..we should listen to them.
Today, the Austrian National Bank gave a lecture on Bitcoin, together with The Austrian Federal Economic Chamber, with an open discussion possibility afterwards. I also participated in this lecture as I am from Austria and I was very interested in what our economists, bankers and other people who participated in the lecture think of Bitcoin.
They all were pretty sceptical. They adressed a lot of issues that come with the usage of Bitcoin as a currency. Here are the main issues they adressed:
- Many people buy Bitcoin to hoard them for future capital gains instead of using it as a currency (they often compared it to gold), which is, in their opinion, normal rational thinking of people ("Why should I use them if there is a good chance they will be worth a lot more in the future?").
- Volatility - of course. For companies that sell goods or services for Bitcoin there are great workarounds to reduce the volatility risk (Bitpay, Coinbase). But the users have huge risks when using Bitcoin as a currency to pay for things they want to buy.
- Shady exchanges: With the recent MtGox disaster, people can't be sure if their funds are safe on exchanges. (But I personally think that this is getting better and better with things like prove of solvency and cryptographic audits)
- Complexity: I think 95% of the people sitting in this hall today still don't understand how to use Bitcoin in practise. The guy who talked most of the time had a too complicated and technical explaination for Bitcoin. It would have been MUCH better if he would have shown an example on stage or at least use an easy explaination with good, clear graphics or something similar. His explainiation was way too much for the average Joe.
Are these issues something new? No, not really.
Are they important for Bitcoin's success? YES!Guys.. we really need to think of these issues even more than we do now if we want Bitcoin to succeed. Although there were a few guys who really had a positive feeling about Bitcoin and its great opportunities, the majority was pretty sceptical about Bitcoin.
We need even simpler walltes. We need even safer exchanges. We need much more people who actually USE Bitcoin and not only buy and hold it. And we need to face the volatility issue which is in my opinion the biggest problem of Bitcoin (something that may stabilize in the future when Bitcoin gets a bigger and bigger userbase).
What can we do against all this? Let's have an open discussion.
By the way.. I tried to record everything with my phone microphone, but the quality is pretty miserable. However, here's the download link:
Google Drive---
Sorry for any grammar or spelling mistakes that may occur, as I am not a native English speaker.
