intrinsic value from physical notes/coins, i.e. scrap metal value of 1 cent coin exceeds 1 cent, but scrapping/destroying official money is a criminal offence.