It is time for Bitcoin Critics to find new talking points — They are starting to sound dated and old. | by Bitcoin Basics | The Dark Side | Jan, 2024

The year is 2024. Everyone and their grandmother have both heard about Bitcoin and have also heard about its inevitable demise shortly thereafter. However, in the year 2024, I am continuously surprised by how little critics of Bitcoin actually know about the network, the currency, or even the true value proposition. What many critics may know about Bitcoin often turns out to be nothing more than dated takes and strawman cliché narratives from cycles past. It’s not 2017 anymore.

Last night for instance I was at a dinner event and was speaking with a cybersecurity expert who worked for a major banking institution. We were having a spirited discussion when the topic of Bitcoin came up. As a cybersecurity expert, his first comment was that he sees potential in bitcoin as a distributed ledger on the internet. He knows that any monetary system that hopes to operate over the Internet must be operated using a ledger system and not a digital token. In my opinion, this is a great insight that shows that he has a high level of understanding on this subject matter of cryptography and digital currency which a lot of regular people would not have.

This is where things started to go south as he transitioned to the ‘but’ of his talking point… here we go. Allow me to paraphrase here:

“But bitcoin has only been used as a payment system for scammers and criminals, and not only that but if we’re in a doomsday scenario and the lights go out, who is accepting bitcoin?”

Where to even begin… In my opinion, these takes are both so dated and so lame. The scammers’ and criminals’ talking points were only relevant a decade ago during the peak of the Silk Road before bitcoin had any other real use cases and before any proof of store of value had been established. It’s hard to argue that Bitcoin is only used by scammers and criminals in the same month that bitcoin received the seal of approval not only by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission but also from 11 of some of the largest asset management financial institutions in the world which have begun trading Bitcoin Spot ETFs in the US… Unless you believe that Wall Street is full of scammers and criminals, which could be a separate discussion…