If I make a USD international wire transfer it will cost me $50 and take 2-3 days. With BTC it will cost me $3 and take 10 minutes. As for payments, that's what the lightning network is for, by the time its fully rolled out and most people are using it it will be too late to make a lot of money in BTC. So I submit to you that if you are waiting for that to believe in BTC, you might get what you wish for but you are unlikely to make any money from it. Maybe not right away but I bought my BTC at $8,500-$9000 avg. It dropped to $3,500 and now it trades at $18,000. So I both lost a big percentage and made a big percentage and thats typical for most people that hold for a few years. Sure, I'm invested because I think I will profit, but I believe that because of the fundamental traits of BTC that I think will attract more and more market participants. But I also see it (along with crypto in general) as a great way to get around stupid capital controls. Just recently I lost my US bank account due stupid Treasury regulations. Now I need to get funds from the UK to Brazil for monthly expenses and I'm exploring using crypto for that. As for buying goods and services, I will do that with BTC when enough people are using the lightning network. It might take a few years but its likely to happen. Heck, PAYPAL is involved in Bitcoin, people, just think for a second how significant is that. YEah, you can't make payments with it yet, but by the time you can BTC is likely to me much more expensive. MARKETS ARE FORWARD LOOKING
You're missing quite a bit, actually, but the question is are you willing to be open-minded and learn? https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf (bitcoin whitepaper published over 12 years ago) Bitcoin is a digital cryptographic asset and can also be used as decentralized, distributed, p2p crypto currency i.e. medium of exchange). It has tremendous value and a thriving nascent financial system is booming with players like BlockFi, Celsius Network, Nexo and recent news says Fidelity is now in on it. https://elitetrader.com/et/threads/...school-prespective.353400/page-3#post-5268804 Bitcoin is not backed by a nation's military power but it is backed by over 130 Million Trillion Hashes per Second of computational power that keeps the network secure and all transactions are trusted and verified in accordance with the rules set forth in the whitepaper (see above), i.e. prevent double-spend. I was a bitcoin miner in the past as well as other sha256 pow coins and it consumes a lot electricity and produces a lot of heat, which is great for the winter, not so much in the summer, but that's what it takes to secure the network and to support the ideologies. https://www.blockchain.com/charts/hash-rate The mathematics of the private key security employed in bitcoin
You probably meant backed by the trust of dreamers, the hopefuls, cartels, and slick startups. What will come and work out will be government backed, centralized electronic tokens driven by block chain technology or one of its derivatives.
If you honestly think your future electronic money transfers will be 3 bucks fixed then you are dreaming. As always there will be dozens of counterparties and middlemen involved who all take their cut. Governments will never ever allow a decentralized monetary system on a large scale. Any physical vendor who would disobey the law will be easily shut down. Get real, no government and its financial firms will let go of the billions of fees collected in the current global monetary payment system. They will, however, introduce electronic payment systems that are vastly superior to the outdated stuff all counterparties are today dependent on. But it will be a centralized system. My hunch is China will be first then perhaps Taiwan, Japan at some point, Scandinavia and Switzerland then US and rest of Europe.
Absolutely. I'll check out those resources later on. Thank you. I'll adress this question to both of you and anyone else who feels compelled to answer. What's to prevent lightning fast electronic transactions using fiat currency? As one of the arguments for BTC and other cryptos is the speed of transactions. Here in Norway, we now have a mobile application Vipps which lets me send money from my bank account to another bank account (and this could be in a completely different bank) instantly for free. This is done using local currency of course. I can also use it to pay in most shops these days and I can use it to pay bills as well. Businesses is also adopting it now for professional use. I don't see why this can't evolve to international transactions as well. So, let's be clear that I'm not opposed to technology or innovation. I'm just still struggling a bit to see the advantages of Bitcoin versus fiat currency.
Actually, it seems like Vipps is already branching out in Europe. I imagine it won't be long until you can send money instantly in Europe as well. Visa partners with Vipps to drive European mobile payments
Central banks realized with Bitcoin that they were decades behind the technology so now they are catching up. Instant fiat payments are the future, however they will have some negative aspects that will drive some people towards bitcoin and other cryptos -If government want to implement negative interest rates in order to conduct monetary policy, they can very easily. So it wont be fun when your government run wallet is charging you -1% to induce you to spend -The goverment will know everything you do at all times, without the need for any warrant. Also what happens when the government gets hacked and the info gets leaked out? -Its still fiat currency in which central banks are committed to drive down the value of (through financial repression/negative real rates, increases in the money supply). Its not hard currency And I like the idea of having these eletronic payment systems around, I think a lot of people will use them. But a lot of people will also like to have their savings in a hard currency that also can make those electronic payments, which this fiat currency isn't. So both will win
I'm on the camp of "bitcoin as a speculative investment asset" more than "bitcoin as a currency", but a main difference between a centralized payment system and bitcoin is that bitcoin is immutable and censorship-resistant. This means if you paid someone using Visa or a bank and for some reason you want to file a charge-back, you can. Also, if the issuing bank suspects the transaction is not legal (i.e. drug sale) then it can freeze the funds or confiscate them. It can freeze your accounts, too. There's no charge-back in bitcoin. There's also no asset-forfeiture. This is why cryptos people fight for privacy. Anyway, the value proposition of bitcoin as a digital asset is much more interesting, imho. On the other elitetrader thread I linked to, I posted 2 Youtube videos discussing a whole ecosystem of debit/credit market that is thriving which is related to the latest Fidelity news. Bitcoin (and other cryptos) as collateral assets have high yields against the backdrop of zirp/nirp everywhere else.