Topic: Bitcoin as a Mainstream payment method (Read 412 times)

Bitcoin as the mainstream payment method could take place, and rhe same needs lots of support. Not only from the government, but from the consumer side. People haven't prepared to consider bitcoin as a mainstream payment method than investment. So, when people start using bitcoin little by little we were able to gain support, without that this is going to be completely an impossible task.

Personally, I don't think it's gonna become a mainstream payment method. People will still be using fiat because you don't need to pay for every transaction when you use it and it's less volatile.

But despite that, it's obvious that payments with bitcoins are getting popular nowadays and a lot of people want anonymity or don't trust banks with their money. But I don't think everyone will be like this in the future.

So I think bitcoin will just become another method to transfer/hold/withdraw and invest money. It would be somewhere in the middle of all those things.

Scalability obviously is the biggest improvement and if this issue will be solved we'll be able to solve most of the other problems in bitcoin. Quicker block times will also be another one because after doing a payments it's not that easy to wait for 10 mins to get a clear confirmation of the transaction being made. So block time is also one of the major issues other than this I think most of the problem aren't that big which  could affect it's usage as a payment system.

One of the things needed is Government involvement and acceptability, for instance, if the Nigerian government give recognition to bitcoin to be used together with fiat as a mean of payment many people who have seen bitcoin as nothing will be interested.

Exactly! As of now people are still lazy when it comes to managing their own property, just like some traditional assets we have that most rich people either use it as a tool to earn more or just store it all away managed by other people. I've got a feeling that those rich people that wants others to manage their own assets would think this way "why would I manage when I have the money to hire people to do that? Besides my time is precious, instead of watching my own backyard I can use that time to be more productive."

I think it's along those lines but that's just my assumption.

Regarding the topic, yes. I asked it vaguely knowing that there will be differing opinions from various countries, and I want to learn what is you country's current stance regarding this topic. Our country doesn't have any clear statements regarding crypto, so for us it is still an open option whether we use it as a tool, but when it comes to investment, they'll just say invest what you can afford to lose.

The most basic reason is because of the rules that limit bitcoin as a legal means of payment, so that people try not to get involved in these legal issues and other reasons because products that accept payments using bitcoin have not yet become widespread and the considerations of producers, product sellers and service sellers are the same, namely the problem of "law" applied in their country.

It is very difficult for governments to provide access to bitcoin as legal tender and it is certain that this will not happen globally. Security and Scalability are two things that must be prepared by the user, but basically bitcoin is much safer than any other method that has ever existed.

You have a major problem if the governments of the world does not want to allow Bitcoin as legal tender or a so-called currency. So, you have a choice... 1. People start using Bitcoin without the government consent and face going to jail or getting a huge fine .... OR 2. People start using their votes to get rid of a government that does not want to allow Bitcoin as a currency.

How many people do you know that will vote for such a government and are there any political parties that will support that? 

I think, Bitcoin's volatility presents a major obstacle to its widespread adoption as a payment system. The unpredictable fluctuations in its value can make it difficult for merchants to price goods and services in Bitcoin, and can discourage consumers from spending their Bitcoin.

Additionally, concerns about the potential for illegal activities to be conducted using Bitcoin can create a negative perception of the currency.

Despite these challenges, there are several areas in which Bitcoin could improve to become more user-friendly. Security and scalability are both important areas of focus.

So, improving security measures can help build trust in the currency, while enhancing the network's ability to handle more transactions would make it more practical for everyday use. By addressing these issues, Bitcoin may be able to overcome its current obstacles and become a more mainstream payment system.

Given that OP posted a vague context like what kind of barriers prevent people from using it, and what kind of the idea of bitcoin is perceived by the people. Generally speaking, it varies from country to country. It is indeed at the end of the day, it comes down to preferences, but if we dig deeper into the root causes, we should seek what kind of barriers people face and the idea they comprehend.

I believe that some people are still getting affected by FUD about bitcoin, so those kinds of people are the ones that need to be educated thus they could get the whole idea of bitcoin. As for barriers, I certainly comprehend that one of the few issues is lack of conveniences, I know that some just won't bother to do a complicated process of managing their own bitcoin. I believe user experiences need to be improved in iteration either for the application itself or the way to store the bitcoins.

Firstly, I will say general acceptability like money which is issued as a legal tender in every economy. Secondly, government acceptability for trade also is very important thanks to Binance and other means by which one can trade.

What bitcoin needs now is clarity about regulation, because in some countries Bitcoin regulation is still in a gray area, so Bitcoin adoption cannot be carried out. For those who don't like the idea of ​​bitcoin it is everyone's preference, but it also affects how bitcoin will develop in the future. People who do not like or are against bitcoin will give negative statements about bitcoin, but conversely, for those who like and support Bitcoin they will find Bitcoin as an alternative option for payment and as a more profitable commodity asset. The current government is a huge wall that still blocks bitcoin.

Less volatility for sure. Being needs to be much further in its adoption, which will mean it is less volatile until people feel better about using it. But also, once you've owned Bitcoin through on market cycle, and are therefore in profit, volatility doesn't matter so much for using it for spending, because you've made money. The volatility is really only a worry if you might lose money by spending. Once you're in profit it doesn't matter so much. Like someone isn't gonna say oh I'm not gonna spend bitcoin because this thing last week cost 30,000 satoshis but today it costs 28000 or 32000 satoshis. If any of those numbers are in profit for you you're not gonna really care.

I don't think you know how the LN works. You don't open a new channel every time you use it...then you'd just be doing on-chain payments. You'd like say start up a node and open up several channels once, and hopefully not have to open or close any channels for months. You're certainly not opening up a channel twice a day. Twice a month would be a lot. Once a month would be a lot. Opening/closing a channel should be a rare event and you should be doing dozens or hundreds (or more) of payments for every channel open/close.  To make this happen of course you need to be both paying and receiving bitcoin on the lightning network, in which case paying on-chain fees for Lightning operations would be a very rare event indeed.

Education, yes, absolutely. It's gonna take many years for the general public to be educated on Bitcoin. Right now probably like 99% of the public actually thinks Bitcoin is a bad thing! lol. It's gonna take a lot of years to remove the misinformation and the stigma of thinking Bitcoin is a bad thing from a significant part of the public. Hopefully in the 2030s there is a decent amount of the public that are educated not only on the fact that bitcoin is good, and bitcoin mining is good, but also in how to use bitcoin. But yea, Bitcoin payments are definitely not a 2020s thing haha, except for early adopters.

Keeping funds safe goes with education yeah. For cold storage it is simple enough, but for payments its harder. Though honestly the vast majority of the public will be fine using custodial services on LN just because its gonna be wayyyyy more convenient and would be more like trusting a bank, which people are used to, but you get the benefit of bitcoin payments efficiency and of course you can always add more bitcoin to your payment LN account with your long term on-chain appreciating bitcoin. For most people to get to the point of using the LN for payments, they first need to be educated on Bitcoin and get into it as a long term store of value, then once they've been holding for a while and their Bitcoin has appreciated they'll want to use it for spending, and that's where the LN (or potentially other future L2s) comes in, but the LN usage is gonna have to be as simple as using a credit card of Apple/Google play, which means its gonna be a custodial use of LN. If its not as dead simple as using current means of payment people won't use bitcoin for payments but just as a store of value / long term savings on-chain.

The biggest problem you mention, is solved as I already stated, by using custodial services on LN. On-chain cold storage for long term savings, LN custodial wallet for payments. Bitcoin purists will groan at this but 99% of people will groan at running their own LN operation so this is the only way its gonna happen. It's still a huge improvement over the banking system because you've got savings in bitcoin and stored in a sovereign way, and you have LN with same convenience of fiat fintech apps or credit card but more efficient than those.

Stability will increase bitcoin's rating among users, and more companies will accept it as payment. At the moment, bitcoin's reputation as an unstable currency is only making it worse.

It's true that despite the growing awareness of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, there are still many barriers preventing their widespread adoption as a mainstream payment system. In addition to improvements in security, scalability, and user experience, I believe that widespread education and awareness about the benefits and potential of cryptocurrencies is essential. Many people still don't fully understand what Bitcoin is or how it works, which can lead to misconceptions and skepticism.

For me, since we have a lot of issues with regulations or some government policies regarding Bitcoin, so urgently requires regulatory clarity as several countries are struggling to establish Bitcoin or cryptocurrency regulations, leading to uncertainty for investors and businesses. Creating clear and consistent rules for how Bitcoin should be regulated could make it more stable and help it grow better.

I think Bitcoin can succeed as a store of value more than a payment system. One of the most obvious reasons is the price volatility, which could cause some problems for business owners if they decide to accept Bitcoin. In addition, there is a person who holds 1 million Bitcoin, that can crash the market at anytime it moves. Moreover, the transaction fee might not be suitable for small value transactions.

For mainstream payment method it needs a few things:



1. Merchants need to accept it
    - Right now in most parts of the world it's very hard to find anywhere that accepts Bitcoin.

2. More users, and users wanting to use bitcoin for payments
    - The reason merchants don't accept bitcoin is because there aren't enough users, and when merchants do accept it sometimes they eventually stop accepting it just because they barely get any customers using Bitcoin. Specifically not just more bitcoin owners but a lot more of those owners want to use bitcoin as payment rather than just investment/savings/store of value.

3. Tax law changes
    - Right now in the US and probably in most countries, when you sell or pay in Bitcoin you pay capital gains taxes on this. This effectively prevents anyone from paying with Bitcoin because it would be a huge tax hassle to keep track of the taxes you owe. And also generally you don't want to spend money and then have to pay taxes on that money later on, it would make more sense to sell the bitcoin, put aside what you owe for the taxes on that, and then have the left over money to buy things. There needs to be tax laws that exempt any bitcoin payments with less than a few hundred dollars in profits from taxes so that people can spend bitcoin for everyday purchases without worrying about being taxed on it.

4. Lightning Network needs to get better and grow much much larger
    - Obviously payments for everyday purchases won't be done on-chain because nobody is going to want to pay a $1 to $10 fee on a small purchase, though of course on-chain can be done for large payments, but >99% of payments would be done through LN. LN works but it is still early on and is still very small and needs improvements in both how it works and in the wallet software so that the average person can use it no problem and the wallet handles stuff like inbound/outbound imbalances, rebalancing, channel closings, etc in a way that makes Lightning usage easily understood by anyone and easily handled by anyone. And the network needs to grow immensely because as said above bitcoin needs a lot more people who want to pay with bitcoin so there needs to be millions or tens of millions of Lightning users. Also as the network grows and more larger channels get opened the network effect takes place so failed transactions will be few and far between. Basically LN just needs more time to improve and more time to add many times the number of users that are on there today. But of course there is no reason to be on LN if you're aren't making payment in Bitcoin so this will gradually grow hand in hand with greater bitcoin adoption, greater merchant adoption, and tax law changes to allow payments to be done without tax hassles.

Bonus: Bitcoin education
    - The biggest thing holding Bitcoin back is lack of education, misinformation, and bad public optics because of those two things. Most people don't know what Bitcoin is, and most of the people who have a little understanding of what Bitcoin is have probably seen a lot more misinformation on it than anything else, so they usually have a dim view of Bitcoin and think it is something bad because all the information they have is from negative headlines that they then repeat to others. Bitcoin growth in general relies on combating the massive misinformation out there and also helping to educate those who simply don't know anything at all about it.



I'd say those are the basic things that need to happen for Bitcoin payments to go mainstream. It'll happen gradually and it'll take YEARS! Nobody should be expecting bitcoin payments to be a normal thing this decade. Hopefully this decade lays the groundwork for this, ie getting Bitcoin owners well into the hundreds of millions, getting many of those owners though one market cycle so they are well in profit and don't mind spending their money if given the opportunity, many merchants and most large mainstream merchants providing pay by bitcoin options, tax law change to allow bitcoin payments without hassle, lots of improvements and growth in the LN, and bitcoin becoming a bit more normalized to the general public and not viewed through the lens of misinformation so that when people hear about bitcoin they don't think "oh that scammy wasteful thing that I hear is going to zero" but instead think the truth: "humanity's hard money for the digital age". If the groundwork for all that can be laid this decade then perhaps over the course of the 2030s we'll start to see bitcoin payments become mainstream and perhaps there will be tens of millions of people using bitcoin on a fairly regular basis.

One of the most important requirements for Bitcoin to become a commonplace payment method, aside from advancements in security, scalability, and user experience, is widespread acceptance. As a result, more shops and companies must accept Bitcoin as payment, and more people must use Bitcoin in regular transactions. Increasing acceptance would result in better market stability and liquidity, which would make Bitcoin a more alluring payment alternative for both consumers and businesses. More legal acceptance and regulatory clarity would also assist to legitimate Bitcoin and promote wider usage.

forget making it a mainstream payment method, the internet access alone is already a huge problem. aside from internet problems, people also needs to be educated about cryptocurrency, and if there is no sufficient internet making them aware and teaching them about crypto will be a huge challenge. the country which I lived in is one example amongst so many 3rd world countries that are suffering from internet problems. i could say that we have a decent amount of internet in different regions to access social medias and other stuffs, but do you think that's enough?.. no it's not. you should also be aware that crypto relies mostly on modern technologies, and as the technology keeps improving, do you think those countries can keep up? let's just say they could but it'll all end up that those who can invest or use crypto are only those who can afford.

Bitcoin to be used as a form of payment is just simple. We can see this happening with more businesses, just a wallet created and the address being shared to receive the transaction. How to make this to be a mainstream payment method needs good support from the government. Adding bitcoin acceptance to every business doesn't looks difficult. Whether people use it or not just have it. In the past people doesn't prioritise wallet payment, now everything is happening out of it. So, it is good to lay the foundation and slowly we can experience better progress.