[hnracer]

You can just hedge your exposure on a futures exchange and still use BTC to transact but be unexposed to any price movements. Although doing that is very complicated and defeats the purpose of an easy to use alternative to centralized cash.

[bostonsre]

That sounds like it could be a PITA for everyday people tho.

[hnracer]

Indeed but I wonder if one could build a platform that does this behind the scenes. User sends BTC to the online wallet, and the site hedges on behalf of the user on one of the liquid future exchanges, locking in the prevailing BTC price. People can make payments out of this online wallet with just as much ease as they're currently doing. Then they have an easy to use digital cash without any price risk.

The site charges a small fee for the service of derisking the holdings.

This does seem to solve a real user pain point (risk and the complexity of hedging) and benefits from scale economies.