Bitcoin is not money during a crisis
It can function as one, as long as there will be people willing to accept it for goods and services. People telling bitcoin isn't money because it is
only meant to be a store of value do not look beyond the possibilities for bitcoin, clearly.
Bitcoin is supposed to be a Store of Value. Crypto sphere has pitched it as an uncorrelated asset, a safe haven, a hedge, an insurance against a global economic crisis. False! The opposite has happened, at least, in the short-term. People flee to cash. They dumped their positions in equity and Bitcoin. For a few weeks, equity and Bitcoin prices are highly correlated.
To be fair, people fled to cash a few weeks back, and after they have bought their supplies, the stimulus fund most Americans received were already dumped into some other investments, gadgets and other cool stuff that they don't really need this time. People are also buying bitcoin and gold as a hedge! Why would they resort to cash when they clearly know that it's going to devalue within the next few years anyway?
During this crisis, Bitcoin volatility increased dramatically. It dropped more than 50% (from 8k to 4k) on March 12, 2020. The lesson here is Bitcoin is not money during a crisis. People need cash to pay for their essential expenses (e.g. rent, food).
The lesson here is that all asset class irregardless of which category they belong to are affected by such a crisis. No one expected the virus to blow out of proportion and get this big, hence the panic when the numbers began to rise on their own yards. Also, most countries encouraged landlords to suspend rent for the time being until everything settles, so people only need to worry about food for the most part.
- Short-term, Bitcoin is a speculative asset.
It became a speculative asset since it hit exchanges, and will always remain to be one.
- Bitcoin is not a medium of exchange.
Again, dependent on the situation.
When the US government announced the 2T stimulus package, people flooded Crypto Twitter with the Money Printer Go Brrr meme. This meme quickly died as the crypto sphere quickly realized the scope of the Coronavirus damage. This is no ordinary economic crisis. The US economy has shut down. Consumptions slow to a halt. People briefly spent more money to stock up groceries at the beginning of the shutdown. Consumptions in other categories, like entertainment and travel, are down from 20% to 90%. We see reports of farmers dumping milk and eggs because consumptions have gone down. When demand drops and supply remains the same, price has to drop to encourage people to spend. Commodity prices will drop. Companies will make less money. Then, wages will drop. This is a vicious price decrease cycle. We are heading into a deflationary crisis.
It's not as if the US is the only country severely hit by this virus. The whole world's burning down into its economic core but we're still getting by. This situation would likely ease within the next few months as we are getting closer and closer to finding an actual drug that can inhibit the effects on the virus on human body systems. There are promising ones appearing already, and heck, even the Philippine president volunteered its nation to be a nation of lab rats with Japan's drug cocktail! Nations will come up with ideas to keep the economy up and running without sacrificing the health and welfare of its citizens, I'm sure. We just have to make-do before everything returns to normal. It's a painful and hurtful time, but it is what it is.