One start on this question is with another question: What advantage does Nakamoto consensus have over typical Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance? It, surprisingly enough, scales better and is also open with permisionless participation. It's inefficient but a big part of that is because it's both open and seeks consensus with essentially no subjectivity.
The combination of these features: a distributed, open, permissionless, minimal subjectivity, practical double spend immunity, and malicious actor or sybil resistance log of transactions, are what make it as it is and difficult to improve upon without weakening one of those aspects. To answer your why questions would be to defend those properties.
My experience is people from oppressed corruption filled countries tend to be sympathetic of those properties and those from wealthy stable countries tend to think them not worth the cost. It probably can't be used as a global currency but can (in theory) be there for scenarios where trust and subjectivity tolerance are minimal.
> isn't this a ponzi scheme
I would say no, it's more like a speculative bubble and casino that breeds pump and dump schemes. If most participants are uninformed then it's a scam, if most are informed it's senseless gambling. There are some legit uses such as funding civil disobedience or hedging against serious inflation in countries with constrained access to dollars (this usecase is why it fails to be a ponzi scheme, you don't want value to increase, stability is preferred).
The combination of these features: a distributed, open, permissionless, minimal subjectivity, practical double spend immunity, and malicious actor or sybil resistance log of transactions, are what make it as it is and difficult to improve upon without weakening one of those aspects. To answer your why questions would be to defend those properties.
My experience is people from oppressed corruption filled countries tend to be sympathetic of those properties and those from wealthy stable countries tend to think them not worth the cost. It probably can't be used as a global currency but can (in theory) be there for scenarios where trust and subjectivity tolerance are minimal.
> isn't this a ponzi scheme
I would say no, it's more like a speculative bubble and casino that breeds pump and dump schemes. If most participants are uninformed then it's a scam, if most are informed it's senseless gambling. There are some legit uses such as funding civil disobedience or hedging against serious inflation in countries with constrained access to dollars (this usecase is why it fails to be a ponzi scheme, you don't want value to increase, stability is preferred).