[nadam]

These "bitcoin = tulip maina = .com bubble" articles get a bit boring after a while especially if one is relatively deeply involved with the space. This has been discussed at very great depths thousands of times already.

What shows how superficial these articles are is that almost all of these articles (and most of the mainstream media articles) single out BTC, (which is less than 50% of total crypto market capitalization) without going into specifics of the given coin (like discussion of cons and pros of on-chain scalability solution vs. second layer scalability solutions, POW, POS, small/big block sizes etc...)

I think it would be a bit more interesting to speak about the price of a continously rebalanced, market-cap weighted index of the top 10 coins or something for mainstream purposes. This would prevent these articles focusing too much on the current state of BTC (which they cannot really focus on anyway without going much deeper), zoom out a bit more, and put the focus more on the possibilities in the whole evolving cryptocurrency space, which would be more interesting for a mainstream audience (they just don't know, because everybody tells them bitcoin, bitcoin, bitcoin).

[ardit33]

Nobody is using bitcoin for any daily transactions.... at this point is just bits... so, it fails as a cash.

The the second argument is made, it is a "storage" medium, like gold/silver, etc...

At least you could argue that gold/platinium/silver have some intrinsic industrial value, but bitcoin?

[nadam]

The vision of the BTC community is that on-chain scalability for payment has no chance anyway (1MByte is capable of 5 orders of magniutde less tx/sec than VISA), so using second layer methods (like lighting network) to do payment is absolutely inevitable anyway. So they keep blocksize small enough that a regular guy with a regular PC can realistically sync-up the network and become a full node, because they think this is needed to be truly decentralized and secure. This possible lighting network future, and also that BTC is the most battle tested, and most forked coin, and has by far the biggest network effect are all included in its price.

My portfolio contains other coins from the top ten so I hedge it with other solutions for scaling, but BTC's share in my portfolio is close to its share in the crypto market cap (a bit less, admittedly).

[brucephillips]

You've described how BTC can scale as a currency, but haven't addressed ardit33's first point, which is that not many people seem to want to use it as a currency in the first place.

[nadam]

I speculate that at first people want to use it as a store of value, but after a critical amount of holders, and having a lighting network, users and merchants could also adopt it as a currency.

A conservative scenario is that cryptocurrencies will not really become adopted other than store of value: I think even in this case BTC value can go up tremendously. It has benefits over gold: like easy and fast transport accross countries.

[brucephillips]

> I speculate that at first people want to use it as a store of value, but after a critical amount of holders, and having a lighting network, users and merchants could also adopt it as a currency.

Why would they? Why should I buy things with BTC instead of USD? The fact that I've yet to hear a convincing answer to this most fundamental question is the strongest indicator that BTC is a bubble.

I do agree that BTC could become gold, though.

[nadam]

If you already adopt it as a store of value it can be convenient to use it also for payment if:

- it is convenient

- has low transaction fees

- fast

But I agree, store of value is the most realistic mainstream usecase of cryptos.

[throwaway2048]

the value of gold is in no strong way tied to its industrial uses, the concept of "intrinsic value" being what drives market value is silly. If gold had zero industrial usage it would still be almost as valuable as it is now.

After all how much of money's value is due to the fact that it has a decent BTU value per weight in a furnace?

Most money is as purely a "digital fiction" as bitcoin is these days.

[ardit33]

That's incorrect. Gold became valuable in historic times because of its awesome properties as a metal: Doesn't rust, easy malleable, beautiful without much processing(i.e. compared to rough steel), high conductivity of electricity and heat... etc..

At some point, on some societies, things like rare sea shells, or big stones, were used as currency, but they didn't survive times for a good reason: No real use in real life.

Same with bitcoin, unless it starts having real use in real life, it wont survive. People buy it because they expect it will go up. It is like the Kim Kardashian of currencies, popular just because it is popular. But once that expectation is broken (i.e. of bitcoin always rising in value), than the downspiral starts.

[drizzzler]

This has nothing to do with the parent.

[brucephillips]

It does. There's little point it debating which currency or index of currencies to analyze, when none of them are showing significant traction as a currency.

[drizzzler]

The parent comment says nothing about the validity of "it being a currency"..this is an argument the child brings up just to Bitcoin hate. And it's a 'beat the drum' comment, same as the "it's like tulips/.com" that the parent is tired of hearing.

And, it's not the point of every cryptocoin to be a currency, whatever may be your definition of a currency.

This forum is so dumb now.