

Ask HN: Will Bitcoin ever go mainstream? - matthewbauer

I&#x27;ve been reading a lot of Bitcoin discussion on bitcointalk lately and it frustrates me how misinformed most Bitcoin &quot;evangelists&quot; are on the economics that are critical to Bitcoin&#x27;s future. Most of these people see Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as a thing to &quot;buy low and sell high&quot; thinking they are more of a stock than a currency. If there opinion represents a majority of Bitcoin owners, then we can expect a huge devaluation of Bitcoin in the next couple of years as they start to &quot;cash out&quot; as the prices increases significantly. I think this is speculator mentality is a factor in the extraordinarily high variation in the exchange rate of BTC&#x2F;USD compared with relatively low variation in the exchange rate of EUR&#x2F;USD.<p>This has me worried about the future of Bitcoin. I think Bitcoin and its derivatives have a lot of potential as a future currency but the way that people treat it now worries me. For Bitcoin to have a future it needs to be used by people in the same way that we dollars and euros day to day. People need to start buying more things with Bitcoin, get paid with Bitcoin, and keep savings and money market accounts in Bitcoin. We need to start &quot;thinking&quot; in Bitcoin like we think in dollars. But, the high changes in price scare adoption of Bitcoin. Why would I buy a laptop for 2 BTC when tomorrow that laptop could only cost 1.5 BTC because the value of BTC changed over night?<p>What is your opinion on the Bitcoin&#x27;s future as a true currency? Is my concern valid or will the power of the technology trump the speculators in the long run? Can anyone point me to resources that go beyond the &quot;speculator mentality&quot; that has started to plague BT and various &quot;Bitcoin evangelist&quot; magazines?
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underwun
Recently I have been looking at the numbers and wondering if we are kidding
ourselves.

Consumer sales transaction numbers are trivial It fails as a remittance
vehicle due to the buy/sell delta Chinese moving money offshore 58% inflate
transactions/price Bitcoin playing mother hen to alt-coin falsley aids price
You'd never buy if calc replenishment costs Mining it's wasteful and
inefficient

My prediction is Bitcoin will be a casualty of showing the way but not having
the legs to deliver. In part because of flaws in its design and in part
because open-source projects lack direction.

Positively, I'm certain cryptos are here to stay and we will see the currency
of the future emerge in the next year or two.

One last thought, it's money going into Bitcoin investment or rather crypto -
infrastructure?

