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Re:Bitcoin Halving Just Occured by opportune on Monday May 11, 2020 @06:03PM (#23147646)
People certainly used to use it before transaction fees became too high. It saw a lot of real use in dark net markets which AFAIK now use more privacy-preserving coins, since the bitcoin blockchain is simply pseudonymous. For regular payments Bitcoin has some tradeoffs, theoretically the high hash power makes it "safer" (though it's quite consolidated), it's somewhat less volatile than other coins due to trading volume, but its fees are quite high. It's basically dead for on-chain transactions under a certain amount.

Personally I think Bitcoin has great historic value and may become a collector's item similar to how a denarius still has value now, but its properties make it pretty bad for everything you would want a currency to be, except that it's deflationary and well-known. For anything you would want to do with it other than speculate, there is probably a better cryptocurrency (based on the actual tech/design of the currency) or non-crypto tool - it's like the Model T of crypto.

Re:Bitcoin Halving Just Occured by neop1x on Wednesday May 13, 2020 @11:26AM (#23167791)
that's why there are thousands of altcoins which always have seen a spark of popularity and their slow decay while Bitcoin still being #1 cryptocoin today