I believe the most powerful force that could cause adoption of BTC by the masses is the ability to buy stuff with it without having to convert it to fiat and move it to a conventional bank. Look at Coinbase, lots of people complain about accounts getting frozen and the 48 hour hold basically restricting your ability to use your assets for real goods at a moment’s notice. Occasionally I’ll google for businesses that accept BTC as payment but I don’t put much time into it. Let’s start a list of places that accept BTC in exchange for the stuff everyone currently has to buy using fiat. Cars, toilet paper, food, etc. I’m mostly looking for brick and mortar stores in the USA but interesting vendors that are only online are ok to. Edit: just found this website, maybe it’s what I’m looking for. I still think it would be cool if we post any interesting vendors we run across.
The problem is that as soon as you convert BTC to another coin, or you use it to purchase something you create a tax event for Capital gains. This is why people are just hodling and not spending.
I didn’t realize that. I’m still stuck on bitcoin being a potential currency. It seems that the current rules are designed to prevent that. I just read that it could be up to a 37% capital gains tax. That would essentially be a sales tax on top of the cost of products. Looks like I’ve wasted some brain cells thinking about it.
BTC transaction fees are really high, and really slow. Every coin promises to be fast and cheap, but as soon as the price skyrockets, they become slow and expensive.
You would think that if bitcoin was really meant to be used as a medium of exchange that it would then already be used as a medium of exchange by now. But not so much.
The people that run our banking infrastructure will not allow this to happen. It will take legislation to accomplish what you want. But that won't happen because our legislators are bought off by those same bankers. KYC rules are just the start. It will only get progressively worse. They created the fed for a reason. There's a reason we went into Iraq. Saddam was going to switch to the euro for oil trade, and even in this the euro is attached to the hip to the dollar. Gaddafi wanted to create a bank of Africa, well, look what happened to him. Same with Russia. Only Russia has the ability to fight back. I don't know how to go about lobbying, and politicking, and so on. I do know how to complain online, though. Anyway, in order for this to happen there would have to be a force capable of out spending or out muscling said bankers.