And yet some people, like me, use Bitcoin to buy products and services. Your articles merely explain that Bitcoin legally is not money. But in practice it is used as money, it is seen as money, so it is money. Practice trumps theory.
Also these articles fail to mention that volatility is quickly decreasing, thanks to increasing market depths: https://mobile.twitter.com/lsukernik/status/8649208737189519...
Re:Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index
by nunyabuizness on Sunday August 27, 2017 @01:45AM
(#15109318)
Well it's pretty easy to spend an asset that's consistently increasing in value... the real test of it's utility as money is how many businesses and people have started accepting Bitcoin recently.
160k merchants, 3-6 million users. https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/fileadmin/user_upload/research/cen...
Re:Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index
by grwthckrmstr on Sunday August 27, 2017 @04:41AM
(#15109769)
You should also look at this as % of merchants and users in the world.
Is it 10%,50%,or 0.001%?
What percentage of merchants and users accept HKD?
100% in Hongkong, which is also where the most HKD are circulated.
Pointless comment. Bitcoin is a borderless technology. There will never be, by design, a "Hong Kong-sized" area with BTC accepted everywhere. That is, unless BTC achieves world domination :-)
OP asked "in the world"
If BTC was circulated in only a Hongkong-sized area, that would be a fair comment. It isn't, the area of its circulation is the world.
Re:Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index
by whateverman2 on Sunday August 27, 2017 @12:27PM
(#15111414)
Or hamburgers? After all, you can trade them for the local currency. Hamburgers must be a currency!
Re:Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index
by ForHackernews on Sunday August 27, 2017 @04:44AM
(#15109779)
Why would you ever want to spend an asset that's increasing in value? Seems like a useful currency should be mildly inflationary.
Why not dump your entire life savings into it right now?
Because there's risk, it fluctuates, there's no guarantee it will always go up. People need to decide to what degree do they want to invest and be exposed to the risk and reward. Say someone decides they want 1BTC of exposure, and are contemplating buying an item of 0.01BTC. Would that really be a big deal? Small changes in the degree of exposure shouldn't be a financial problem to worry about.
Re:Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index
by ForHackernews on Monday August 28, 2017 @04:42AM
(#15115246)
> Why not dump your entire life savings into it right now?
Plenty of the bitcoin true believers have.
Everything you're talking about makes sense for investing in a commodity, not for a currency.
[1] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212567115... [2] https://litigation-essentials.lexisnexis.com/webcd/app?actio... [3] https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xwwv83/cryptocurr...