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When it comes to the general public adopting crypto as usable, cash replacement currency, I think there's two issues with adoption. One is of course the networ

When it comes to the general public adopting crypto as usable, cash replacement currency, I think there's two issues with adoption. One is of course the network effect. I can't pay with (whatever)coin unless other people use it too. So unless I'm just really excited about crypto and want to pay with it, it's not very useful to me until more people start using it. And considering most of the crypt-hype has worn off, there's less and less people that are just dying to use it. And the other is that people (and businesses) are not going to try things over and over until someone gets it right. Bitcoin is terrible as a currency. I tried paying a friend of mine for a sandwich once, just for fun, and it cost me $10 to send him $10, plus it took almost an hour. Of course it's less bad now, but it's still not great. Valve started accepting bitcion and later stopped. Lots of retailers did too. No one is going to jump on Bitcoin Cash or Monero or whatever, even if they're better, because they were burned pretty hard with Bitcoin. Someone is going to have to genuinely nail it with a currency that is instant, costs almost nothing per transaction, is very easy to use, and they're going to have to make sure everyone knows it. And even then I think it's going to be uphill.

buboard 8y ago
> No one is going to jump on Bitcoin Cash or Monero or whatever, even if they're better I think they will, if it is better. > going to have to genuinely nail it with a currency that is instant, costs almost nothing per transaction, is very easy to use, There are such cryptos. stellar, nano and i m sure also others. And i think monero's anonymity promise is a big selling point too
- waynecochran 8y ago
  Who will use bitcoin without it having a stable value?
  - buboard 8y ago
    The fees are a much bigger problem. Bitcoin is unusable, it s a speculative vehicle for rich people. Zero-fee , or very-low-fee cryptos (i remember stellar, iota, raiblocks, even xrp) would be very usable if they had a large userbase and a very easy way to buy them. One of those has to focus on real world growth, i.e. get many websites to support them by providing a dead-simple payment solution. I think there are ways to make them less volatile. For one, don't list them in any crypto-to-crypto exchanges, instead allow only dollar cash-ins/outs, or limit the amount that can be exchanged to some fixed value like $100 / hour. Speculation and greed is limiting the prospects of most coins.
    - hackandtrip 8y ago
      Iota is unusable from (almost) the very first day it got out, they are just scheduling and rescheduling the removal of central coordinators, making that in no way different from a central authority authorizing payment, they cashed and they disappeared basically Stellar is trying to achieve a completely different goal than exchanging stellars coins. Almost no one of those crypto could achieve even half of the current daily transaction processed by CC, and the proof they are using is in no way as safe as proof of work, even if more efficient. Why would people adopt them? There's no advantages, fees would be similar probably
  - dwild 8y ago
    > Who will use bitcoin without it having a stable value? It just need to be stable enough for the length of the transaction. As long as you keep the bitcoins moving, the gain/loss will distribute itself over everyone and it won't be different than any bank fees. Let say I want to buy something from you for 20$ USD, I'm in Canada, so I buy 27$ CAD of Bitcoin on a local exchange (so I buy it from someone that essentially just sold something), I transfer the resulting Bitcoin to you, you then sold it as soon as you can. Even if the Bitcoin price is losing 25% today, if you can do all that in 2 hours, you will only lose about 3%, which is similar to Visa fees. Ideally you wouldn't hold them for more than 5 minutes and it would all be automated behind the scene without your knowledge, probably through your bank if they move quick enough, but that could be through a third party too (which is the beauty of it all, you depends on no one). That's an ideal world though and I feel like that's an utopia but that's how I see we can ignore the stability issue.
scj 8y ago
I think of it as the ice-cream currency test. The transaction needs to occur before an ice-cream cone would melt, and it needs to cost less.

buboard 8y ago

> No one is going to jump on Bitcoin Cash or Monero or whatever, even if they're better I think they will, if it is better. > going to have to genuinely nail it with a currency that is instant, costs almost nothing per transaction, is very easy to use, There are such cryptos. stellar, nano and i m sure also others. And i think monero's anonymity promise is a big selling point too

waynecochran 8y ago
Who will use bitcoin without it having a stable value?
- buboard 8y ago
  The fees are a much bigger problem. Bitcoin is unusable, it s a speculative vehicle for rich people. Zero-fee , or very-low-fee cryptos (i remember stellar, iota, raiblocks, even xrp) would be very usable if they had a large userbase and a very easy way to buy them. One of those has to focus on real world growth, i.e. get many websites to support them by providing a dead-simple payment solution. I think there are ways to make them less volatile. For one, don't list them in any crypto-to-crypto exchanges, instead allow only dollar cash-ins/outs, or limit the amount that can be exchanged to some fixed value like $100 / hour. Speculation and greed is limiting the prospects of most coins.
  - hackandtrip 8y ago
    Iota is unusable from (almost) the very first day it got out, they are just scheduling and rescheduling the removal of central coordinators, making that in no way different from a central authority authorizing payment, they cashed and they disappeared basically Stellar is trying to achieve a completely different goal than exchanging stellars coins. Almost no one of those crypto could achieve even half of the current daily transaction processed by CC, and the proof they are using is in no way as safe as proof of work, even if more efficient. Why would people adopt them? There's no advantages, fees would be similar probably
- dwild 8y ago
  > Who will use bitcoin without it having a stable value? It just need to be stable enough for the length of the transaction. As long as you keep the bitcoins moving, the gain/loss will distribute itself over everyone and it won't be different than any bank fees. Let say I want to buy something from you for 20$ USD, I'm in Canada, so I buy 27$ CAD of Bitcoin on a local exchange (so I buy it from someone that essentially just sold something), I transfer the resulting Bitcoin to you, you then sold it as soon as you can. Even if the Bitcoin price is losing 25% today, if you can do all that in 2 hours, you will only lose about 3%, which is similar to Visa fees. Ideally you wouldn't hold them for more than 5 minutes and it would all be automated behind the scene without your knowledge, probably through your bank if they move quick enough, but that could be through a third party too (which is the beauty of it all, you depends on no one). That's an ideal world though and I feel like that's an utopia but that's how I see we can ignore the stability issue.

scj 8y ago

I think of it as the ice-cream currency test. The transaction needs to occur before an ice-cream cone would melt, and it needs to cost less.