[hapnin]

Use as a currency was the point I was addressing. Bitcoin has been a working network for 9 years with 300,000,000 plus transactions.

It's a useful currency.

[simias]

300 million transactions in 9 years is ridiculously low compared to any "fiat" currency. Googling around I find a post that gives a lower bound for number of debit card transactions in the USA alone as 47 billions for 2012 alone[1]. That's not counting the rest of the world and the other exchange media like cash or bank transfers. 300 million transactions is nothing. I mean thing about it, it's one single transaction for every person in the USA over the course of 9 years. Alternatively it's less one transaction per year for the entire population of Canada.

Amazon alone probably handles more transactions over the course of a couple of weeks.

[1] https://www.quora.com/How-many-credit-and-debit-card-transac...

[wpietri]

Gambling has way more transactions. LIBOR options have more transactions. Any actively traded stock has more transactions. None of those things are currency.

Even prominent Bitcoin advocates agree it's not effective as a currency: http://avc.com/2017/08/store-of-value-vs-payment-system/

[Frondo]

I wonder how many minutes it'd take for cash to manage 300 million transactions.