[0bsidian]

I would buy more Bitcoin.

The world needs a censorship-resistant digital vault to store wealth. Bitcoin is basically a very cheap "Swiss bank account as a service" for the world's unbanked.

Some use cases I can think off the top of my head:

(1) You are from Syria and need to flee war and escape into Europe – however bank transfers into Europe are almost impossible if you are a common Syrian. Bitcoin allows you to take your wealth with you, in your brain, as you escape across the border, by just memorising your twelve word private key.

(2) You are from Venezuela or Zimbabwe – The government has issued capital controls and is devaluing currency by the day. You transfer your wealth into Bitcoin in order to offset capital erosion due to hyper-inflation. When the situation stabilises, you transfer your Bitcoin back into fiat.

(3) You are Saudi billionaire Al-Waleed bin Talal. The government freezes all your assets in a political coup. If you have a portion of your wealth in Bitcoin, you could protect them from government expropriation and anonymously transfer them to associates or family members abroad.

I truly believe that Bitcoin will serve the unbanked of the world. We're not there yet, but these are very early days for crypto.

Sorry for the long winded response, I get excited when talking about BTC.

[jwilliams]

It doesn't need to be Bitcoin (BTC) that takes this mantle.

In the case of a correction your cases 1 and 2 could end up very poorly off indeed.

BTC as a store of value has some brittle pieces. I'm not as confident in the current direction.

[Tepix]

What if there's a reason why its bubble bursts? Perhaps a single party manages to have >51% hash power for a long time. Or Bitcoin exchanges get outlawed in several important countries. Or fees keep rising to $50 or higher per transaction.

These developments could make Bitcoin (mostly) unusable and thus worthless. Would you still buy more?

[neuralzen]

Since BTC is paired with the blooming crypto markets and platforms of services they provide, it would be easier to blow out a spark in a gently accelerating hurricane of gasoline fumes and powdered creamer. It's not a bubble, it is the pin pricking the paradigm.

[hoffs]

Sure I would (cue the ending of The Big Short)

[aaavl2821]

Something like 20-25% of Syrians have internet access. I saw a 40% figure for Venezuela and a 15% figure for Zimbabwe. Many internet-literate people are not comfortable with bitcoin; how would you get a meaningful number of people who have never used the Internet comfortable putting their family's net worth in some arcane instrument with a reputation for use in money laundering and crime?

Why would a person with low wealth invest their life savings into a highly volatile, recently developed instrument, when they can just buy jewelry, gold, etc

For the latter use case fewer objections readily come to mind, but this supports the reputation as a tool for those who are barred from capital markets due to illegal activity (whether real or politically contrived illegal activity)

[coryl]

In due time. Commercial transactions will occur first, business to business.

Consumer applications (like Coinbase) will emerge to support the local population who can use it via smartphone and not need to understand public/private key encryption etc.

how would you get a meaningful number of people who have never used the Internet

They use the Internet; they just call it by a different name: Whatsapp, Facebook, Instagram...

Why would a person with low wealth invest their life savings into a highly volatile, recently developed instrument, when they can just buy jewelry, gold, etc

Gold, jewelry, etc can be stolen or lost.

[aaavl2821]

Those stats are for internet users including people who use the apps you mention. Further, Syria has a history of internet censorship and even large outages. I'd imagine people in Syria don't trust the internet, much less a tool from a western company like coinbase that offers a way to store an instrument that is completely foreign to someone who doesnt use the internet

All of finance is built on trust. Trust in enforcement of securities and property laws, trust that banks or debtors won't disappear overnight, trust that counterparties will not disappear, trust that someone won't lie to you and take your money, and trust that, when the above inevitably happen, there exists a set of institutions that can protect you

You may trust blockchain more than a bank, but you are the minority by a massive massive margin. The reality is that banks, while not perfect, are accountable. They are run by people whose jobs depend on them not totally screwing up. And despite the bad / shady things that banks do, overall they do a pretty good job at maintaining a stable financial system

With bitcoin and other decentralized systems, there is no accountability. You must rely on the perfection of the technology. It will break, and when it does, there is no legal system to protect you and no bank that will reimburse you for fraudulent charges

You may not care about this, but 99% of the world does

[coryl]

It's not that Syrians distrust the Internet. Its that they distrust their governments and politicians. And possibly their banks.

There is already a lack of legal systems and order. You have ISIS roaming around cutting people's heads off.

Obviously you have a different set of priorities when you're running for your life.

[mancerayder]

But the issue is this: hypothetically, let's say on Nov 12 I fled from country X and put my life savings (let's call it $5800) into one bitcoin valued at that. I put it in a hardware wallet, I transferred it electronically to another wallet, or perhaps I wrote the private key down someplace. Then, on Nov 27 my wealth is suddenly $9700. That's great. But how can I be sure it won't be down to $3000?

At least jewelry and watches are a relatively stable store of wealth.

There's a 'no one knows' stigma hanging around the cryptocurrencies. It's risky enough risking an escape from Syria, without adding a risk that traders are going to suddenly sell en-masse before you withdraw the funds.

[MadVikingGod]

How does the rising transaction fees on the BTC network effect these people? I could easily see a scenario soon where both 1 and 2 might have to pay 50% of the money they are trying to save in fees to the network.

I mean a transaction today can cost $3-4 USD. With valuation rising, and the network automatically paying out less per block, we could soon see a flooded network that is asking for $10-15 for a transaction. Is this an impediment from it becoming a large scale value store?