I've been told many times that when bitcoin matures to the point that everyone knows about bitcoin and owns some the price will stabilize and it can serve as a currency that is stable enough to be used for daily transactions; assuming that scaling to handle millions of transactions per second is not an issue.
Relative price stability, compared to these early adopter years of exponential growth, ought to come after the vertical swing of the adoption S-curve is complete.
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.54906097But that's probably not saying much. Gold is a very liquid market and still sees 5% days. Maybe Bitcoin can get there someday. But expecting it to trade like fiat currencies......that will never, ever happen.
I still think that the price of bitcoin will be volatile even at this stage, purely due to speculation and the limited quantity. I also think that the world will need another currency that is stable by design. I've written this paper to capture some of the key features of such a currency. It would be based on UBI and demurrage and would be fair to everyone regardless of when they discover it.
I like the idea, particularly the use of demurrage to deter hoarding. Still, it would be quite experimental and I'm not sure how it would pan out in practice.
Do you think there is room for another currency to provide the use case for daily transactions; or will bitcoin eventually succeed at this? If you think bitcoin will succeed, how long do you think it will take?
I think there will eventually be scalable and liquid Layer 2 protocols for daily transactions. It could take decades to get there though. Partially centralized solutions like Liquid may fill the gap during the interim years.