> People on HN are smarter than me, and they all seem to hate bitcoin with passion, but I haven't yet understood why. I think it might be harder to recognize its value when it's part of your implicit cultural background: the dollar is money.
Because if BTC is going to be my money for transactions, I actively do not want any of the speculation on its price. It’s not useful for normal transactions if the price can swing as much as 50-100% within a year — some quick searching says BTC started the year around $17k/BTC and is currently around $27k/BTC. BTC currently acts like both a currency and a speculative store of value, and only one of those is really useful if it’s supposed to be the future of money. Otherwise it’s just a more-volatile speculative bet than stocks or bonds or etc that people hope to eventually trade for USD.
You do realize that people heavily speculate on the price of dollars, stocks, real estate, etc., don't you? ;-)
In all seriousness, we do understand what you are saying, bitcoin's price relative to the things you want to buy does fluctuate pretty heavily right now because it is still very much in the early adoption phase. But eventually that will even out.
> You do realize that people heavily speculate on the price of dollars, stocks, real estate, etc., don't you? ;-)
The supermarket doesn't let me use stocks or houses to buy milk and bread, and fortunately I live in a stable enough country that currency fluctuations are fairly minimal. Compared to Bitcoin it may as well not move at all!
I don't think you can call something early adoption if it's been around for 15 years. The iPhone had been around for about the same amount of time and it's a mature platform. The "it's early" argument is really only peddled by people who seem to have an interest in bitcoin's value increasing.
The temptation for sarcasm here is so high...15 whole years huh? This isn't a JavaScript framework we are talking about here. A secure and reliable financial system has very different properties than a consumer product like an iPhone.
You do know the Internet got started in the 1960's, right? And didn't really take off until 30 years later?
Bitcoin has had plenty of time to see widespread adoption. Its numerous flaws have become apparent and the ecosystem is so infested with scams and get rich quick bullshit. Good luck!
Saying bitcoin has had plenty of time is laughable. Do you think anyone said that about the internet in 1985 maybe?
When you start talking about scams and get rich quick schemes are unfairly grouping all of "crypto" with bitcoin. Bitcoin has been used in some of the schemes, but always with some other "coin" and false promises in conjunction with bitcoin. People that have stuck with plain vanilla bitcoin have not been scammed.
It is possible to borrow against BTC (and many other crypto) holdings. This means you don't have to sell. Lend your BTC, earns a bit interest. Borrow your local currency at some rate and within a comfortable liquidation ratio. Spend the local currency on what you want to buy. Earn from your job. Pay back the loan. Keep thing thing you bought. Now you're putting your store of value to work for you and the daily swings in BTC price become less important. No need to go to anyone for permission to do that either. No credit checks. No banks. Anywhere in the world.
> It’s not useful for normal transactions if the price can swing as much as 50-100% within a year
Why not? If you're not using it for speculation then you wouldn't be holding it for that long. If you're using it as a currency then you might keep $50 worth in your wallet and if you ever receive more than that and not want to spend it immediately you'd exchange it for some traditional investment instead.
What does that matter? If you're only holding $50 then your maximum exposure is $50. And if it turns into $100 then you're not exactly complaining about it.
> Because if it goes to five when I need to use it for groceries, I’m in a bit of a pickle.
Why? You're out $45. That sucks, but since you're not a Bitcoin speculator who holds all their assets in Bitcoin, you only have to open your phone and exchange something for another $50 worth of Bitcoin so you can use it to buy groceries.
Maybe you could use the $50 you made that time your $50 in Bitcoin turned into $100 and then you used half of it to invest in something else because you're not a Bitcoin speculator who needs more than $50 worth of Bitcoin at any given time.
> That does not happen with the USD/Euro/whatever.
When you're measuring dollars in bread rather than Bitcoin in dollars, the consequence is that a loaf of bread costs more dollars. People are complaining about this happening right now.
So I’m not using it for currency, then? If it’s value can range from $100 to $5, it is unusable as daily currency, and the only reason to hold it is because I’m hoping today is the day it’s $100, and if it’s not, I’m going to use my real currency to buy things.
You’ve just made speculation small scale and complicated.
And my bread costs 8% more dollars than it did a little while ago. My dollar didn’t lose 92% of its value. They’re entirely different issues. My fifty USD will still buy enough bread for the week. My fifty BTC might if I happen to want bread at the right time.
In the past year the difference between the low and the high for Bitcoin was about 100%, i.e. if you bought at the low and sold at the high your $50 turned into $100 and if you did the opposite your $50 turned into $25. This is the variation over the last year, not the last day, and only if you picked the worst (or best) to days to transact. In the past seven days the net change was <1%. This is more variation than US dollars have but it's not unreasonable when you're only holding small amounts -- as you would when using it as a currency.
You use it as a currency because you can't email someone dollar bills and digital payment processors charge higher fees. Because you want to buy something that isn't tied to your name, or don't want everything you buy tied to your name. Because you want to write a piece of code that lets people buy and sell directly without relying on a mercurial third party that can steal anyone's money or close their account without recourse. And if you want to, to pay your phone bill.
> You’ve just made speculation small scale and complicated.
Actually buying investment securities with a $50 cryptocurrency gain was a joke. You could do it in theory but what you're really going to do is not buy anymore Bitcoin until you've spent the $100 worth instead of buying $50 more after you'd spent the original $50. The point is that the volatility generally evens out. It doesn't really matter if you replenish your Bitcoin wallet after 5 days one time and 10 days another if it averages out.
Moreover, the more people use it, the less volatile the price is. It's understandable that people don't immediately use this to buy groceries, but if they use it to buy digital subscriptions or build distributed systems or what have you, the more people use it for those things the less volatility there is. And then at some point people may start using it to buy groceries.
Because if BTC is going to be my money for transactions, I actively do not want any of the speculation on its price. It’s not useful for normal transactions if the price can swing as much as 50-100% within a year — some quick searching says BTC started the year around $17k/BTC and is currently around $27k/BTC. BTC currently acts like both a currency and a speculative store of value, and only one of those is really useful if it’s supposed to be the future of money. Otherwise it’s just a more-volatile speculative bet than stocks or bonds or etc that people hope to eventually trade for USD.