Anything can be used as a currency. Currency has value only when people believe it does. That's the primary reason its called *fiat* as you are also using that term. So in your view, only criminals and investors have cryptocurrency? USDC, BUSD, PAX, DAI, those are all cryptocurrencies (that are not bitcoin) that are used for transactions by quite a few companies (and growing) that have the same value as the USD. With a value pegged to the dollar, and merchants willing to accept it (like VISA), that pretty much breaks the argument of criminals/investors HODLing it. Then again, with that same argument, you could call Disney a criminal enterprise when it printed out *Disney Dollars* which was currency used in its theme parks.
Do you know any scientists, historians, scholars, etc? I work with many. Actually, several HUNDRED of them. I'll go show them this, especially the part about *reading books and scientific papers is not research* and see what they say. Just to summarize, everything you stated above that is *not* research, is research. Especially the school, and books. Yes, even the Youtube. Some of them present really good Youtube material. It's not just for social media influencers, although there's a lot of those.
This makes no sense. Money in the bank is still fiat currency. There is no difference between a Benjamin stuffed in your mattress and $100.00 stored in a bank. In one case, $100 is represented by a piece of cloth with lots of security features and the other is electronically stored (and earns a tiny bit of interest).
No, its the demand of so many people willing to pay more than the guy next to them that raises the value of the item, not the *market* dictating the value of the item. A market is just a market. It doesn't state the value of anything, its not a Kelley Blue Book, it's not a Sports Trading card valuating company. If everyone in the world looked at a Monet and said it was the ugliest thing in the world, it's value would drop instantly.
And unfortunately, this is also not true. One only needs to look at the past government of Zimbabwe (with its 100 trillion dollar bills!), current Vietnam (500,000 VND notes), Pre-WW2 era Germany, and even great-depression era of the USA and see that governments cannot ultimately control the values of their currencies. Governments *try* to. That's what they like, that's what they make attempts to do. But its not guaranteed, it's subject to market changes, and ultimately, its not under anyone's control, really. If you want to argue with that, tell me what the cost of a dozen eggs will be in 10 years, in US dollars.