> It's not dependent on any centralized authority.

Say you gave me your fee for representing me in court and I tried to write you a cheque made out to "the bank of imaginationland." How highly would you value that cheque? Probably not very since there's no centralised authority to cash the cheque with.

Cheques from bank of america have value because BoA are a centralised authority and so is the american court system which will intervene if I try to write bum cheques.

> Anyone can make them

That's unreliable, not decentralised.

> and anyone can accept them

Anyone can accept anything. A feature that applies to anything is not a real feature.

> They're negotiable. If I give you .15 bit coin you have .15 bitcoin. If I gave you a check for .15 dollars you have a check for .15 dollars. Both are trustless as you say.

No. I'm trusting you that you actually have $0.15 in your bank account and I'm trusting the justice system that it'll make you pay me the $0.15 somehow even if you don't.

By contrast if you give me .15 bitcoin then that's it. If the transaction goes through then it's mine and you can't take it back.

> The only difference is that you want to think of check as having to be converted into cash and therefore unreliable. That's a psychological issue, not a check issue.

The difference is that I'm depending on the bank/courts to enforce the transaction. And they are centralised trusted authorities. If they behave in an untrustworthy fashion then I get nothing.