[Born_Again]

>>Bitcoin's narrative has had to morph from "digital currency" to "digital gold"

I wholeheartedly agree with this. Let's look at some Reddit /r/bitcoin posts in January 2014:

https://redditsearch.io/?term=&dataviz=false&aggs=false&subr...

People were discussing bitcoin being used as a digital currency. There was talk of bitcoin being accepted on Overstock.com, TigerDirect, and using bitcoin apps on phones as a digital wallet. I would argue the majority of people in the bitcoin community at the time were genuinely interested in the technology and its use as an everyday currency.

Now let's look at some Reddit /r/bitcoin posts in January 2020. I picked this date because there weren't any recent significant price fluctuations.

https://redditsearch.io/?term=&dataviz=false&aggs=false&subr...

There was practically zero discussion on using bitcoin as a currency. People were only interested in the price and treated it as a commodity, just like a digital gold.

> EDIT: downvote me if you want but you are flat wrong

Do people treat bitcoin as a currency or a commodity today?

[shuntress]

*The narrative around bitcoin has always been "It is digital currency. It works like gold".*

I don't think we need to get into whether or not gold is a currency or a commodity but you are fooling yourself if you think that the price of gold is driven by jewelers and PCB fabs.

[tim333]

You'd be surprised how much does go to jewelry https://www.statista.com/statistics/274684/global-demand-for...

Long term the price is driven by the mining cost.

[TimJRobinson]

People were overly enthusiastic about it intially, but soon realized almost no one wants to use a slower, riskier, and now more expensive payment option. Bitcoin is good for merchants but terrible for buyers.

Bitcoin lightning could change this, instant transactions with almost no fees, but it's still in early days.

[spurgu]

The Phoenix wallet[0] is actually quite a nice LN solution. When I tried it out it gave me similar feelings of excitement as when I first got into Bitcoin.

Reading about the Lightning Network gives me a headache in general, but Phoenix manages to hide all the tech stuff. I think my old parents would be able to use it.

And it solves one LN problem of having to have bitcoin for opening a payment channel, you can simply install the wallet and start receiving bitcoin.

[0] https://phoenix.acinq.co/

[Erlich_Bachman]

> Now let's look at some Reddit /r/bitcoin posts in January 2020.

This is a very amateurish attempt at analyzing what "Bitcoin community" (which you haven't even really defined properly either) are thinking or are interested in. Bitcoin reddit is a bunch of kids who like memes and hating on the FED. I know a lot of serious investors who would never be seen posting or commenting there. It is just not a place for a lot of people.

[zepolen]

r/bitcoin is heavily censored, it's the reason for Bitcoin Cash fork and why the uncensored r/btc was made.

All the original Bitcoin adopters from the beginning moved discussion there.

[SilasX]

I would say it’s now more promoted as an uncorrelated asset class.