Topic: Have you started spending rather than hoarding your bitcoins? - page 2. (Read 3054 times)

Of course, the good thing here is that the opposite of this is also true.  If the price stabilizes, there won't be a cost of spending bitcoins.  Right now, the reason a lot of people are hoarding is that, over the long haul, bitcoin has consistently gone up, rather substantially.  If you have a choice of spending two currencies: one that goes down in value consistently, and another that is highly volatile, but also goes up rather rapidly, which would you spend?  I'd spend the one that goes down, and I think that's why a lot of people hoard, because obviously, they want their bitcoins to become more valuable.

If the price stabilizes, there will be an opportunity cost associated with holding bitcoins.
This could prompt people to move out of bitcoins, and get interest on their money from banks.

Of course, if we are able to deposit our BTC holdings with banks and earn interest on that, then there would be no opportunity cost associated with holding bitcoins.

There already is a killer app for bitcoin, or the potential of one, anyway.  It's remittances, or the possibility of them anyway.  Sending bitcoins to another country is orders of magnitutes cheaper than sending money via Western Union.  Even with price fluctuations, you usually come out ahead sending with bitcoin instead of dollars (for example).  The only real issue here is that I think not all countries have bitcoin -> fiat exchanges.  When that happens, or a large majority anyway, we should really do some serious marketing of bitcoins, for this is really the area in which it makes total sense for bitcoin to totally take over.

As far as the original question, I have a stash of bitcoins that I don't plan on spending.  I may trade them if I'm fairly certain I can make a profit (ie, sell high, buy low, and get more bitcoins without spending more fiat).  But otherwise, I'm holding these with the hope that bitcoin will continue to appreciate.

That said, I'm seriously thinking of starting a bitcoin-based business, and if it's successful, those bitcoins I would definitely spend.  Aside from that, the only time I'd spend bitcoins are in a time where I'm buying stuff off a place like bitcoinstore.com where the price is enough lower than it justifies the bit of a hassle of buying bitcoins over just buying stuff on Amazon.  So far, there's only really one thing I want where I'm planning on doing that, a 16 GB RAM chip that was $20+ cheaper on bitcoinstore.com than Amazon.  While I can't speak for everyone, that kind of price difference definitely justifies buying a bit more bitcoins to me.

This sounds a lot like the 'what comes first, the chicken or the egg' question.

Somebody needs to go out and buy a pizza or something with BTC. 

I spend bitcoins but still not enough places to buy with bitcoins

If I'm not misreading OP, he said we need use our bitcoins to bring mass adoption.
Since mass adoption = bitcoin value skyrocketing, he's saying that we need spend bitcoin to make its value rise, at least in the long run, but bitcoin is sold by many people like the investiment with biggest return ever created(the HODL people from the speculation subforum), so there is no incentive to use it(= lose big money in the future).

If no one wants bitcoin, the price will plungue even if everyone just hold it.

This ^

I try to use Bitcoin whenever possible to make online purchases, but I also immediately buy more to replace any that I spend.

I spent most of bitcoins on gambling, and i spent some on a single purchase, maybe i would be buying more in future if there are more shops accepting bitcoins, or maybe more people accepting it.

I use Bitcoin for digital purchases.
I can't really ship anything , because the shipping fees mostly outweigh the item cost.

My digital purchases end up being pretty small though.

So my answer would be hoarding , with only small purchases.
No trade for Fiat in either direction though.

I spend all the time and NEVER "cash out", in fact  have spent about $1000 so far this week. Honestly, I don't know how hoarders understand the real power of bitcoin if they have never even used bitcoin. They spend all their time and profit trying to convert back and forth with fiat. Do they not realize that once you have bitcoin you have money? just spend the coin.

Still holding. Will hold for at least the next 2 years. After the next halving, I'll reconsider.

If the merchant also sells his BTC as soon as he receives it, effectively there is no movement in BTC. 

Maybe I'm misreading what you're saying, but for #2, hoarding will increase the price, not make it fall.  If you spend bitcoin, I think most merchants will convert it to fiat very quickly, which will lead to a drop in price.

1 - Attract people saying bitcoin price increased by 1 million percent in the fast 4 years, and they can get millionaires if they have some bitcoins.

2 - Complain they don't spend bitcoin, and for this the price is not rising.


Seems some people are doing the wrong propaganda of bitcoin.

been accumulating since 2011 - been spending since 2011

i probably buy ~10% of things with bitcoin now.

Short term bitcoin price is unpredictable, but long term is much more likely to go upward because the adoption is still at its early stage.

At the moment I mostly spending Bitcoin, not holding.
First, because I need money right now and can't wait
and second, in my opinion, nobody really knows what will happen with the price of Bitcoin in next period, if this price will rise or not.

The value in those years is growing exponentially, in my opinion buying things with bitcoins isn't a nice move,
you should use FIAT instead.
If today you can buy a car with btc, probably the next year you can buy 2 or 4 cars.