[wpietri]

Almost every word of that is untrue in practice. But let's focus on the core part, "successful".

Let's compare with M-PESA, a money transfer solution that started around the same time. M-PESA has steadily grown, doing 26 billion transactions last year. [1] Bitcoin was somewhere around 100m transactions for the same period. [2] That's about 0.5% of the volume. And its worse than the raw numbers suggest, in that the M-PESA transactions were things with positive economic impact, whereas a lot of the Bitcoin activity was driven by speculation or crime.

And that's wildly smaller than the number of credit and debit transactions that happened over the same time, of course. Bitcoin was hoping to be "electronic cash", but the shift away from physical cash was toward the already existing digital payment mechanisms, not Bitcoin. Merchant adoption, always small, went into decline years ago.

So no, Bitcoin was not successful in the sort of terms that match its initial goals or what was hyped in the early years.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1139181/m-pesa-transacti...

[2] based on eyeballing this: https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_transactions_per_day

[TrapLord_Rhodo]

Firstly, Transaction volume and total number of transactions are two different metrics. Bitcoin transactions are generally in the $400k-$800k range. Couple things that makes bitcoin more than what it appears:

The metrics you quoted are on chain. There are no telling how many transactions are rolled up through the lightening network.

With around $20B of various wrapped bitcoins being used in defi, you can easily put that number up to hundreds of millions of transactions 'a-day' because bitcoin is being used as collatoral.

We are in a 'bear market' for crypto and it's market cap is $600B, which is larger than some countries let alone M-PESA.

[wpietri]

I have a lot of questions about people who are making $400k-$800k cash-like transactions. But as far as I'm concerned, that's another sign of Bitcoin's failure in terms of its original goals. That's a sign that Bitcoin is even less useful for productive economic activity.

> market cap is $600B

Sorry, but talking about "market cap" for currencies and commodities is ridiculous. What's the market cap of the US dollar? What's the market cap of gold? Those are fundamentally stupid questions, because "market cap" only applies to equities, which are pieces of a single entity that is both economically productive and owns a bunch of assets. Market capitalization matters because with a company, anybody with enough money can go out and buy the whole thing. It's not a meaningful number for a currency or a commodity. Or for a cryptocurrency.

[sowbug]

Money supply (M0, M1, M2, etc.) is an important concept, no citation needed.

Your quarrel seems be with the broad application of the term "market capitalization." From context, it's clear what people mean, much as it's clear what it means to "dial" a phone number on a phone that doesn't have a dial. Surely there's a better response against digital currencies than stating that Bitcoin's $607B aggregate value isn't technically called a "market cap."

[wpietri]

It is clear what it means: a bunch of grifters are trying to pretend their magic beans are an actual investment like equities are. So they want a big and impressive sounding numbers, especially one that can be easily manipulated by wash trades and the like.

[Forgeties79]

> Bitcoin transactions are generally in the $400k-$800k range.

What percentage of those 400k-800k transactions do you think are by the very banks and hedge funds that crypto advocates claim to be subverting and defying? For a currency that is supposed to help the masses that sure doesn’t seem like the kind of money most people play with.

[bottlepalm]

Read my post, I said successful as a 'store of value' not 'electronic cash'.

Bitcoin is more akin to gold - an inflation resistant store of value. There is a premium for transacting it which means you should convert it into a more inflation prone transactional currency if you want to spend it.

[wpietri]

Well look at those goalposts move. Bitcoin's original purpose was precisely electronic cash: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

But if you'd like to shift focus to why "store of value" is also wrong, I'm glad to. A store of value needs to be more stable than the thing you're moving out of. It also needs to be relatively liquid, and should have low transaction costs. But Bitcoin is very volatile compared with major fiat currencies, and also when compared with gold. Transaction costs are relatively high. The market is thinly traded, and is widely believed to be manipulated. Gold, in contrast, is more liquid, cheaper to trade in, and much better regulated.

So no, Bitcoin doesn't make for a good store of value. People wanting to store value would generally be much better off buying index funds, which are also pretty inflation resistant, and also have a positive return. But if they want to avoid equity exposure, then the gold standard for this is, well, gold. Bitcoin is terrible by comparison.

[bottlepalm]

Again you're mixing up short term cash and long term store of value.

Cash you want stability, fast and low cost transactions - you pay for all those benefits with inflation.

A good long term store of value you will sacrifice a little of all those things for better inflation resistance.

Gold and index funds are also good for long term value storage, but index funds you can't really use as a medium for exchange, and gold is physical so not great for easy and quick transactions.

[wpietri]

You have ignored the central part of this: volatility. Bitcoin is not a good store of value. I don't have time for people who argue so misleadingly, so I'm done here.

[bottlepalm]

Cool, well the price of Bitcoin disagrees with you. Maybe you should think why after 10 years of the same tired arguments, Bitcoin is still going strong. How many years of success will it take for you to change your mind? Serious question.

[wpietri]

Again, it's not a success. And it's hilarious that a cryptowhatever advocate is trying to complain about tired arguments.

[mandevil]

BTC seems to be very interest rate dependent- it goes up when rates go down and down when rates go up. That is pretty much the opposite of an "inflation resistant store of value". It's financial behavior over the last ten years isn't that of a "inflation resistant store of value" its that of a "speculative, very risky investment."

Ideologically, to a certain type of person, it should be inflation resistant. The math says so! But the markets have judged it to not be so. So who are you going to trust? Your ideology or the market?

[bottlepalm]

What are you talking about, over the last 10 years Bitcoin has gone up in value substantially, while the Dollar has lost substantial value.

Interest rates affect all asset classes as obviously people are going to start moving money one way or another when the ROI for the dollar changes.

[fragsworth]

This site is full of people who are in a tech rat race, and the distribution has changed over time. It's now biased largely against crypto, and for reasons that I think are fairly clear:

Most of the users who would have agreed with you already got rich, because they understood the things you understand, and they don't use the site much anymore as a result (they are no longer in the rat race). They've mostly checked out.

So, because the people who remain on this site are those who never bought any, and people like to hear that they were right, the groupthink tends to be unrealistically negative about it.