> You could make the same claim about any kind of money though.
This is one of the things I find hilarious about cryptocurrency discussions. When I point out it isn't a good asset, people argue it's really a currency. When I point out it's a bad currency, people argue it's an asset. I'd love it if you all could get together and agree on what it's supposed to be good for and just leave the rest of us out of it.
But addressing your point directly, it's bad as a currency. It was launched in 2009 as e-cash, and for a while people argued it was going to be a great medium of exchange. Now, more than a decade later, Bitcoin is doing what, 100m transactions per year? Most of which are not real economic transactions for goods and services. Venmo, which started around the same time, does over 2 billion. M-Pesa, a "digital money" solution the same age does 15 billion. US credit transactions? 45 billion. Debit? 75 billion per year. And unlike Bitcoin, most of those are what people would call real transactions. Bitcoin's real use as a currency/payment system is a rounding error.
Anyhow, as others point out, actual major currencies are backed by very sophisticated organizations dedicated to maintaining the value of those currencies. Which are in turned supervised by national governments, most of which are democratically elected.
For Bitcoin, at best you have a set of shadowy organizations manipulating the market to their own advantage. E.g., reasonable people suspect that Tether is behind quite a bit of Bitcoin price appreciation. They have been proven to be liars about what they're doing and how much money they have. This is great for creating hype and volatility, but it's very much not what you want in an actual currency.
All reasonable criticisms. But it is very early still and you won't see many transactions for exchange of goods this early in its adoption. That's not to say that BTC will eventually take over, it's just to say that the kinds of uses you see this early aren't predictive of its future.
It is not very early. I specifically gave comparisons for things that launched at the same time.
And merchant adoption actually declined heavily for Bitcoin. It had a period where many online merchants and some offline merchants tried it out. Everybody gave up on that because it is not a good currency. That's when prominent advocates pivoted to "store of value" (which it is also bad at). For example: https://avc.com/2017/08/store-of-value-vs-payment-system/
The whole "but look at the fuuuuuuuuuuture" routine was plausible early on. But at this point there's nothing but wishful thinking to suggest that there will be a radical change. Whatever it is, Bitcoin is what it is.
This is one of the things I find hilarious about cryptocurrency discussions. When I point out it isn't a good asset, people argue it's really a currency. When I point out it's a bad currency, people argue it's an asset. I'd love it if you all could get together and agree on what it's supposed to be good for and just leave the rest of us out of it.
But addressing your point directly, it's bad as a currency. It was launched in 2009 as e-cash, and for a while people argued it was going to be a great medium of exchange. Now, more than a decade later, Bitcoin is doing what, 100m transactions per year? Most of which are not real economic transactions for goods and services. Venmo, which started around the same time, does over 2 billion. M-Pesa, a "digital money" solution the same age does 15 billion. US credit transactions? 45 billion. Debit? 75 billion per year. And unlike Bitcoin, most of those are what people would call real transactions. Bitcoin's real use as a currency/payment system is a rounding error.
Anyhow, as others point out, actual major currencies are backed by very sophisticated organizations dedicated to maintaining the value of those currencies. Which are in turned supervised by national governments, most of which are democratically elected.
For Bitcoin, at best you have a set of shadowy organizations manipulating the market to their own advantage. E.g., reasonable people suspect that Tether is behind quite a bit of Bitcoin price appreciation. They have been proven to be liars about what they're doing and how much money they have. This is great for creating hype and volatility, but it's very much not what you want in an actual currency.