Ok, fair enough. I disagree, though, with your assessment that people will stop using cash because it's worthless. Actual cash and digital credit are not the same thing. If the digital credit dollar hyperinflates, there is an argument that actual cash bills and coins will increase in value, because of scarcity, but are still excellent as a medium of exchange. It's perfect for an underground economy, and is already used in that way to avoid taxes, etc. Is there enough bitcoin penetration for people to use it to run an economy? When will that happen? Will it happen in time?

Also, bitcoin depends on a functioning electrical grid. Meanwhile the grid is ancient and needs billions in new investment, rolling blackouts are coming to basically all of Europe this winter and most likely every winter after that, Russia is currently taking out the electric generation capability of Ukraine, and we can sit back and watch new dominoes fall. I guess it can work well in the Capitol in a Hunger Games world, though, so with the caveat that that the inhabitants of surviving bubble zones with the lights still on are the target audience, and not the ROW, go ahead, educate them.

How does storing it on an exchange facilitate its use?

Oh, that's right, it's only useful for speculation and trading.

If you store it on an exchange, your not using it right.

First off, everybody knows “not your keys = not your coins”, that’s never been a secret and I assume that everybody understands that when I say Bitcoin, I mean self-custodied Bitcoin.

With all due respect to Ms. Fitts, she’s always been behind the curve on Bitcoin and she continues to equate it with CBDCs, when in fact Bitcoin is the anti-CBDC. The difference will be whether you can take custody over your private keys or not.

Finally, I’ve been invested in gold and singing its praises for over 20 years and I’ve never stopped, including pushing back on Bitcoiners who think it will replace gold (it won’t).

This article is a criticism of online payment rails like Paypal, most of this other stuff was out of scope.

Keep using cash? Yeah ok. It’s literally worthless, be my guest. But in an all-bets-are-off situation, cash is about the last thing anybody is going to trade anything useful for.

Catherine Austin Fitts at Financial Rebellion hosted by Children's Defense Fund is recommending that people return to using cash as much as possible, to prevent adoption of CBDCs. Currency, unlike its digital credit equivalent in bank accounts, is an asset that you control and which is "outside the system." The government would have to outlaw currency as legal tender, which could happen but if people use it a lot, there would be hell to pay. Have and use cash. This is by far the simplest answer. Yeah, you won't be able to do internet buying, but it's time to get local.

BTW, bitcoin is itself an external opaque system, because it requires a significant investment of time to understand it well in order to protect your bitcoin "wealth". There are also reports of governments stopping it or trying to control it, so how is this better? As I recall, Trudeau also stopped payments to support the truckers by bitcoin, so how is this better?

The other obvious answer which you also can't bring yourself to mention is gold coins.