Topic: What happens to the price if mass acceptance is not achieved? (Read 2179 times)

That's true but there are certainly plenty of metrics that could be used to assess the level of acceptance. I don't think anyone would argue that at the moment we are far from 'mass acceptance' because you still can only use BTC (or cryptos in general) at a small handful of places and the majority of transactions are still just occurring between miners and investors (and between investors and other investors.)

I think any "mass acceptance" would require that cryptos be used more as a currency than a get-rich-quick investment. I also think we'd need to see some amount of people getting paid in crypto before I would personally consider it to have reached 'mass acceptance.'

Another huge one is the fees. Eventually cryptos are supposed to support the costs of continuing to secure the network by generating tons of small transaction fees. So it seems that there also must be enough transactions going through in every block to make it worthwhile for a certain level of hashing to continue solely for the sake of earning those transaction fees, in order to say we have reached 'mass acceptance.'

I think it's only time question for bitcoin price to go up. There was and there will be "obstacles" for BTC like we have now but it should balance out in a matter of time.

First off there is no black and white definition of 'mass acceptance', how will anyone even know when we have/have not achieved 'mass acceptance'? On the assumption that somehow everyone is in agreement as to what defines mass acceptance, I'd say we attain some degree of stability with the possibility of climbing higher on the basis of hope for greater acceptance and merchant/consumer integration.

The future potential will always be there. Even the Mt Gox scandal couldn't destroy it. Until something drastic happens, such as the discovery of a bug which makes double spending possible, the value of the Bitcoin will continue to climb.

He does bring some very logical and truthful arguments, mass acceptance will only be achieved if the bitcoin mining hardware assemblers and manufacturers turn their attention from mining onto creating useful gadgets that don't require palm prints etc so that interaction with bitcoin becomes less of a hassle than it is right now, I'm talking about creating tools for merchants something like POS with bitcoin cards/coins that can interact with them and your wallet could be held onto that card which you can synchronize with your smart phone, pc etc.

I'm talking about solutions that are simple, enjoyable and useful for the large audience not only for geeks, kinda like what Steve Jobs did for computers making them accessible to everyone. So we need a pioneer who will set the trend into this domain and then the mass acceptance will follow but at the moment there are mostly speculators who only try to obtain a profit without doing nothing in return for bitcoin and also ignorant people who don't understand bitcoin at all. Only in certain parts of the world bitcoin is adopted to a higher level because of its inherent properties, places like Argentina where there are many problems with their local currency.

If you are that negative about Bitcoin, why are you on these forums?

i guess the price wont fall

But what if in addition to knowing the price wouldn't rise, you also knew the price wouldn't fall?  If 1 BTC would forever buy the same basket of goods, would you hold more or less of your wealth in bitcoin?

Personally I would hold a larger % of my wealth in bitcoin.  I think many bitcoin users would do the same, and I think many new people would become adopters.   

I could wash up on a foreign beach after being shipwrecked at sea.  I could be naked, with no ID, no belongings, and no way to connect to my former life here in Canada.  As long as I could get to a computer with internet access and hash my brain wallet, I could start a new life with the wealth stored in my head.  

That's pretty fuckin' cool.

Bitcoin is half a decade old. Stagnant development has led to a permanent "beta" stage, to give off the impression this is a new technology. Why are people still believing in mass acceptance?

And no don't start with the internet taking 20 years argument. The internet itself has sped up proliferation of something new by a factor of 100.

The fact is most people have absolutely no need for bitcoin. People like a physical money they can touch. You know why nerd? Because we still live in a physical world. Not everyone is plugged into a virtual utopia 24/7. At least not anyone with any money in the first place.  Bank notes have not vanished as all the pundits have claimed, demand for physical money has never been higher(further evidence by precious metals).

Buying a bitcoin requires what? Palm prints, ID scans to shady exchanges, days waiting for shitty services like Coinbase....

Bitcoin's utility demand comes from those who have no choice BUT to accept it because no better alternatives exist. ie. cybercrime, certain gambling services, forum scams.

The rest is speculative demand. Coming from poor wage earners buying crypto instead of lottery tickets, wall street types who love watching something swell in value from no work.

The userbase is also stagnant. Take coinmap, rate of new business's adding bitcoin has collapsed since December.
If you take the average per day transactions of 60k~, and do a few simple estimations that is roughly anywhere from 500-15,000 unique users. Tiny.

Contrary to the shills, bitcoin does not liberate anyone or anything. Users are under the whim of miners who extract a huge fee for "security". Any large scale bitcoin based economy would simply not work, as producers would face a persistent chronic shortage of money. Never ending cycles of hyper deflation(value explosion) followed by hyper inflation(value collapse) would persist, as large holders and miners dictate the market.

The bitcoin ecosystem will also suffer from perpetual scams and thefts. Why? Because for the introvert's ripping people off behind computer screens is much easier then doing it to them face to face. Also, from what we have seen there are very few consequences in robbing people online. This is a huge turn off to any mass useage.

LMAO! Really, now. Do tell that to the bagholders that bought in at $800+ and have been shitting their pants for months now.

It wouldn't fall because the current price is reflective of the fact that only a small percentage of the population are buying coins. But the real question is the opposite: how much might the price rise if mass acceptance IS achieved?

Usability problems would include threats like Google joining Apple to block mobile apps. 

Also would like to mantion that the price of BTC will not drop much no matter what happen It is the King of the coins and will stay like this for sure

Hi,
Not sure with the price every single day When i start my computer every morning i am excited how much money do i have in my BTC Wallet

I think we can safely say that if we knew bitcoin was not going to change in value, 99% of people on this forum would dump it. That's kind of my whole point when people talk about adoption... the bottom line is there is no real good reason (yet) for average people to get involved in cryptos unless they are trying to make a profit by having them appreciate in value.

Less, but I am not representative:  I am grossly over-exposed to BTC.  If I held BTC according to MPT, then my answer would be "more".  I think most investors follow MPT.  The forum has a disproportionate share of extreme speculators, relative to the general population, or even to the investing community at large.  I conclude that this line of reasoning is bullish.

I wonder.  

Thought experiment: tomorrow you learn somehow that bitcoin will never go up in value, but will never go down in value either.  1 BTC will forever be able to purchase the same basket of goods.  

Would you hold more or less of your wealth in bitcoin than you currently do?  

Yes I think it could also survive as a niche payment method for die-hard libertarians

It wouldn't fall.  It would instead max out at tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars per coin, rather than millions.

Based on what I have seen so far, it seems like a lot of cryptos don't quite die but just keep slowly losing value and crawling along. I could probably like a hundred examples.

It seems like now investors are getting leery of 500 million altcoins, there are too many of them and most flop.

If we are strictly talking about Bitcoin, I think it could survive even if mass acceptance is never achieved. It could remain as a niche thing for computer enthusiasts now that so much ground work has already been laid out. Think of it like those credit cards that are not commonly accepted but some people still insist on using them whenever they can.