Technical:

- transfer of provably discrete (and sometimes fully private) values between machines, without a central intermediary. It takes what HTTP/S, FTP, all the information protocols that opened up the internet to what it became, and adds the ability to know that packet_a is the only packet_a out there.

- it's on the back 30-40 years of research of the same computer scientists that brought you consumer cryptography, Tor, and many other consequential innovations. As in, it didn't just pop out of SBF's head.

- Think of what non-discrete digital information transmission did to everything. Now we have discrete digital information transmission. This is where the "money of the internet" terminology comes from IMO.

- "but we have Google/ApplePay, Venmo, etc!:" look at the protocols that govern the internet and similar examples like linux. how many of them are "owned" by a central party like digital payments currently are? yes, some have heavy influence, and ICANN, DNS, etc are somewhat centralized when you really get down to it. But there is no vendor-specific HTTPs.

Not technical:

- simply put: people, governments, financial institutions, and on and on are using it. The opinion pieces and select loud voices in government and HN would make you believe that only criminals or techies putting the dotcom bubble to shame are using it. However, hand on the bible, it has penetration across quite a lot of use cases as a digital, international currency, beyond NFTs and moonCoins. Bank of International Settlements just let member banks deposit 2% of their holdings in BTC. This is not a small event, and its one of many out there. While Senators, ECB, and coworkers in HN are shaming it, it's getting adopted by their peers. And normal folk who don't know better see it as an open question still or fraud somehow.

- payment censorship: The largest capital outflows from CN where when crypto was legal there, and then subsequently banned. Ok though, "it could never happen here" is often thought if you live in the West. People saw Julian Assange's cut off from payment rails and rightfully so perhaps dismissed it. But then what about OnlyFans last year almost having to change its entire product because someone didn't like porn and pressured enough investors/payment providers in the West to cut them off? Mindgeek (Pornhub) lost payment providers access as well last year. Ok though, "well that's porn." When you combine the march of digital payment censorship based on the values of the day, combined with the digitization of cash and limitations around paper currency, that's a trend to note. What about abortion? What about pro-life funding? What about...? What about Equifax selling your compensation history to competitors, and your lack of opt-out from that system because you get paid in USD via digital banks? In short, digital currency is not currently trustless and censorship-less in the same way paper currency more or less is and has been for centuries, crypto is the only (perhaps imperfect!) alternative out there right now.

- inflation: 8% inflation in the US is one thing, but I know for a fact restaurants where I live (normal town, US) have faced 100% raw ingredient prices YoY. money printing == inflation is irresponsibly simplifying it, but where is your right to have a currency backup that at least has some boundaries around the monetary policy of the day, enables to you exist and spend online, and aligns with your incentives to spend or not spend? Dgital currencies built in CN have test trial "expiration dates" on them to spend for instance. The US is in the middle of similar tech. "It could never happen here" but if you dig in and read some Keynes which our monetary policy is based on... it certainly could.