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Can you elaborate on how that is going to happen? Not trying to flame, I can see a world where people use BTC for everything, but I am confused at how that will

Can you elaborate on how that is going to happen? Not trying to flame, I can see a world where people use BTC for everything, but I am confused at how that will happen with current valuation. BTC is worth thousands of dollars, so if everyone starts using BTC will people pay irrational fractions of BTC for bread and milk at the supermarket? will there be some adjustment? How will other entities handle conversion and exchange? Will the general population have some compulsatory event to liquidate their own bank accounts into BTC funds? Could this change asset valuation worldwide(Real estate, investment funds, etc)? If no government entity mediates currency value and printing can they tax your earnings if companies pay through some decentralized medium? What happens when nobody is paying taxes? How about other cryptocurrencies, is there some kind of zero-sum game race to the top going on? Can they co-exist in the long term purist scenario? Some of these questions are probably extremely stupid as I have little financial and economics knowledge and I am almost illiterate when it comes to Bitcoin, and I don't know how it works for the average joe if this purist scenario becomes true.

Empact 9y ago
Most wallets have started communicating values in "mBTC" - whose price is within an order of magnitude of a dollar.
azinman2 9y ago
Bitcoin is deflationary by design. This is problematic for any country to then adopt, as it removes a major economic lever.
nosuchthing 9y ago
What is Bitcoin doing? The BTC network is a service. At the time of this writing, there are upwards of 30-100+ functioning cryptocoin networks which offer the same distributed ledger functionality of BTC wallets and a few with more unique features and trustworthy dev teams. The arbitrary supply of and rules which define how minted coins are rewarded is an important aspect of each of these cryptocurrencies, and if the limited edition deflationary aspect was valuable then maybe we should all buy into that BTC clone with 42 coins in "circulation". BTC isn't rare, it's just the AOL of cryptocoins right now. Slow and over priced. There are better alternatives.
skizm 9y ago
I'm not an expert on BTC or anything. In fact I'm not even long on BTC. I don't think it will work in the long term. That said I'm just answering questions as I understand them: > BTC is worth thousands of dollars, so if everyone starts using BTC will people pay irrational fractions of BTC for bread and milk at the supermarket? will there be some adjustment? The block chain supports values as small as 0.00000001 BTC (called a Satoshi). More terms will be coined as more common denominations eventually are used to buy things. > How will other entities handle conversion and exchange? Will the general population have some compulsatory event to liquidate their own bank accounts into BTC funds? There will be no single event, over time people will simply not use their local currency any more in favor of BTC. Slowly, over time, the population will lose trust in fiat and gain trust in BTC. This may occur over decades or more. > Could this change asset valuation worldwide(Real estate, investment funds, etc)? If no government entity mediates currency value and printing can they tax your earnings if companies pay through some decentralized medium? What happens when nobody is paying taxes? I'm not sure about these. Right now if you sell things for BTC I'm pretty sure you have to pay taxes on the "fair market value" of the BTC, which I have no idea what that would be (maybe the average price at the time of the payment?). I assume people long on BTC are hoping laws will adapt by the point when it is widely accepted. > How about other cryptocurrencies, is there some kind of zero-sum game race to the top going on? Can they co-exist in the long term purist scenario? I mean, a cryptocurrency is only as valuable as the trust people have in it. So all the same rules/theories apply to other cryptos the same as BTC. BTC just happens to be the most popular at the moment, and therefore has the highest market cap (not even sure if this term applies).
- nosuchthing 9y ago
  >There will be no single event, over time people will simply not use their local currency any more in favor of BTC. Slowly, over time, the population will lose trust in fiat and gain trust in BTC. This may occur over decades or more. The BTC network processes about 3 transactions per second. Bitcoin advocates will tell you this doesn't matter, or it can be improved with a future fork - which by then why not just make a newly designed protocol/altcoin network entirely ? (Consider: is what they're telling you based on their current investments that they'll sell off after you've bought in? Now think of what happens when a hedge fund, or other early adopter who has acquired several thousand coins or if there's whales who've traded their way to now own %10 of the coin supply in the network. What happens if they divest and crash the 'value' of this coin 'investment'?) The great thing about cryptocoins is you can create an improved protocol and if it's better then previous protocols, the users will migrate. There's a lot of misinformation flying around because people are trying to spam their investments into their cryptocoin service networks which they've bought into (or engineered a marketing pump and dump scam, i.e. premined ICOs like antshares) in hopes that they can later sell at excessively inflated prices because of some arbitrarily limited "supply" which a programmer just typed into the software running their network.
tylersmith 9y ago
You don't measure inches in miles. You use a unit suitable to your needs.
AgentME 9y ago
>BTC is worth thousands of dollars, so if everyone starts using BTC will people pay irrational fractions of BTC for bread and milk at the supermarket? will there be some adjustment? "1 bitcoin" is a truly arbitrary amount, just like "1 pound of gold" is arbitrary. They're both divisible.
wyldfire 9y ago
> BTC is worth thousands of dollars, so if everyone starts using BTC will people pay irrational fractions of BTC for bread and milk at the supermarket? This is moot until/unless BTC undergoes significant changes. It's not suited for this kind of transaction at all, IMO. But let's say confirmation times were orders of magnitude faster and we wanted to cross the threshold to supermarket transactions. I think we'd still denominate the purchases in the local fiat currency anyways. The only way this would change is if producers and distributors had their costs anchored in BTC. But this seems very unlikely to occur in the next decade.

Empact 9y ago

Most wallets have started communicating values in "mBTC" - whose price is within an order of magnitude of a dollar.

azinman2 9y ago

Bitcoin is deflationary by design. This is problematic for any country to then adopt, as it removes a major economic lever.

nosuchthing 9y ago

What is Bitcoin doing? The BTC network is a service. At the time of this writing, there are upwards of 30-100+ functioning cryptocoin networks which offer the same distributed ledger functionality of BTC wallets and a few with more unique features and trustworthy dev teams. The arbitrary supply of and rules which define how minted coins are rewarded is an important aspect of each of these cryptocurrencies, and if the limited edition deflationary aspect was valuable then maybe we should all buy into that BTC clone with 42 coins in "circulation". BTC isn't rare, it's just the AOL of cryptocoins right now. Slow and over priced. There are better alternatives.

skizm 9y ago

I'm not an expert on BTC or anything. In fact I'm not even long on BTC. I don't think it will work in the long term. That said I'm just answering questions as I understand them: > BTC is worth thousands of dollars, so if everyone starts using BTC will people pay irrational fractions of BTC for bread and milk at the supermarket? will there be some adjustment? The block chain supports values as small as 0.00000001 BTC (called a Satoshi). More terms will be coined as more common denominations eventually are used to buy things. > How will other entities handle conversion and exchange? Will the general population have some compulsatory event to liquidate their own bank accounts into BTC funds? There will be no single event, over time people will simply not use their local currency any more in favor of BTC. Slowly, over time, the population will lose trust in fiat and gain trust in BTC. This may occur over decades or more. > Could this change asset valuation worldwide(Real estate, investment funds, etc)? If no government entity mediates currency value and printing can they tax your earnings if companies pay through some decentralized medium? What happens when nobody is paying taxes? I'm not sure about these. Right now if you sell things for BTC I'm pretty sure you have to pay taxes on the "fair market value" of the BTC, which I have no idea what that would be (maybe the average price at the time of the payment?). I assume people long on BTC are hoping laws will adapt by the point when it is widely accepted. > How about other cryptocurrencies, is there some kind of zero-sum game race to the top going on? Can they co-exist in the long term purist scenario? I mean, a cryptocurrency is only as valuable as the trust people have in it. So all the same rules/theories apply to other cryptos the same as BTC. BTC just happens to be the most popular at the moment, and therefore has the highest market cap (not even sure if this term applies).

nosuchthing 9y ago
>There will be no single event, over time people will simply not use their local currency any more in favor of BTC. Slowly, over time, the population will lose trust in fiat and gain trust in BTC. This may occur over decades or more. The BTC network processes about 3 transactions per second. Bitcoin advocates will tell you this doesn't matter, or it can be improved with a future fork - which by then why not just make a newly designed protocol/altcoin network entirely ? (Consider: is what they're telling you based on their current investments that they'll sell off after you've bought in? Now think of what happens when a hedge fund, or other early adopter who has acquired several thousand coins or if there's whales who've traded their way to now own %10 of the coin supply in the network. What happens if they divest and crash the 'value' of this coin 'investment'?) The great thing about cryptocoins is you can create an improved protocol and if it's better then previous protocols, the users will migrate. There's a lot of misinformation flying around because people are trying to spam their investments into their cryptocoin service networks which they've bought into (or engineered a marketing pump and dump scam, i.e. premined ICOs like antshares) in hopes that they can later sell at excessively inflated prices because of some arbitrarily limited "supply" which a programmer just typed into the software running their network.

tylersmith 9y ago

You don't measure inches in miles. You use a unit suitable to your needs.

AgentME 9y ago

>BTC is worth thousands of dollars, so if everyone starts using BTC will people pay irrational fractions of BTC for bread and milk at the supermarket? will there be some adjustment? "1 bitcoin" is a truly arbitrary amount, just like "1 pound of gold" is arbitrary. They're both divisible.

wyldfire 9y ago

> BTC is worth thousands of dollars, so if everyone starts using BTC will people pay irrational fractions of BTC for bread and milk at the supermarket? This is moot until/unless BTC undergoes significant changes. It's not suited for this kind of transaction at all, IMO. But let's say confirmation times were orders of magnitude faster and we wanted to cross the threshold to supermarket transactions. I think we'd still denominate the purchases in the local fiat currency anyways. The only way this would change is if producers and distributors had their costs anchored in BTC. But this seems very unlikely to occur in the next decade.