[tethis]

But if the currency is deflationary with a coin limit, over the long term the only way more people can enter the market / make use the currency is for, as an example, $1 USD to be represented by smaller and smaller subdivisions of BTC. This necessarily increases the value of 1 BTC.

Why is there ever any incentive to do anything with BTC besides hoarding?

[gnaritas]

Hoarding creates the value necessary per unit to make large funds transfers possible. Hoarding is good.

[tethis]

But to succeed as a currency, it needs to encourage people to spend.

[gnaritas]

It doesn't need to succeed as a currency to succeed.

[logicallee]

bingo. It can succeed the way beanie babies did, which were never used as a unit of account or medium of exchange. /s

[gnaritas]

Don't be so simple minded. It can succeed as a remittance mechanism without succeeding as a currency. If it does nothing more than eliminate Western Union for international wire transfers it'll be massively successful.

[logicallee]

I think by definition it is a currency if it succeeds as a remittance mechanism - because you can really only send BTC using the bitcoin network, it can't track USD values directly (as a network.) Using the Western Union network you can literally "send dollars" (or euros or pounds) but the same isn't true of bitcoin. It's a remittance network tied to a currency, and that currency is bitcoin.

In this sense its use as a remittance network implies its success as a currency.

For this reason, I had no idea this is what you meant - I thought you meant it can succeed as an investment, without succeeding as a currency.