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Bitcoin is generally considered a 'store of value' rather then a day to day 'currency'... Sorta like a savings bond vs a credit card And a few years back, bef

Bitcoin is generally considered a 'store of value' rather then a day to day 'currency'... Sorta like a savings bond vs a credit card And a few years back, before the transaction fees got so high - there were a few places that took it. NewEgg comes to mind.

acdha 5y ago
More accurately, after years of failing to be viable as a currency the salespeople started claiming the goal had never been replacing cash and instead was some sort of poorly defined “store of value” instead of what they’d spent the previous decade spinning stories about. Since a real reserve currency is stable and backed by consistent demand, it’s unclear why anyone expects a pure fiat currency backed only by a small community of speculators to be successful.
- dale_glass 5y ago
  Well, not really. BTC was sort of usable as a currency to a point. You could even buy games on Steam with it. But it had a 1MB block size limit, which was initially implemented to prevent spam. This was obstinately kept in place, and that quickly destroyed its usefulness as a currency -- since now there's a lot of contention, transacting is slow and expensive. This doesn't bother the people who want an asset to buy once, but makes it useless as a currency.
  - acdha 5y ago
    It was technically possible but nobody seriously did it because the transactions were very slow and fees were massive compared to everything else, not to mention that the deflationary design meant that anyone who did would be mocked for not having held on until the value went up. Remember all of those comments about people buying a pizza with what a few years later would have been thousands of dollars? That sealed its fate as a currency because anyone who has an alternative will be better off using it as long as speculators are pouring money in.
    - mech422 5y ago
      >>the transactions were very slow and fees were massive compared to everything else I gotta admit, this is my biggest issue with crypto. So far, it's just too slow/expensive to be attractive to me as a day to day tool.
      - lamp987 5y ago
        *Bitcoin. Transactions on Fantom for example take couple seconds and cost less than a USD cent. Similarly Nano, AVAX, Cardano and many others. Cryptocurrencies are area of hot research and it innovates fast. Bitcoin was just first (and least capable).
      - mech422 5y ago
        >>*Bitcoin. Transactions on Fantom for example take couple seconds and cost less than a USD cent. Similarly Nano, AVAX, Cardano and many others. Can't reply to your comment for some reason.. I been in Cardano/ADA for years now, and it generally takes about an hour to get the required confirms for moving between exchanges. Not familiar with Nano, and AVAX...
        pcthrowaway 5y ago
        Cardano transactions shouldn't take more than a few minutes at most. If you're waiting about an hour, it's because the exchange has a wait period.
    - pcthrowaway 5y ago
      I was using bitcoin as a currency where I could in 2015. 'Seriously'. There were lots of restaurants, businesses, and even people who would accept it for payment, and transaction fees were completely reasonable. There is a lot of corruption and perverse incentives in Bitcoin governance, and I don't use it or hold it at all anymore, so I don't know how feasible it is to actually use as a currency now, other than that the fees are out of control, but I think it's unfair to say 'nobody seriously did it'. I think most of the people still tied to proof-of-work crypto despite the massive environmental concerns which have become obvious more recently, have switched to a variety of other platforms, bitcoin cash being the closest one to bitcoin (but without the block-size constrained, allowing basically fee-less transactions, though you still have to wait for confirmations) For full disclosure, I don't hold or use any proof-of-work crypto now (other than perhaps Nano, which is sort of a hybrid that has very small proof-of-work performed by the user making the transaction, and proof-of-stake at the validation/confirmation layer)
- imtringued 5y ago
  The speculators want to make money and they don't care how they get that money so they imagine something stupid like a major country adopting it as a reserve currency. Using El Salvador as an example would be funny because they use Bitcoin as a life raft for remittances, not because the currency is a good fit for day to day transactions.
  - ashwagary 5y ago
    All the problems bitcoin solves are worth solving. Do you have a solution to help people paying 20-50% fees for remittances? Many here are comfortably banked and can't seem to put themselves in less privileged people's shoes.
lottin 5y ago
It's marketed as a store of value. The fact is value can't be stored reliably anywhere. And storing it in a purely imaginary asset, of all things, seems about the dumbest idea.
- mech422 5y ago
  No different then 'collecting' funko pops, spoons, sneakers, comic books, and a host of other things and hoping they increase in value.
  - lottin 5y ago
    It's different in at least two ways: physical objects provide utility in some way (you can read the book, wear the sneakers...) which means the demand isn't entirely speculative, and they also have a scrap value.
    - mech422 5y ago
      except people routinely pay more then their 'utility' value..so its just as easy to lose money. Not sure what the 'utility' of funco pops are, or the scrap value (same with stamps IIRC - many of them aren't even valid for postage). Stocks typically have no 'scrap' value as well - if a company goes out of biz, the stock is worthless, and these days you generally don't even have the paper certificates to sell for scrap. Also, the 'value' of art, books, and collectables is rather subjective and fairly volatile. TBH, they seem pretty comparable to cryptos to me. You collect them for fun, hoping the value goes up.
      - lottin 5y ago
        If they routinely pay more than their utility value, it's a good indication that the asset is in a bubble, and therefore not a good investment in the long term. Most assets are not in a bubble. In fact, they can't all be in a bubble. If some assets are overpriced, then other assets must be underpriced. Stocks don't have scrap value because they're a financial derivative, whereas we were talking specifically about physical assets. A stock is a claim on a company's equity, and the company equity is defined as assets minus liabilities. Obviously if assets < liabilities, then equity is negative, but that doesn't contradict the assertion that physical objects have scrap value, which was my claim. Bitcoin is not a derivative, because it has no underlying. It's not a commodity either, because it doesn't exist. It's an imaginary asset, like fiat money. But unlike fiat, Bitcoin doesn't work as money, so it really has no use-case other than be used as a speculative asset. It's a bubble asset.
quickthrowman 5y ago
BTC is not like a bond at all. A bond is a collection of future cash flows (coupon payments) and a principle payment at the end (or for savings bonds/t-bills, you are buying one future payment for a discount). BTC has no intrinsic value or cash flows or earnings or assets or..
- mech422 5y ago
  simple analogy was simple.. Would you prefer comparing it to gold ? Art ? collecting sneakers ? or Comic books ? how about buying land ? Edit: I should probably clarify..People buy/collect lots of things in the _HOPE_ they'll increase in value. BTC and crypto in general is not unique in that regard.
  - quickthrowman 5y ago
    Gold, art, sneakers, comics— yes, those are comparable to BTC. Land is not, as land investments are usually based on future cash flows, which BTC doesnt have.

acdha 5y ago

More accurately, after years of failing to be viable as a currency the salespeople started claiming the goal had never been replacing cash and instead was some sort of poorly defined “store of value” instead of what they’d spent the previous decade spinning stories about. Since a real reserve currency is stable and backed by consistent demand, it’s unclear why anyone expects a pure fiat currency backed only by a small community of speculators to be successful.

dale_glass 5y ago
Well, not really. BTC was sort of usable as a currency to a point. You could even buy games on Steam with it. But it had a 1MB block size limit, which was initially implemented to prevent spam. This was obstinately kept in place, and that quickly destroyed its usefulness as a currency -- since now there's a lot of contention, transacting is slow and expensive. This doesn't bother the people who want an asset to buy once, but makes it useless as a currency.
- acdha 5y ago
  It was technically possible but nobody seriously did it because the transactions were very slow and fees were massive compared to everything else, not to mention that the deflationary design meant that anyone who did would be mocked for not having held on until the value went up. Remember all of those comments about people buying a pizza with what a few years later would have been thousands of dollars? That sealed its fate as a currency because anyone who has an alternative will be better off using it as long as speculators are pouring money in.
  - mech422 5y ago
    >>the transactions were very slow and fees were massive compared to everything else I gotta admit, this is my biggest issue with crypto. So far, it's just too slow/expensive to be attractive to me as a day to day tool.
    - lamp987 5y ago
      *Bitcoin. Transactions on Fantom for example take couple seconds and cost less than a USD cent. Similarly Nano, AVAX, Cardano and many others. Cryptocurrencies are area of hot research and it innovates fast. Bitcoin was just first (and least capable).
    - mech422 5y ago
      >>*Bitcoin. Transactions on Fantom for example take couple seconds and cost less than a USD cent. Similarly Nano, AVAX, Cardano and many others. Can't reply to your comment for some reason.. I been in Cardano/ADA for years now, and it generally takes about an hour to get the required confirms for moving between exchanges. Not familiar with Nano, and AVAX...
      - pcthrowaway 5y ago
        Cardano transactions shouldn't take more than a few minutes at most. If you're waiting about an hour, it's because the exchange has a wait period.
  - pcthrowaway 5y ago
    I was using bitcoin as a currency where I could in 2015. 'Seriously'. There were lots of restaurants, businesses, and even people who would accept it for payment, and transaction fees were completely reasonable. There is a lot of corruption and perverse incentives in Bitcoin governance, and I don't use it or hold it at all anymore, so I don't know how feasible it is to actually use as a currency now, other than that the fees are out of control, but I think it's unfair to say 'nobody seriously did it'. I think most of the people still tied to proof-of-work crypto despite the massive environmental concerns which have become obvious more recently, have switched to a variety of other platforms, bitcoin cash being the closest one to bitcoin (but without the block-size constrained, allowing basically fee-less transactions, though you still have to wait for confirmations) For full disclosure, I don't hold or use any proof-of-work crypto now (other than perhaps Nano, which is sort of a hybrid that has very small proof-of-work performed by the user making the transaction, and proof-of-stake at the validation/confirmation layer)
imtringued 5y ago
The speculators want to make money and they don't care how they get that money so they imagine something stupid like a major country adopting it as a reserve currency. Using El Salvador as an example would be funny because they use Bitcoin as a life raft for remittances, not because the currency is a good fit for day to day transactions.
- ashwagary 5y ago
  All the problems bitcoin solves are worth solving. Do you have a solution to help people paying 20-50% fees for remittances? Many here are comfortably banked and can't seem to put themselves in less privileged people's shoes.

lottin 5y ago

It's marketed as a store of value. The fact is value can't be stored reliably anywhere. And storing it in a purely imaginary asset, of all things, seems about the dumbest idea.

mech422 5y ago
No different then 'collecting' funko pops, spoons, sneakers, comic books, and a host of other things and hoping they increase in value.
- lottin 5y ago
  It's different in at least two ways: physical objects provide utility in some way (you can read the book, wear the sneakers...) which means the demand isn't entirely speculative, and they also have a scrap value.
  - mech422 5y ago
    except people routinely pay more then their 'utility' value..so its just as easy to lose money. Not sure what the 'utility' of funco pops are, or the scrap value (same with stamps IIRC - many of them aren't even valid for postage). Stocks typically have no 'scrap' value as well - if a company goes out of biz, the stock is worthless, and these days you generally don't even have the paper certificates to sell for scrap. Also, the 'value' of art, books, and collectables is rather subjective and fairly volatile. TBH, they seem pretty comparable to cryptos to me. You collect them for fun, hoping the value goes up.
    - lottin 5y ago
      If they routinely pay more than their utility value, it's a good indication that the asset is in a bubble, and therefore not a good investment in the long term. Most assets are not in a bubble. In fact, they can't all be in a bubble. If some assets are overpriced, then other assets must be underpriced. Stocks don't have scrap value because they're a financial derivative, whereas we were talking specifically about physical assets. A stock is a claim on a company's equity, and the company equity is defined as assets minus liabilities. Obviously if assets < liabilities, then equity is negative, but that doesn't contradict the assertion that physical objects have scrap value, which was my claim. Bitcoin is not a derivative, because it has no underlying. It's not a commodity either, because it doesn't exist. It's an imaginary asset, like fiat money. But unlike fiat, Bitcoin doesn't work as money, so it really has no use-case other than be used as a speculative asset. It's a bubble asset.

quickthrowman 5y ago

BTC is not like a bond at all. A bond is a collection of future cash flows (coupon payments) and a principle payment at the end (or for savings bonds/t-bills, you are buying one future payment for a discount). BTC has no intrinsic value or cash flows or earnings or assets or..

mech422 5y ago
simple analogy was simple.. Would you prefer comparing it to gold ? Art ? collecting sneakers ? or Comic books ? how about buying land ? Edit: I should probably clarify..People buy/collect lots of things in the _HOPE_ they'll increase in value. BTC and crypto in general is not unique in that regard.
- quickthrowman 5y ago
  Gold, art, sneakers, comics— yes, those are comparable to BTC. Land is not, as land investments are usually based on future cash flows, which BTC doesnt have.