Topic: If bitcoin ever goes mainstream - page 17. (Read 29054 times)

It can't be FIAT, since as per definition FIAT money is money that's been issued by a centralized entity and is destined to be the currency as per law. You also can't exert financial controls, to e.g. counter inflation, like you can with FIAT, since you can't regulate or control Bitcoin in the same way as you can with FIAT.

If bitcoin goes mainstream, all the current problems will disappear. It will become like fiat, just a digitized version.

But also the total number of transactions is at an all-time high. Of course that number can also be falsified or manipulated, but I believe it gives at least some sort of real insight into the traction BTC has achieved as of now. Download numbers are a very bad metric, that's for sure.

"Blockchain's February announcement that it hit 3 million bitcoin wallet downloads illustrates the product's continued rise in popularity, (14%) this quarter (Slide . The total number of bitcoin wallets [taking in account all major wallet providers and downloads] has almost doubled since last year, closing Q1 at 8,457,207." (see http://www.coindesk.com/5-facts-coindesks-state-bitcoin-report-q1-2015/).

Of course, it would be important to know how much of these wallets have an actual balance. And many people have several wallets and downloads every new release.

How many Bitcoin users are there in the world right now? 500.000? 1 million? I think it's less than 250k. We have a lot of time and there are a lot of room to improve. This tech is so new that people can't learn it quick. We need at least 3-4 years to attract average joe. When Bitcoin goes mainstream we should expect 6 figures per BTC.

I have to agree. It still has a long ways to go.

Bitcoin has made tremendous strides in that direction, but it's still far from mainstream.

No it hasn't it's far from it. Go to the street and ask people what Bitcoin is. 99% don't even know what is and the rest don't know how to properly use it and don't see a point in doing so. We are still in ancient times compared to mainstream adoption.

It is just a matter of time for bitcoin to go mainstream and get worldwide adoption and once it happens its price will be really high and the centralized authorities will find a hard time fighting against the freedom of bitcoin and eventually surrender, the countries should either adapt an flourish or non confirm and perish.

Hasn't bitcoin already gone mainstream?


Paypal seems to already be looking at implementing it in some capacity. It's not really a threat to it because bitcoin needs payment processors and that's what they'll be.

Bitcoin can have an inflationay effect over fiat if a very high appreciation of its price creates a perception that bitcoin will keep raising and that fiat is an asset wih no value (good currency vs bad currency). That would induce people to dump (spend or exchange) fiat and shift their savings into bitcoin. Making its price skyrocket and fiat's price to drop not only to bitcoin but also to goods. This mechanism is one of the major causes of hyperinflation. No one wants to keep fiat in these moments.

I didn't loose hope that this will happen once in the not too distant future.
It would be enough that some really ''great player in on line payment industry'' like PayPal add BTC as a payment option, and bitcoin will become mainstream in very short time.
Unfortunately, this is unlikely to happen because the BTC is actually competition to PayPal.
Bitcoin has a lot of opposition but sooner or later we will become mainstream, there is no doubt about it.
Turning point will be when people realize the benefits of using Bitcoin compared to other on line payment option.

Well but in this hypothetical case people in Europe would adopt Bitcoin to a certain degree and thus the value of the Euro would decrease proportionally. In that case it could be true that FIAT holdings could lose quite a lot of their initial/previous value!

I disagree that Bitcoin increasing in value decreases the value of fiat.
If I can buy a house for $150k now and in the future I can still buy a house for $150k, but instead of being 680BTC it only costs 20BTC, the fiat owners haven't lost a thing, but the Bitcoin holders have gained.

I live in Germany, and the euro has weakened recently.  I haven't become poorer (unless I go on holiday) as prices stay the same and everything is priced in €.  The same will be true with other fiat currencies.

Yeah, the downtrend is having a huge influence on Bitcoins adoption, that's a given. But I also believe Bitcoin's usability as a currency to pay for things in brick-and-mortar stores is highly limited, actually. Online transactions,... maybe... But paying for your coffee using BTC? Nah...

This statement "merchants have been "widely disappointed by the number of transactions they see in bitcoin" (Slide 50). According to the report, mainstream users simply don't have a compelling reason to try a volatile currency over its alternatives, yet. This sentiment is echoed by that fact that the growth rate of new bitcoin-accepting merchants is declining (Slide 47), continuing the downward trend from previous State of Bitcoin reports." (see http://www.coindesk.com/5-facts-coindesks-state-bitcoin-report-q1-2015/) confirms what I wrote about how much bitcoin still have to go on the mainstream road.

Anyway, much of the somehow low trending interest on bitcoin is motivated by the downtrend of its price. I'm expecting this trend to continue for some time more. But watch out for the reversal.

In a report published last month, the Australian Treasury states that "Similarly, financial markets are increasingly globally integrated, and the international flow of
capital has become less restricted and more mobile. Technology has also allowed new business models to evolve that have substantially changed the way businesses and
consumers interact. New ways of transacting, including crypto-currencies such as bitcoin, were not contemplated when the current tax system was designed.
These developments make determining the appropriate tax outcome for a particular company in a specific country difficult and raise concerns about the ability of companies to relocate profits to minimise their tax." (see http://bettertax.gov.au/files/2015/03/TWP_combined-online.pdf).

I think this is an underestimation. It's not only corporations that can use bitcoin for tax evasion. Even if big corporations can try to use bitcoin to avoid paying huge amounts of money, massive fiscal evasion from individuals is also a big threat. Mainly because individuals are not subject to the same degree of control that big corporations are.

I left the notion of mainstream intentionally ambiguous. Because it's hard to define.

One can use different criteria.

1) A percentage of the amount of the total expenses on one year. But even 1% would be huge and would imply a very high price for bitcoin. However, according to the mentioned Gresham's Law, bitcoin will be hoarded and only rarely spent. It's like gold. Gold is part of mainstream, but people don't exchange it much, they prefer to keep it. On the main functions of money: mean of exchange, unit of account and reserve of value, I think the last will be bitcoin's main function. It won't be used much as unit of value, because of its volatility (many places that accept bitcoin, prefer to announce the prices in USDs). It won't be used a lot as mean of payment, because people will rarely spend it.

2) Accessibility: the fact that anyone can easily buy, sell and pay with bitcoin. Clearly, this is decisive. If we could exchange and spend bitcoins on the majority of ATM and retailers, we might be able to say that bitcoin is mainstream. But imagine that even in these conditions bitcoin kept being scarcely used, with small demand.  It wouldn't be mainstream. Many physical businesses complain they never had customers paying with bitcoin. So, this is a necessary condition, but it isn't enough.

3) A percentage of people owning it. This seems to be a good criterion. But it isn't easy to establish a number: 10% seems enough, but not 1% or even 5%. 70 million users on the all world would be great, but not enough for talking about mainstream. I guess only at 10% we would start to see unfold the problems above mentioned. But this kind of projections is hard to make.

Think about Paypal (I hate it, but let's use it as example). Is Paypal mainstream? I don't think so. It had a volume of transactions of only 180 billion on 2013, about 150 million active registered accounts and in many countries you can use it as mean of payment only on a few places. So, it reached about 2% of world population.

Bitcoin had about 23 billion USDs in trade volume alone during the last 12 months (see http://www.bitcoinity.org/markets/list?currency=ALL&span=6m, at current price) and maybe 1 or 2 million active users. It still has a long way to go.

I hope you are right and that we will see some ''big'' changes in bitcoin world soon.
and yes, don't worry, I'm still positive and optimistic about future of BTC, maybe more realistic
 

we wouldnt know if its bad or not if we're not still on the mainstream stage.

Let us just cross the bridge when we get there.