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> we have a deflationary currency we trade for goods and services. Such a vanishingly small percentage of cryptocurrency activity is actually used for trade (a

by danhak 5y ago

> we have a deflationary currency we trade for goods and services. Such a vanishingly small percentage of cryptocurrency activity is actually used for trade (as opposed to speculation) that it is a novelty and newsworthy when it actually happens. E.g. We all know about that guy who bought a pizza with BTC. And when Tesla decided to allow purchases via BTC (which they have since backtracked) it was a media sensation and market-moving. This is not normal.

Baeocystin 5y ago
Is this really true? I buy stuff with crypto all the time. It's how I learned about crypto in the first place- back ~2015, I ordered legitimate, had-a-prescription medication for my father from overseas using bitcoin, as it was the only way I could get it, as the even-with-insurance price in the states was beyond our means. Wound up doing so for several years, and it was much easier than dealing with the 'normal' ways of payment. A lot of the things I order from overseas in general I pay for in crypto, simply because it's cheaper & easier than doing regular currency conversions. I'm talking about regular things, like specialty foods, or everyday items I can't find in the states. Nothing even close to grey market or sketchy. Just regular financial transactions, using crypto. I'm sure by numbers my <$100-equivalent purchases are small potatoes, but how is that not also true for regular money? There are billions of dollars of capital sloshing around in the markets, but that doesn't make my personal-level spending not useful.
- OOPMan 5y ago
  Are you being intentionally daft? Or do you genuinely fail to realise thay there is a difference between you and small number of other people relative to the global population using cryptocurrency as money as compared to everyone on the planet doing so?
  - Baeocystin 5y ago
    Ideas start from somewhere, and take time to spread.
    - 908087 5y ago
      Unless something major changes, I'm guessing we can expect to continue hearing about how it's "still early days" and "just takes time to catch on" another decade from now.
    - sidlls 5y ago
      And most of them never get anywhere meaningful.
      - samplatt 5y ago
        They certainly don't when they have have otherwise intelligent people using strong emotive language telling them that they're not important. There's facing statistical facts, and then there's just being flat-out negative.
        sidlls 5y ago
        The statistical facts warrant a strongly negative outlook.
  - temptemptemp111 5y ago
    I think they're literally blind. It is biblical.
- joshuahaglund 5y ago
  Have you heard of PayPal? Because i buy things internationally and pay with PayPal all the time. If I don't receive the order, I can contest and cancel the charge (sometimes). And there's no transaction fee that I'm aware of. Do you buy $5 items internationally? Because the bulk of my international orders are low value items. If I have to spend more on a transaction fee than the item costs, I'm not gonna buy the item. Oh, lightning you say? You really think I should trust that more than pay pal?
  - Baeocystin 5y ago
    https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/paypal-fees https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/paypal-fees https://www.fool.com/the-ascent/research/average-credit-card-processing-fees-costs-america/ https://www.fool.com/the-ascent/research/average-credit-card... There are significant international transaction fees. There are also merchant fees involved for sellers. Much like the ubiquitous credit card fees, you may not see it line-itemized on your bill, but the costs are absolutely part of the price you see at checkout. Literally everything I buy with crypto, the crypto network fees are less than what I would have paid otherwise.
    - joshuahaglund 5y ago
      I guess my point is that with PayPal, as a buyer, the transaction fees are seamlessly included in the price. With crypto, it depends. Which coin? Which wallet? Which seller or marketplace? I'm curious if you care to share more about your transactions, that cost less using crypto. Now, if you're saying that you bought at $100 and it's at $1000, and you "paid less" that way, that's just this stage of the ponzi scheme's doing, not an inherent feature of the network that lowers costs.
      - Baeocystin 5y ago
        Oh, for sure, there's plenty of work to still be done on the crypto side of things. Regarding which coins I use, it's mostly Bitcoin Cash or Doge. No funny accounting or anything. The network transaction fees are readily available: https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/dogecoin-transactionfees.html https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/dogecoin-transactionfee... https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin%20cash-transactionfees.html https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin%20cash-transact...
- frosted-flakes 5y ago
  Don't all online payment systems use cryptography?
- perl4ever 5y ago
  I don't know what jurisdiction you are in, but as far as I know, crypto is treated as a capital asset in the US, not a currency, so I'm unprepared to deal with the tax consequences of using it as a currency. If I paid for things with it then every transaction would require calculating capital gains/losses. And it's far worse than conventional assets like stocks because at least the brokers track that stuff for you.
  - Baeocystin 5y ago
    You're absolutely right that the current US tax laws are a real problem for crypto-as-a-currency. I do expect better law to prevail over time.
  - rglullis 5y ago
    We can have the cake and eat it too: it's called stablecoin. 1. Park your ETH/WBTC/BAT (a whole bunch of other tokens) on a smart contract as collateral so that you can withdraw a token that is pegged to the USD, or just go to a regular exchange to buy the stablecoin. 2. Use this token to make transactions online. Tax advantages: you are not selling your volatile crypto, so you don't have to declare any sales or profits. On the other hand, if the crypto you place loses so much in value to the point where the smart contract liquidates you, you don't need to return the stable token and you can get a tax write-off.
    - davidcbc 5y ago
      This isn't how tax laws work. Exchanging one cryptocurrency for another is a taxable event. You are committing tax fraud.
      - kolinko 5y ago
        Depends on jurisdiction. In Poland the official government stance now is that only exchange into fiat is taxable. (which is absurd, but I won’t be the one to complain)
      - rglullis 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- sidlls 5y ago
  No offense, but you and the few dozens (exaggerating here for emphasis) of others around the world who use crypto as a currency regularly just don’t even matter in the context of the world’s financial systems.
  - Baeocystin 5y ago
    No offense taken. I know I am currently in the (significant) minority. But it's been six years, now, since using crypto has been a genuine net benefit for me, and this is completely outside of any kind of monetary speculation. That's not nothing. Is it a useful comparison, one guy that works in tech vs. the world's financial systems? If using crypto helps me, it can help other people, too. That's enough for a real start, all on its own.
  - tshaddox 5y ago
    Cool so just ban it without worrying about who it hurts because you’ve literally explicitly declared that they don’t matter.
    - sidlls 5y ago
      Well, yes, if banning something considered harmful for the vast majority hurts a few, at some point it's worth considering. The line differs for everyone to be sure. For crypto"currency" in particular I'm not sure an outright ban is merited. It sure does seem more useful for criminal organizations and trading casinos to part unsophisticated "investors" (idealists?) from their cash than for actual people to use to conduct business, though.
- ProjectArcturis 5y ago
  Like... Why? Why pay $10-25 in transaction fees for a $100 purchase? Unless it's illegal, it's far easier and cheaper to do currency conversion with a credit card.
  - Baeocystin 5y ago
    I'm not using bitcoin. I mostly use bitcoin cash and doge, where fees are in the 50 cent - dollar or two range.
- lmm 5y ago
  What proportion of bitcoin use do you think is legitimate purchases versus crime? I suspect it's a long way on the wrong side of Blackstone's ratio.
  - Baeocystin 5y ago
    Specifically for bitcoin- my hunch is one of the main drivers of its valuation is Chinese-owned capital trying to find its way outside of mainland China, as the ability of the average middle-class or wealthier Chinese person to have assets outside of state oversight is highly constrained. I do think that coins with more reasonable transaction fees are actually used as normal, boring currency a lot more than crypto-naysayers think. I also think the rampant speculation going on over coins like Doge is nuts, but it's worthwhile keeping in mind that if you're just using crypto as an exchange of value, with the purchase of the coin and its use at the same time, it doesn't really matter what the spot price is.
    - lmm 5y ago
      > my hunch is one of the main drivers of its valuation is Chinese-owned capital trying to find its way outside of mainland China, as the ability of the average middle-class or wealthier Chinese person to have assets outside of state oversight is highly constrained. Where by constrained you mean it's a crime, right? Obviously you can argue that in this specific instance making it easier for criminals to evade law enforcement is a morally good thing, but cryptocurrency does the same thing for any profitable crime in any country, which is why I see it as such a negative thing overall.
      - Baeocystin 5y ago
        >Where by constrained you mean it's a crime, right? Not in the way you mean it, no. Otherwise industrial-scale bitcoin miners, situated near power plants, wouldn't be able to operate in the open at all, yet they do. Without making any moral judgement one way or the other, China works differently than is generally understood by the West. // I don't want to downplay criminal use of crypto- its use in cryptolocker-type malware is a real problem, for example. I do think it is important to recognise that criminals already use existing monetary systems quite well, and that fully-public blockchains have an audit trail that investigators could only dream of compared to plain cash.
alanbernstein 5y ago
What percentage of dollars are used for trade, as opposed to investment? Does it matter?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
DickingAround 5y ago
I guess I don't totally know how to respond to that; I have no idea what everyone is using it for. That's rather hard to know just looking at the blockchain, or even reading message boards like this. I have no problem spending it; pretty easy to convert it to gift cards that can be spent anywhere (they give you a kick back even), there's some places that do take it directly (not restaurants, or car repair, but like electronics stuff on the internet). And of course you can just sell it for fiat on an exchange then turn around and dump the fiat for stuff (in this case, fiat is kind of the weak asset since no one really wants to hold cash for long). Plus, it can buy some stuff you can't get with fiat (e.g. overseas purchases not tied into USD, or all the dark web stuff people talk about). It feels pretty darn liquid; I've never had a problem turning BTC into stuff. And it is way more so than gold, land, even stocks and bonds; none of which can turn into stuff in under an hour much less without audit/paper-trail/control. Only fiat is more liquid, except no one wants to hold fiat; just turn it into something else actually worth having. The real problem is getting BTC. Lots of roadblocks in acquiring it and generally the people who have it would rather pay you in fiat and keep their BTC.
- Closi 5y ago
  What’s the point of a currency where you have to convert it to another currency to spend it? (I’ve got an idea, and I think the answer is speculation….) Converting BTC to Fiat and then spending Fiat isn’t the same as buying things with Bitcoin. It’s buying things in Fiat with extra steps.
  - fvdessen 5y ago
    If the extra step means my money doesn't lose value as government print cash like there's no tomorrow, then that step is quite valuable to me
    - FalconSensei 5y ago
      It only loses value when Elon shitpost on Twitter, right?
    - 5y ago
z3c0 5y ago
...you do realize that most of the world's money supply exists in the form of derivatives, right? A single-digit percentage is actual cash. You're committing a strawman. They didn't say anything about how the proportionality of crypto's use breaks down - they simply stated that it has achieved the basic use it set out to. And they're 100% correct - I use crypto to buy things quite regularly (email, VPN, etc), and will continue to. Really, the only thing preventing me from doing so more often is hard-headed people refusing to support it, because it's "mostly speculative." Here's an infographic: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/all-of-the-worlds-money-and-markets-in-one-visualization-2020/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/all-of-the-worlds-money-and...
- diamondhandle 5y ago
  Someone is going to make a chart comparing crypto to the already-ridiculous crypto derivatives market, and you’ll realize your point is totally irrelevant. Companies don’t transact in Bitcoin because nobody wants to hold it. Except for companies getting a valuation boost from retail investors.
  - z3c0 5y ago
    No, my point isn't irrelevant, and you thinking it is means you almost certainly missed it. Most of the world's value is speculative in nature (derivatives, credit, real estate, you name it), so I couldn't care less about the crypto derivatives market, or the "normal" derivatives either. Neither are preventing me from using crypto as a store of value. At the end of the day, people speculating the value of crypto does nothing to detract from its core function as a decentralized ledger. I know this to be fact, because I have and continue to use it as money, and no amount of smug pseudo-intellectual retorts can change that. The briefest of cursory internet searches will disprove your idea that companies don't want to hold crypto - there's been massive buy in from very significant companies. Eg Sotheby's, a company that has existed since the 1700s. But they must be fools who don't know what they're doing, right?
    - throwaway2037 5y ago
      You wrote: <<internet searches will disprove your idea that companies don't want to hold crypto - there's been massive buy in from very significant companies. Eg Sotheby's>> I looked into this claim, and I disagree. Google search for <<sotheby's cryptocurrency>>. The first two results for me were: https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/cryptocurrency-payment-information https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/cryptocurrency-payment-... https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy-sell/cryptocurrency-faq https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy-sell/cryptocurrency-faq They are allowing partial cryptocurrency payment for a single Banksy painting. From the FAQ: << Which part of the transaction is payable in cryptocurrency? Sotheby's will accept cryptocurrency for the hammer price of the lot. The buyer’s premium and overhead premium, as well as any taxes, must be paid in USD. >> Sotheby's is simply facilitating the transaction as an auction house. They have zero exposure to cryptocurrency. I assume the cryptocurrency will be transferred to the seller after the auction is paid-in-full. The buyer must pay all non-hammer-price costs in USD to Sotheby's. (As I understand, these fees can be significant.) Like some other posts mentioned, the seller could agree to receive seashells instead of cryptocurrency. All said, this seems like a very good publicity stunt by Sotheby's.
dheera 5y ago
> And when Tesla decided to allow purchases via BTC The main reason I don't buy things with cryptocurrency is that it would trigger a liquidation event and short term capital gains taxing. Due to that, for US residents and citizens, it's not functional as a currency in its current form. I'm vehemently against taxing of cryptocurrency or treating it as a security by the IRS, but that's the way it is now.
samplatt 5y ago
It was a media sensation because it was Tesla doing it, not because of what was being done. Tesla and Musk are attention-sponges and it's a large part of how they're still operating.
genidoi 5y ago
> Such a vanishingly small percentage of cryptocurrency activity is actually used for trade In reality, an overwhelmingly large percentage of tangible trade is fasciliated by one specific cryptocurrency for one particular umbrella of goods and services that may have something to do with onions.
tshaddox 5y ago
> Such a vanishingly small percentage of cryptocurrency activity is actually used for trade (as opposed to speculation) that it is a novelty and newsworthy when it actually happens. First, that last part is definitely not true. People do accept Bitcoin and buy things with it, and it’s not newsworthy at all unless it’s a meme-driven electric car company boss doing it. But secondly, why do these percentages actually matter? At what point does my valid use of something become dismissible because another use case which you don’t like gets popular? Do we dismiss people who actually like playing the Pokémon card game because lots of people collect the cards purely for speculation now?
Geee 5y ago
You can use bitcoin as a saving mechanism, which is the primary purpose of money, as long as you can trust that it is tradeable to something else. There are hundreds of millions of people who use bitcoin in this way. For using it as everyday currency, there are debit cards that automatically convert your bitcoin to local currency at the time of payment. There are probably millions of people who use these debit cards. Bitcoin itself isn't suitable for everyday payments yet.
usehackernews 5y ago
Yeah, I use crypto for purchases quite frequently. From hotel rooms to supplements.

by danhak 5y ago

Baeocystin 5y ago

Is this really true? I buy stuff with crypto all the time. It's how I learned about crypto in the first place- back ~2015, I ordered legitimate, had-a-prescription medication for my father from overseas using bitcoin, as it was the only way I could get it, as the even-with-insurance price in the states was beyond our means. Wound up doing so for several years, and it was much easier than dealing with the 'normal' ways of payment. A lot of the things I order from overseas in general I pay for in crypto, simply because it's cheaper & easier than doing regular currency conversions. I'm talking about regular things, like specialty foods, or everyday items I can't find in the states. Nothing even close to grey market or sketchy. Just regular financial transactions, using crypto. I'm sure by numbers my <$100-equivalent purchases are small potatoes, but how is that not also true for regular money? There are billions of dollars of capital sloshing around in the markets, but that doesn't make my personal-level spending not useful.

OOPMan 5y ago
Are you being intentionally daft? Or do you genuinely fail to realise thay there is a difference between you and small number of other people relative to the global population using cryptocurrency as money as compared to everyone on the planet doing so?
- Baeocystin 5y ago
  Ideas start from somewhere, and take time to spread.
  - 908087 5y ago
    Unless something major changes, I'm guessing we can expect to continue hearing about how it's "still early days" and "just takes time to catch on" another decade from now.
  - sidlls 5y ago
    And most of them never get anywhere meaningful.
    - samplatt 5y ago
      They certainly don't when they have have otherwise intelligent people using strong emotive language telling them that they're not important. There's facing statistical facts, and then there's just being flat-out negative.
      - sidlls 5y ago
        The statistical facts warrant a strongly negative outlook.
- temptemptemp111 5y ago
  I think they're literally blind. It is biblical.
joshuahaglund 5y ago
Have you heard of PayPal? Because i buy things internationally and pay with PayPal all the time. If I don't receive the order, I can contest and cancel the charge (sometimes). And there's no transaction fee that I'm aware of. Do you buy $5 items internationally? Because the bulk of my international orders are low value items. If I have to spend more on a transaction fee than the item costs, I'm not gonna buy the item. Oh, lightning you say? You really think I should trust that more than pay pal?
- Baeocystin 5y ago
  https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/paypal-fees https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/paypal-fees https://www.fool.com/the-ascent/research/average-credit-card-processing-fees-costs-america/ https://www.fool.com/the-ascent/research/average-credit-card... There are significant international transaction fees. There are also merchant fees involved for sellers. Much like the ubiquitous credit card fees, you may not see it line-itemized on your bill, but the costs are absolutely part of the price you see at checkout. Literally everything I buy with crypto, the crypto network fees are less than what I would have paid otherwise.
  - joshuahaglund 5y ago
    I guess my point is that with PayPal, as a buyer, the transaction fees are seamlessly included in the price. With crypto, it depends. Which coin? Which wallet? Which seller or marketplace? I'm curious if you care to share more about your transactions, that cost less using crypto. Now, if you're saying that you bought at $100 and it's at $1000, and you "paid less" that way, that's just this stage of the ponzi scheme's doing, not an inherent feature of the network that lowers costs.
    - Baeocystin 5y ago
      Oh, for sure, there's plenty of work to still be done on the crypto side of things. Regarding which coins I use, it's mostly Bitcoin Cash or Doge. No funny accounting or anything. The network transaction fees are readily available: https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/dogecoin-transactionfees.html https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/dogecoin-transactionfee... https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin%20cash-transactionfees.html https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin%20cash-transact...
frosted-flakes 5y ago
Don't all online payment systems use cryptography?
perl4ever 5y ago
I don't know what jurisdiction you are in, but as far as I know, crypto is treated as a capital asset in the US, not a currency, so I'm unprepared to deal with the tax consequences of using it as a currency. If I paid for things with it then every transaction would require calculating capital gains/losses. And it's far worse than conventional assets like stocks because at least the brokers track that stuff for you.
- Baeocystin 5y ago
  You're absolutely right that the current US tax laws are a real problem for crypto-as-a-currency. I do expect better law to prevail over time.
- rglullis 5y ago
  We can have the cake and eat it too: it's called stablecoin. 1. Park your ETH/WBTC/BAT (a whole bunch of other tokens) on a smart contract as collateral so that you can withdraw a token that is pegged to the USD, or just go to a regular exchange to buy the stablecoin. 2. Use this token to make transactions online. Tax advantages: you are not selling your volatile crypto, so you don't have to declare any sales or profits. On the other hand, if the crypto you place loses so much in value to the point where the smart contract liquidates you, you don't need to return the stable token and you can get a tax write-off.
  - davidcbc 5y ago
    This isn't how tax laws work. Exchanging one cryptocurrency for another is a taxable event. You are committing tax fraud.
    - kolinko 5y ago
      Depends on jurisdiction. In Poland the official government stance now is that only exchange into fiat is taxable. (which is absurd, but I won’t be the one to complain)
    - rglullis 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
sidlls 5y ago
No offense, but you and the few dozens (exaggerating here for emphasis) of others around the world who use crypto as a currency regularly just don’t even matter in the context of the world’s financial systems.
- Baeocystin 5y ago
  No offense taken. I know I am currently in the (significant) minority. But it's been six years, now, since using crypto has been a genuine net benefit for me, and this is completely outside of any kind of monetary speculation. That's not nothing. Is it a useful comparison, one guy that works in tech vs. the world's financial systems? If using crypto helps me, it can help other people, too. That's enough for a real start, all on its own.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  Cool so just ban it without worrying about who it hurts because you’ve literally explicitly declared that they don’t matter.
  - sidlls 5y ago
    Well, yes, if banning something considered harmful for the vast majority hurts a few, at some point it's worth considering. The line differs for everyone to be sure. For crypto"currency" in particular I'm not sure an outright ban is merited. It sure does seem more useful for criminal organizations and trading casinos to part unsophisticated "investors" (idealists?) from their cash than for actual people to use to conduct business, though.
ProjectArcturis 5y ago
Like... Why? Why pay $10-25 in transaction fees for a $100 purchase? Unless it's illegal, it's far easier and cheaper to do currency conversion with a credit card.
- Baeocystin 5y ago
  I'm not using bitcoin. I mostly use bitcoin cash and doge, where fees are in the 50 cent - dollar or two range.
lmm 5y ago
What proportion of bitcoin use do you think is legitimate purchases versus crime? I suspect it's a long way on the wrong side of Blackstone's ratio.
- Baeocystin 5y ago
  Specifically for bitcoin- my hunch is one of the main drivers of its valuation is Chinese-owned capital trying to find its way outside of mainland China, as the ability of the average middle-class or wealthier Chinese person to have assets outside of state oversight is highly constrained. I do think that coins with more reasonable transaction fees are actually used as normal, boring currency a lot more than crypto-naysayers think. I also think the rampant speculation going on over coins like Doge is nuts, but it's worthwhile keeping in mind that if you're just using crypto as an exchange of value, with the purchase of the coin and its use at the same time, it doesn't really matter what the spot price is.
  - lmm 5y ago
    > my hunch is one of the main drivers of its valuation is Chinese-owned capital trying to find its way outside of mainland China, as the ability of the average middle-class or wealthier Chinese person to have assets outside of state oversight is highly constrained. Where by constrained you mean it's a crime, right? Obviously you can argue that in this specific instance making it easier for criminals to evade law enforcement is a morally good thing, but cryptocurrency does the same thing for any profitable crime in any country, which is why I see it as such a negative thing overall.
    - Baeocystin 5y ago
      >Where by constrained you mean it's a crime, right? Not in the way you mean it, no. Otherwise industrial-scale bitcoin miners, situated near power plants, wouldn't be able to operate in the open at all, yet they do. Without making any moral judgement one way or the other, China works differently than is generally understood by the West. // I don't want to downplay criminal use of crypto- its use in cryptolocker-type malware is a real problem, for example. I do think it is important to recognise that criminals already use existing monetary systems quite well, and that fully-public blockchains have an audit trail that investigators could only dream of compared to plain cash.

alanbernstein 5y ago

What percentage of dollars are used for trade, as opposed to investment? Does it matter?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

DickingAround 5y ago

I guess I don't totally know how to respond to that; I have no idea what everyone is using it for. That's rather hard to know just looking at the blockchain, or even reading message boards like this. I have no problem spending it; pretty easy to convert it to gift cards that can be spent anywhere (they give you a kick back even), there's some places that do take it directly (not restaurants, or car repair, but like electronics stuff on the internet). And of course you can just sell it for fiat on an exchange then turn around and dump the fiat for stuff (in this case, fiat is kind of the weak asset since no one really wants to hold cash for long). Plus, it can buy some stuff you can't get with fiat (e.g. overseas purchases not tied into USD, or all the dark web stuff people talk about). It feels pretty darn liquid; I've never had a problem turning BTC into stuff. And it is way more so than gold, land, even stocks and bonds; none of which can turn into stuff in under an hour much less without audit/paper-trail/control. Only fiat is more liquid, except no one wants to hold fiat; just turn it into something else actually worth having. The real problem is getting BTC. Lots of roadblocks in acquiring it and generally the people who have it would rather pay you in fiat and keep their BTC.

Closi 5y ago
What’s the point of a currency where you have to convert it to another currency to spend it? (I’ve got an idea, and I think the answer is speculation….) Converting BTC to Fiat and then spending Fiat isn’t the same as buying things with Bitcoin. It’s buying things in Fiat with extra steps.
- fvdessen 5y ago
  If the extra step means my money doesn't lose value as government print cash like there's no tomorrow, then that step is quite valuable to me
  - FalconSensei 5y ago
    It only loses value when Elon shitpost on Twitter, right?
  - 5y ago

z3c0 5y ago

...you do realize that most of the world's money supply exists in the form of derivatives, right? A single-digit percentage is actual cash. You're committing a strawman. They didn't say anything about how the proportionality of crypto's use breaks down - they simply stated that it has achieved the basic use it set out to. And they're 100% correct - I use crypto to buy things quite regularly (email, VPN, etc), and will continue to. Really, the only thing preventing me from doing so more often is hard-headed people refusing to support it, because it's "mostly speculative." Here's an infographic: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/all-of-the-worlds-money-and-markets-in-one-visualization-2020/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/all-of-the-worlds-money-and...

diamondhandle 5y ago
Someone is going to make a chart comparing crypto to the already-ridiculous crypto derivatives market, and you’ll realize your point is totally irrelevant. Companies don’t transact in Bitcoin because nobody wants to hold it. Except for companies getting a valuation boost from retail investors.
- z3c0 5y ago
  No, my point isn't irrelevant, and you thinking it is means you almost certainly missed it. Most of the world's value is speculative in nature (derivatives, credit, real estate, you name it), so I couldn't care less about the crypto derivatives market, or the "normal" derivatives either. Neither are preventing me from using crypto as a store of value. At the end of the day, people speculating the value of crypto does nothing to detract from its core function as a decentralized ledger. I know this to be fact, because I have and continue to use it as money, and no amount of smug pseudo-intellectual retorts can change that. The briefest of cursory internet searches will disprove your idea that companies don't want to hold crypto - there's been massive buy in from very significant companies. Eg Sotheby's, a company that has existed since the 1700s. But they must be fools who don't know what they're doing, right?
  - throwaway2037 5y ago
    You wrote: <<internet searches will disprove your idea that companies don't want to hold crypto - there's been massive buy in from very significant companies. Eg Sotheby's>> I looked into this claim, and I disagree. Google search for <<sotheby's cryptocurrency>>. The first two results for me were: https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/cryptocurrency-payment-information https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/cryptocurrency-payment-... https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy-sell/cryptocurrency-faq https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy-sell/cryptocurrency-faq They are allowing partial cryptocurrency payment for a single Banksy painting. From the FAQ: << Which part of the transaction is payable in cryptocurrency? Sotheby's will accept cryptocurrency for the hammer price of the lot. The buyer’s premium and overhead premium, as well as any taxes, must be paid in USD. >> Sotheby's is simply facilitating the transaction as an auction house. They have zero exposure to cryptocurrency. I assume the cryptocurrency will be transferred to the seller after the auction is paid-in-full. The buyer must pay all non-hammer-price costs in USD to Sotheby's. (As I understand, these fees can be significant.) Like some other posts mentioned, the seller could agree to receive seashells instead of cryptocurrency. All said, this seems like a very good publicity stunt by Sotheby's.

dheera 5y ago

> And when Tesla decided to allow purchases via BTC The main reason I don't buy things with cryptocurrency is that it would trigger a liquidation event and short term capital gains taxing. Due to that, for US residents and citizens, it's not functional as a currency in its current form. I'm vehemently against taxing of cryptocurrency or treating it as a security by the IRS, but that's the way it is now.

samplatt 5y ago

It was a media sensation because it was Tesla doing it, not because of what was being done. Tesla and Musk are attention-sponges and it's a large part of how they're still operating.

genidoi 5y ago

> Such a vanishingly small percentage of cryptocurrency activity is actually used for trade In reality, an overwhelmingly large percentage of tangible trade is fasciliated by one specific cryptocurrency for one particular umbrella of goods and services that may have something to do with onions.

tshaddox 5y ago

> Such a vanishingly small percentage of cryptocurrency activity is actually used for trade (as opposed to speculation) that it is a novelty and newsworthy when it actually happens. First, that last part is definitely not true. People do accept Bitcoin and buy things with it, and it’s not newsworthy at all unless it’s a meme-driven electric car company boss doing it. But secondly, why do these percentages actually matter? At what point does my valid use of something become dismissible because another use case which you don’t like gets popular? Do we dismiss people who actually like playing the Pokémon card game because lots of people collect the cards purely for speculation now?

Geee 5y ago

You can use bitcoin as a saving mechanism, which is the primary purpose of money, as long as you can trust that it is tradeable to something else. There are hundreds of millions of people who use bitcoin in this way. For using it as everyday currency, there are debit cards that automatically convert your bitcoin to local currency at the time of payment. There are probably millions of people who use these debit cards. Bitcoin itself isn't suitable for everyday payments yet.

usehackernews 5y ago

Yeah, I use crypto for purchases quite frequently. From hotel rooms to supplements.