“What the hell is a bitcoin?”

[WOTR]

All great points and central banking, traditional banking, and commodity markets. And obviously I don't understand the underlying technology. It would seem to be that if 'every transaction' is 'kept' on the blockchain than the crypto currencies would even have more, at least similar, tracking to transactions over the traditional banking system and likewise could be tracked, blocked, or hacked, or lost due to some server shutdown or the companies 'holding' your coin. And not 'anonymous.' Maybe if there was some physical coin that was anonymous, so more like cash, that can't be tracked (as easily at least) once it is a physical form and has exchanged hands several times. I don't know.

Tracked-yes. Blocked-no. Hacked-no. (Bitcoin) and tracked with addresses. Only able to be tired to an individual if you connect it to you in some manner.

Monero had some tracking prevention built in- but it is a little suspect.

Most alt coins are garbage in every sense of the word.

And yes, physical commodities are good as well. Though diamonds are not something I would trust... Try selling one. Way to specialized, way too small a market. Way to easy to buy something that is worthless and most people know as much about diamond investing as crypto investing (strangely, I have told a lot of people to not invest in crypto unless they do the research necessary to understand it.)