* "This will decentralize ownership of a currency." Nope, it will move from having government control to having oligarchic control.

-> While not perfect, look at something like DAI. You can buy MKR and then be involved in the process of managing the DAI currency. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dai_(cryptocurrency)

* "A strict limit on the number of tokens means that the value isn't stolen away by inflation." If the supply of currency doesn't keep up with demand, the price skyrockets. This discourages investment, since you get more value just by holding onto it.

-> Not all cryptocurrencies have a max total supply. There is all sorts of experiments going on.

* "These are anonymous transactions." On a public ledger, the most you can do is pseudonymous. Just like TOR, you only need to monitor the exit nodes to map pseudonyms to actual people.

> "Is using monero gui (not through a remote node) safe from tor exit nodes?

> The exit node will see that there is traffic on the XMR port and where the destination > of those packets is (an XMR node). But they won't know where it came from, and with regard to the transaction, they won't know the sender, the recipient, or the amount. Short answer: yes."

https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/5umdut/monero_safet...

-> Maybe it goes down a rabbit hole of semantics but I think for most people the above (sender, recipient and amount are unknown) constitutes anonymous.

* "Irreversible transactions are a feature." They're definitely a bug. If I buy a TV with a credit card, and receive a box of rocks, I can do a chargeback. If I make that same transaction with cryptocurrencies, I'm SOL unless a fraudster suddenly decides that they really want to make good on it.

-> I think this is pure opinion. I've never charged back something. If it's something you do often you as the user can decide whether it's a feature or bug.

* "We don't need banks anymore." is absolutely hilarious when coupled with "Off-chain transactions solve the throughput limits." If there's an organization that holds money in their on-chain accounts on behalf of others, manages a balance of those off-chain accounts backed by deposited assets, and facilitates transactions between those off-chain accounts, that sure sounds like a bank to me.

-> I assume you're referring to something like Tether or USDC. You are correct for now. Chains like Solana can do 50k TPS today. UST (TerraUSD) is currently securing 2 billion USD equivalent completely on chain. We have the tools to transition but you're correct that we have not transitioned yet.

* "Sure, there's a high electricity cost, but compare it to the entire banking system that it's replacing and it's minimal." This one manages to be both inaccurate and false. A proof-of-work cryptocurrency must at all times expend energy proportional to the value represented by the cryptocurrency, or else be vulnerable to attack. As such, the more it expands in usage, the more much be expended to secure it. We've seen how Bitcoin alone now dwarfs entire countries, let alone the banking sector. And even if the statement were true, it is misleading to compare a payment processor to the entire banking sector. Even if the entire banking sector ran on cryptocurrency, you'd still need somebody to underwrite loans and mortgages.

-> A chain like Solana is running on Proof of stake and uses a fraction of the energy that BTC uses. They currently have around 700 validators and rising fast. Undercollatoralized loans are another challenge which many teams are working on. Keep in mind, the challenge is to replace a system that has been solving issues it ran into for hundreds of years. Cryptocurrencies / DeFi are very new and there is much work ahead.

I understand you're skeptical and have a negative opinion. It's great to be skeptical. Why I firmly believe that there is a big future ahead for these technologies is because the trend I can observe around the globe is a trend towards more technology in everything. Why have a dumb phone when you can have a smart phone? Why have dumb money when you can have smart, programmable money where lending, sending, purchasing can be streamed, fractionalized, automated and whatever else we come up with. Technology has a habit of making tools more performant. I anticipate the same outcome in this area.