Extremely, despite its flaws, because it solves a big problem with money.

The problem with money: you need somebody to vouch for it. You need somebody to assure you that your cash is real, authentic, and worth what you say it is. You need somebody to guarantee that you have the authority to use it.

Ideally, this authority would be competent, honest, fair, trustworthy, and free. Usually, this authority charges fees, makes mistakes, defrauds you, lies to you, steals from you, colludes against you, takes your sensitive personal information, or arbitrarily changes the terms of your transaction.

Humans have found many solutions to this problem over thousands of years. Governments, settlement houses, clearinghouses, laws, courts, accountants, signatures, oaths, etc. All entail some risk, cost, complexity, and the chance of human error. All can be corrupted. None can be scaled. It’s hard and expensive to create any uniformity or standardization of output.

Bitcoin/cryptocurrency accomplishes the same result without many of the downsides. Tokens ensure everybody follows the same rules and blockchain guarantees transactions will go through exactly as you intend. As a result, you no longer need to rely on government decrees, local regulations, or the good faith of strangers. You can safely transact with millions of people who you have never met, with whom you have no relationship, who live in a country with different laws and regulations. As long as you trust bitcoin, you don’t need to trust people.

One Thing You’re Getting Wrong About Cryptocurrency

Are there problems with cryptocurrency? Yes, of course. All solutions create a new problems. This does not usually keep people from believing those solutions are worth using. Internal combustion is 150 years old and still sucks. Man-made electrical power is even older and causes all sorts of problems. Some say wireless technology has destroyed our society. Even the wheel has its limitations.

Like all these innovations, cryptocurrency solves a huge problem in a new way, and as a result, offers tremendous potential for growth, development, application and improvement. It’s already happening. In 2018 we saw a surge in VC investment (900+ announced), record number of registered U.S. patents, between 7x to 35x job growth (depending on who you believe), business use of cryptocurrency, tremendous technological development, and continuous growth in the number of bitcoin wallets and bitcoin transactions—despite a collapse in the cryptocurrency markets.

Mark Helfman's answer to Is blockchain technology really going to change the way the world works or is it mostly hype?

Every single bit of value on earth can be recorded on a blockchain and bought or sold at any time using cryptocurrency like bitcoin. Rat colonies in research labs. Patents and copyrights. Real estate. Hammers. Carbon emissions credits. Wireless data. Assets we haven’t even created yet. Everything.

Because cryptocurrency has solved the problem I mentioned above, you can now create global marketplaces for everything—all $200 trillion to $1 quadrillion worth of “things” that exist. This has tremendous economic value and opens up a whole new world of solutions to financial and economic problems. It’s also really hard to conceptualize, even if you understand the technology. And it will take a very long time to happen.

It won’t be sunshine and roses, either. There are lots of important social, economic, legal, and political questions we’ll need to think about. If you’re interested in understanding how the world might work with cryptocurrency, read my book, Consensusland: A Cryptocurrency Utopia. You can buy it from all online retailers or directly from the publisher Order Now | Consensusland. Learn more here.

Cryptocurrency is different, not necessarily better, than our current money systems. Over time, we will see where it’s valuable and where it’s not, what it can and can’t do.