Topic: Many people think that Bitcoin is not a currency with practical uses - page 3. (Read 662 times)

I agree with you that Bitcoin is not a Rich men's toy, despite they use Bitcoin as an instrument for making more money. But of course it is in an easy access for lots of people like any other asset, and everyone can easily buy some part of Bitcoin))) It gives people opportunities to make at least small movement in order to get good result. Of course we can not buy milk or bread for BTC in most places, but we slso can not do this for gas or oil for example. Crypto is just another separate direction where you are able to build your strategy and become richer or fail in casr your steps will be wrong. We can say "a bubble" about the dollar also, but it is still used worldwide and noone hesitate using dollar)))

If All of us will HOLD bitcoin then what will happen?
Will the value increase? or will slowly die? Bitcoin must circulate meaning be used for transactions as payment or for trading material but if everyone will hold then forget about what is this .
And besides why would you expect a Fast transactions when the main objective of Bitcoin is privacy and not the transacting things.

its not going to burst just because most people dont know about btc or know what btc is but refrain from using it as a currency but infact it will get more stronger or bigger because people will put money in it thinking that it can be a good piece of investment tool .

the value are going to be moderate if people use bitcoin balancedly ( for investment and for currency use ) but that looks pretty healthy for btc than when people only foccus on one side .

Volatility is not essentially a bad thing. And in case of Bitcoin, it is always going up in the long term. So don't spend it if you are afraid that the prices will increase in the future and you may end up with a loss. On the other hand, if you are going to sell some of your coins to fiat, then it may not be a bad idea to purchase something with the same coins. It may reduce your tax bill, and Bitcoin is always a convenient method for payment compared to credit card or PayPal.

I believe that after 5-10 years, Bitcoin will become less volatile and its capitalization will exceed the current one by several times, and perhaps then we will see the final product, which was planned by Satoshi Nakamoto. It is when the majority of the big capital is concentrated in Bitcoin that Bitcoin will fully match the daily means of payment.

It has just begun, it is way too big to fail now. I think that even if Bitcoin ad failed, the Blockchain technology helped pave the way for others to add onto the code and inspire to create their own. That is the beauty of making the code open source, it stays true to the pioneering way,  the stuff real innovation made from, the collective effort.  Collective effort driven by the good old spirit of competition breeds inspiration and innovation.

This is the crux of why people don't "like" bitcoin in general. They don't like change and can't understand it, so they tell themselves it isn't legitimate.

Common criticisms:

"it moves up to fast so it must be a bubble/ponzi/scheme/fraud/etc"
Because there has never been a publicly available asset like Bitcoin before. Coinbase at $100B means the first their investors who put in $5 million at a $22 million valuation have made over 4500x in less than 8 years. That's just about exactly what you would have made if you invested in Bitcoin a few months before that and held until now. Yet Coinbase is just considered a highly successful company while Bitcoin is derided by most people simply because you can actually see its price action because it was publicly available instead of being hidden behind the veil of a private company.

"it isn't real its just ones and zeroes"
And yet they fail to realize most money in the world is digital and is just ones and zeroes. Not to mention all technology built on computers is just ones and zeroes. But for Bitcoin it's fake because I dunno maybe cuz you can't print it out and people think a currency has to be both digital and physical?

"it always crashes"
And yet people still invest in the stock market that routinely crashes as well. But Bitcoin is new so they ignore the part where it always goes higher and just focus on those times that it crashes just like every other asset does from time to time.

You do realize that every currency has a price right? Otherwise it would have no value and therefore not be money.
And you do realize that all currencies are traded against other currencies right?

Under your definition there is no such thing as a currency.

The fact that some people do not still consider bitcoin as a currency is because of their rigidity and refusal to accept and adapt to change. Most people from the analog age where everything was physical still have a hard time accepting this new reality of digitalisation.

We can't force them to think and accept bitcoin as a real Currency that can be used by many people in from day to day basis but what I am sure about is that people will not use their bitcoin as a day to day process because they will just use it as an investment as many is doing this. Bitcoin is used by the people as an investment and not for practical uses, unlike fiat currency that everyone is using it due that this is an acceptable way of transaction and a traditional way of using for transactions.

I think I have said similar thing like these before, but actually those who taught that bitcoin is not a currency they are against cryptocurrency especially bitcoin, the kind of cryptocurrency is digital currency is no like fiat currency everyone know and people use too, yeah i can agree with you that bitcoin is not practical currency we can see like paper Fiat, really people who transact crypto or sell to each order is not only rich people, I understand that through crypto system anyone can sell to another irrespective your financial status.

There are places all over the world that accept Bitcoin as payment, so living off Bitcoin is possible. That being said, the options are very limited, and it depends a lot on where the person lives. Moreover, I think most people aren't even interested in spending their BTC directly. They buy and hodl for profit. Then they either intend to sell or might spend it directly if Bitcoin becomes widely accepted as a payment, but it probably doesn't matter much for such people. But what makes Bitcoin different from a bubble is that the bubble bursts and gets destroyed this way, whereas Bitcoin tends to recover eventually.

It doesn't have practical uses because most things we have to pay daily can't be paid through bitcoin yet. I would love to pay electricity and water taxes or pay for food with bitcoin, but it's not possible. Bitcoin as a mean of payment is still something eccentric disponible in few stores, most of them virtual ones which don't sell necessity goods.
For people living from online income and from poor countries where fiat worths nothing bitcoin would be an excellent daily life currency.

Well, nowadays bitcoin is more an inversion tool than a coin to use day by day... Transactions aren't cheap at all, so you can't use it to buy simple things like a coffee or a beer, it's possible to do it, but if you try you will end paying more in fees than the product price.

And another problem that bitcoin has for 'Practical uses' is the confirmation time. This nemesis is a big problem for bitcoin, and people still searching for solutions. The LN could be the best solution for this.

That is actually one of the oldest label for Bitcoin. The keep saying that Bitcoin is a bubble but seeing the graph from past years, all those times that this naysayers talk about Bitcoin along with other Cryptocurrencies, their values have just improved and the surge of people wanting to get in/learn/invest on Cryptocurrencies is also at a new All time high.

We know that anytime Bitcoin can lose its value but nobody can really say if that would happen.

No.  The bitcoin "bubble" has been "about to burst" since early 2011 or mid 2010. People said the same thing when it hit dollar parity - "it isn't sustainable", "it will be back below $1 shortly". 

 As far as "practical uses" much depends on what you are trying to practice.  If you are trying to practice freedom and protecting the products of your life from then bitcoin is quite useful - among many other uses.  Just because Rogoff (whoever that is) said that, it primarily indicates his/her own lack of knowledge and imagination. Perhaps he/she is just upset that he/she got in so late.

And Satoshi didn't intend bitcoin to merely be a currency, it would need to reach a point of equilibrium with fiat currencies prior to that, and Satoshi realized it.

Well, we really cannot blame them for such shortsighted opinions. Bitcoin is currently not what Satoshi intended it to be. When Satoshi created Bitcoin, he intended that it be used as a currency just like the US dollars and every other currency you can think of, only that it is out of the control of the government and banks.
Bitcoin, however, isn't that yet and this is partly due to its high volatility. The volatility in the price of bitcoin and its tendency to rise in value has caused bitcoin to be more of an investment asset than a currency that it is.
It is also partly caused by the fact that bitcoin isn't yet adopted by everyone. There's no way I'd spend my bitcoins if there's no one accepting it for their services or goods

An asset or an asset class being in a "bubble" doesn't necessarily mean it needs to be backed by a government either. And yes, we seem to be holding the current price range pretty well. But who knows? Maybe the bubble top is something like $200,000, and we crash back down to $30k-$50k in the span of a few months with the same percentage drops like we had in the 2017 bubble.

Finally.
I thought I was the only one thinking that other people forgot already its practical uses. It's kinda weird to think sometimes that there are three types of investors here. One for value, two for its uses and three for both.
I do the both, while having separate wallet for use and for investment.
There's nothing wrong with either one of it, but sometimes it even becomes a debate in a thread.

A currency is something that can be easily used, a currency should not have a price tag and should be readily available to everyone, is btc that currency! maybe we should be a bit practical with our perspective on btc, if btc should be regarded as a global currency i don't understand why it should have a price tag and highly speculative by many who are in to make money (fiat so to speak), a currency should not be traded for another currency imo.