That's just the reality of cash, no less in digital form, so it would be naive to think Bitcoin wouldn't inherit the same uses of USD (speculation, money laundering, fraud). It's just not very damning. Though I'm sure various people in the government/Visa would love to ban USD cash with the same demonization.
Except that cash in USD is also used as a medium of exchange.
Any VPN service offers the option to pay in bitcoin, as do many other sites. There are entire marketplaces on Tor where bitcoin is the primary currency.
I was real excited the first time that Bitcoin was explained to me. I saw it as the first real alternative to paper money. But what I soon learned is that most of the people associated with Bitcoin saw it as digital gold and were only interested in seeing the value rise and cashing out. I've seen a few positive developments every once in a while that fail to get much adoption. So I keep waiting and waiting. It increa…
Seems like adoption as a payment method halted when Bitcoin had scaling issues. Now the community seems pretty split in two. There's people who are for Bitcoin and see it as a store of value and people who are for Bitcoin Cash who see it as a store of value and a method of payment. The main contention seems to be around block sizes and wether to increase the block size to make it more scalable, hence the BCH fork.
They both want to scale transactions, they just disagree about how. Bitcoin Cash wants much higher transaction throughput at the base layer (i.e. the actual blockchain). While Bitcoin wants the high throughput lower value transactions to happen at layers built on top of the base chain, e.g. Lightning
No one treats Bitcoin as a currency. It’s treated as an investment vehicle. And the reason behind that is obvious. Something whose value may double in a month or whose value may halve within weeks is a terrible currency. If I expect it’s value to increase then I would be a fool to spend it. If I expect it’s value to drop I would be a fool to accept it. Cryptocurrencies are anything but currencies.
Buying drugs with BTC is very widespread and probably what fuelled the initial adoption. How is that anything but a currency?
Related: the current rise of Bitcoin prices has been peculiar to me, and seems to be a bit of a canary in an inflationary coal mine. We've injected trillions of dollars of fiat into the economy this year. It feels like the sky-high valuations of technology companies and Bitcoin are "shock absorbers" of sorts, or early signals of inflation-yet-to-come. If we assume the market is efficiently pricing these assets (like…
BTC prices have approximately zero relation to inflation in the real economy (for whatever definition of that you want to use). Rising BTC prices are driven by pyramid scams, fraud, and speculation. There is no useful signal here related to anything else.
Ponzi schemes give an INCOME RETURN
Bitcoin gives a PRICE APPRECIATION RETURN
One could call this then a “greater fool” play except it has algorithmic reduction in supply which repairs “greater fool” aspect.
No one treats Bitcoin as a currency. It’s treated as an investment vehicle. And the reason behind that is obvious. Something whose value may double in a month or whose value may halve within weeks is a terrible currency. If I expect it’s value to increase then I would be a fool to spend it. If I expect it’s value to drop I would be a fool to accept it. Cryptocurrencies are anything but currencies.
I grew up in Ukraine where my parents were earning and spending hryvna (local currency, high inflation) while saving in USD (much more stable). And a big value prop in favor of US dollar was its immunity to local country’s politics. Bitcoin has a potential to serve as that kind of saving “currency” a lot of people actually need.
>The scarcity of block chain space has led people to re-invent every last feature of the banks they thought they were going to be escaping. This is a pretty funny point because every time I go on twitter and see people talk about crypto, what they're essentially having is a discussion about public policy, and often they seem to try to reinvent institutions that already exist without even knowing it. From market-maker…
I don't see the irony. The point is that Bitcoin has introduced an actual "digital cash" currency without institutional/governmental middlemen. That institutions can be built on top of that, and that some people want such institutions, doesn't change the novel utility of finally having a currency that functions like digital cash. It's like saying it's ironic that people use physical USD for anonymous p2p transactions…
I think the point is human biology. To date humans have not figured out a society that avoids such barnacles.
These technologies are style and no substance to the masses. Propped up by fetishists and speculators.
No one treats Bitcoin as a currency. It’s treated as an investment vehicle. And the reason behind that is obvious. Something whose value may double in a month or whose value may halve within weeks is a terrible currency. If I expect it’s value to increase then I would be a fool to spend it. If I expect it’s value to drop I would be a fool to accept it. Cryptocurrencies are anything but currencies.
> No one treats Bitcoin as a currency. ... And the reason behind that is obvious. Something whose value may double in a month or whose value may halve within weeks is a terrible currency. Nope. I don't buy things in crypto only because of the reporting burden. Every cup of coffee bought with crypto has to be reported on a tax return.
I don't see the irony. The point is that Bitcoin has introduced an actual "digital cash" currency without institutional/governmental middlemen. That institutions can be built on top of that, and that some people want such institutions, doesn't change the novel utility of finally having a currency that functions like digital cash. It's like saying it's ironic that people use physical USD for anonymous p2p transactions…
That is a good way of thinking about it. "The Internet of Money" is a very good way of labeling it. The internet protocols itself and it's openess are very foundational like bitcoin. Everything we use today is built on top of that. BTC is really just the brand right now. Moving forward we will see if BTC is Yahoo/Myspace and who will be the Google/Amazon of this new sector.
I prefer "The US dollar without democratic institutions"
Theoretically companies like Mindgeek who have been kicked off of the VISA/Mastercard duopoly, would be able to use Bitcoin as a censorship-resistant way to accept online payment. There's additional benefits as mentioned earlier like not needing to comply with KYC laws. Of course, as Bitcoin currently stands, it's difficult for this to come to fruition because most holders are speculators rather than people intereste…
> There's additional benefits as mentioned earlier like not needing to comply with KYC laws. Why would Bitcoin transactions be exempt from KYC?
Because the fact that it's (in theory) anonymous means that most people think that it also cannot be regulated by laws. People just don't outright say that though because it might sound like enabling fraud, tax evasion, and other unsavory activities was the point.
The vast majority of mined gold in existence is not used for industrial purposes.
But industrial use is big (see the link from the other poster, 37% in the US), and growing. Gold is a very useful material and not only for its shininess.
The current pricing of gold has nothing, repeat after me, nothing to do with its industrial use.