Bitcoin was launched in January of 2009, making it roughly 13.5 years old by now.  In that time, it has gone from scam to scam to scam and yet time and again the True Believers make excuses for both it and the entire cryptocurrency ecosystem.  “The tech is still early,” “it’s like the early days of the internet” “any day now mass market use will take off” and it NEVER EVER DOES.  Let’s get some context going:

Google was incorporated in 1998, and by 2008 it had 20 billion dollars in revenue.  Not valuation mind you, yearly revenue

Amazon was launched in 1994, and by 2005 they were offering Amazon Prime, which promised unlimited 2-day shipping on over a million in-stock items for a modest yearly fee

Microsoft was founded in 1975 and by 1985 they launched the Windows 1 which sold over half a million units.

Each of these modern tech giants started small, but had reached mass market appeal in less than a decade.  What does Bitcoin have?  Where is the mass market adoption of Bitcoin as a unit of currency?  Where are the merchants and vendors who take Bitcoin instead of Visa or Mastercard?  Time and again minor partnerships area announced where some sucker claims to accept Bitcoin, Bitcoiners exclaim that this is the beginning of mass adoption, and then Bitcoin is quietly removed from the available payment methods or ends up being the smallest method used by a large amount.  Bitcoin doesn’t compete with PayPal, or Apple Pay or any credit card or payment processor because it sucks and always has sucked.  And mass adoption isn’t right around the corner, we aren’t in the early days of Bitcoin we’re over a decade in and it is still useful for nothing more than scams and ponzi schemes.  Every now and then new stories pop up that *this* time it will be different, *this* will definitely be the start of mass adoption.  And of course every time it’s wrong.  I could go through every year from 2010 to today and find someone claiming that this would be the start of mass adoption too.  It’s always been nothing more than scams and hype.