I have some knowledge in this area. The rise of cryptocurrencies at this time is interesting for sure, and may play into the end times, however I firmly believe that Bitcoin and other crypto's are a tool of freedom, so long as they stay decentralized.
The entire world is held in a state of economic slavery. Dollars, euro's and every other national currency are the real "electronic phantom money backed by nothing," printed, inflated, devalued, and given away over- and under-the table by the politicians and central banks trillions at a time. It irritates me when I hear the parroting of "money isn't the most important thing in life," which is true, but we spend most of our lives trying to earn it and being limited by what we can do because of it... decades of our lives that could have been used for more productive, creative things. You have to have it to be free of it. Debt is slavery. And dollars ARE debt, created 10:1 out of thin air but paid back with interest by us and our descendants.
IMO, some of the wars we've fought have not been over oil per se, but to punish "rouge" nations for abandoning the petrodollar and trading with others in gold or their own currencies. However now the "de-dollarization" is too rampant to stop. There's a deep rabbit hole here.
Bitcoin is the first honest money most have seen in their lifetime. It is controlled by true market forces. I think it's going to the sky (even $1M apiece?), both because of it's usefulness, but mostly because all the national currencies are in a race to devalue so the nations can devalue their debt. So bitcoin becomes a measure of how everything else is devalued.
Gold is assumed to be the alternate store of value but even that has been suppressed by Big Money. Not even counting "paper gold" that exists in multiples of the amount of metal backing it up, and gold-plated tungsten. I'm not anti-gold, though, in fact it's probably a bargain. So yeah gold, silver, bitcoin, other crypto's, real estate, farmland, etc...
What I think we will see, is nations creating their own centralized crypto's. This could be a beastly platform. The difference between the two is whether or not there are centralized controls on the issuance and use of it. So that's the key to be on the lookout for: centralization is the difference between a tool and a weapon, freedom or slavery.
I may or may not have strong feeling on the subject of money. ;-)
P.S. None of this is meant to be a negative reaction to cwood's post, I hope it's not taken that way. She pointed out something that a lot of people are noticing, so I just wanted to give my perspective on it. Like any tech, crypto's are morally neutral. A few tweaks between freedom and oppression, and I wanted to add the nuance to it.
P.P.S. There's also a "war on cash" going on worldwide, to take that alternative away as well.
