Double posting, sorry.1. Currency only has value because people agree that it does. People used to trade seashells. Dollars only have value to the degree people agree to trust our government. Pretty much every government in history with control of the currency resorts to debasement (like the US has been doing for years). Bitcoin is this era's "sound money". Sound money among many things is free from outside manipulation. Maybe that isn't valuable to you. But it is for an ever increasing number of people.
2. Are you really going to argue that when fiat purchasing power all over the world is at these levels? Bitcoin may be volatile, but if you hold it over time your purchasing power will be preserved. This thesis is true until proven otherwise.
3. Financial services is 7% of GDP. How much energy do you suppose is used for that infrastructure? Bitcoin mining function acts as a guardian for the network millions of people use to store value. It is hard coded to defend against a 51% attack. Is it wasted energy if it protects people and their value?
4. It's indefensible because your premise that if something doesn't produce anything then it can't be valuable is obviously false. Many things have value that don't produce something. Bitcoin provides sound money to the world with a finite supply free from government and corporate control. That is valuable to some people.
5. How long did it take for the receiving party to get your funds? My guess is a few days. Basically by carrier pigeon.
1. The value of BTC is manipulated every day. There are constant pump and dump schemes around BTC. It is not "sound money".
2. The value of BTC has dropped like 50% over 6 months, your purchasing power has definitely not been preserved.
3. Here's an article Research: Bitcoin consumes less than half of banking sector that says BTC consumes 113TWH per year, while the banking industries consumes 264 TWH per year. Yet the banking industry handles incredibly more transactions than BTC does. BTC does like 260k transactions per day. Visa alone handles 150 million transactions a day. If BTC had to handle 150 million transactions a day, their power consumption would increase 575 times. It is completely unsustainable.
4. Sure, there are things that have value that don't produce anything, like art. Art isn't a currency though. Bitcoin sucks as a currency, and that's why it has no value.
5. It took less than a day. I went to the bank the day before my closing and the title agency received in the morning.