> But "not enforced at all"? Try paying your US taxes in sats. Try refusing to accept dollars for a debt in a US court.

Those are minor things. Convert your whatever currency of choice to dollars once tax season comes around. Plenty of foreign societies with weak local currencies use strong foreign currencies (Euro, dollar) on a day to day basis even their local government doesn't like it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_facto_currency

Try operating a business that only accepts Bitcoin and see how fast you meet your local regulatory apparatus.

nostr:nprofile1qqsza748zkamgmw4he4hm2xhwqpxd5gkwju38wqh3twmtshx8kv8xvgprpmhxue69uhhxurpw35kzttpwf3kzmnp9e3k7mf0qywhwumn8ghj7mn0wd68ytnrd3hh2epwwe5kumn90yh8s7t69uqsuamnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dshsar36ag runs White Paper Books on Bitcoin. There are many problems but regulatory apparus isn't one.

> The Petrodollar system -- where oil is denominated in USD by geopolitical agreement -- exists. The enforcement is so ambient you stop noticing it, like gravity.

Petrodollar are US military arguments only hold for the US dollar. You'll notice there are many stable fiat currencies in the world. I live in a country whose currency is so stable the Americans envy it, yet there is zero military activity abroad as a matter of principle.

> The difference: when you take a dollar to the shop, an entire institutional framework has pre-negotiated its acceptance.

The acceptance is renegotiated every day through our daily transactions. My local bank which is conservative as fuck offers bitcoin accounts but seems to have little uptake.

Yes it takes a long time for a currency to become as widespread as the top 10 fiat currencies in the world. If bitcoin has little but nonzero use I wouldn't hold it against it. But it has no use whatsoever and no chance of ever having any due to the absence of a price stability mechanism.

> When you take sats to the shop, you're relying on voluntary adoption with zero institutional mandate.

Tourist shops are a good example, in the UK some shops accept euros for the convenience of continental tourists. If it has some utility, it'll be accepted at least somewhere.

> The other just requires math and two willing parties.

It requires a price stability mechanism and Bitcoin doesn't have one.

> You're right that the shop is the final validator. But who built the roads to the shop, and who decided what currency paves them? That's the enforcement layer hiding in plain sight.

I'm perfectly capable of traveling on a road built by one currency to a shop to pay with another, no problem.