“Gold is the money of kings, silver is the money of gentlemen, barter is the money of peasants – but debt is the money of slaves.” ― Norm Franz, Money & Wealth in the New Millennium: A Prophetic Guide to the New World Economic Order.
Images of gold coins from "John Wick" and bar-coded bullion from "Looper".
The major flaw of cryptocoins is that they are not backed by anything and so are not reliable as a store of value. Most crypto holders are governed by greed and fear and so are easy prey for those with the means to manipulate a zero-sum game. The peak market cap reached early this year represented a massive transfer of wealth from the ignorant masses chasing a dream to a small number of early speculators astute enough to cash in at the right time. Many of the losers bet more than they could afford, borrowing or mortgaging to buy into a "sure thing", without understanding anything about cryptos. The pain of their losses will stay with them for a long time. Without an influx of new buyers, the market cap will continue to go down. There is no built-in floor. As miners are no longer able to make a profit, they will stop mining, thus making cryptos more vulnerable to attack.
The only way for cryptos to be viable as a store of value is if they are backed by something like gold, but then it is necessary to trust someone to hold the gold. But if you are going to trust someone to hold gold for you, why not trust a company that also has a more efficient centralized way to transfer value. For example, Goldmoney, for one, features free and rapid transfer of your stored bullion to anyone who also has a Goldmoney account.
Cryptos have had the beneficial side effect of forcing banks to compete better. My bank is now part of a network of banks that uses Zelle to transfer dollars rapidly and with no fee within the network. Without a doubt I trust my bank more than any crypto exchange (even though I distrust banks in general).
Zelle is an example of a PUSH payment system, like Bitcoin, in contrast to the risky PULL payment system that we have all been using when we use standard bank cards. When we give our card number and CCV code to an online merchant, we are authorizing them to pull money from our card. The only thing preventing them from pulling as much as they want is trust, which is abused in an amount of billions of dollars per year, considered by Visa and MasterCard as the cost of doing business. Some banks are already allowing push payments directly from your Visa or MasterCard directly to another card, emulating Bitcoin but less costly and slowly and on a much larger scale.
The only real usefulness I see in cryptos is as a means electronic transfer of value that can avoid border controls and generally hide activities from governments. The goal is not to store value but transfer value, so in and out quickly hoping to avoid a crash in price.
Before Zelle, to send money to a friend you wrote a paper check and handed it to him or sent it to him in the mail. Then he would bring it to his bank and deposit it. Then he would wait several days for the check to clear. With Zelle, you go online, enter your friend's email address and the amount, and click a button. A couple minutes later the amount is credited to your friend's account and is available to use. Much like Bitcoin, only faster and cheaper. Can you see how Zelle is a major improvement?
Yes, the bank is still a middleman as it was before. Comparing to Bitcoin, the trade off is trusting a middleman in order to get better service. But actually, most Bitcoiners also rely on middlemen (exchanges), which are notorious.