I actually like your predictions Leap. I take the other side and am always rewarded handsomely. I am starting to think you really are not Irish because you really have no luck. You can’t even beat a flip of the coin.
I think Visa is trying to get ahead of it so they don’t get disrupted. People, I think you know, are tired of the fees especially when a retailer makes the consumer pay it directly.
We pay more for goods in the first world. Okay knock that down but what do you get?
The German system of fixed prices is fast and economical. Truly it skews pricing towards better profits, industrial manufacturing, and productivity gains pushing down on prices longer term.
The rest of the world haggles.
Would gas prices constantly change and cause haggling? Possibly for the merchants. No one rides for free even after being told it will be wonderful.
In a practical sense yes, you are absolutely right. Bitcoin is not a currency or a payment system and people don’t think of it like that. But quoting from the white paper:
Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System
Bitcoin is designed to be a currency and payment system. But as described in the thread above Bitcoin’s design renders unusable for payments, except in extremely rare circumstances.
So if it is unusable for its designed purpose, and it doesn’t pay a dividend or coupon, what is the investing case?
I don’t think there are too many people who still think BTC will function as a currency (too volatile) or payment mechanism (too slow). But I think there are a bunch of folks that think it will function like gold - as a store of value, a token that people will mutually act as if it has a certain amount of worth even though it cannot practically be used as money.
The investing case is that someone will give you more for it tomorrow. It’s more like a collectible in that regard (no interest, no internal economics, no dividend)
Digital currency is a hard asset, even if imaginary. It’s like other things which produce nothing but which people still want for whatever reason. Beanie Babies, paintings by old masters, Maserati’s, a copy of the Declaration of Independence. You buy it because you want to brag that you have it, and you think there will be someone someday who will pay more for it than you did.
That, obviously, is sometimes true, (and this is important) just as frequently not. It doesn’t always happen quickly, Beanie Babies had a short shelf life, Maseratis will rust away eventually, and what is great art changes with the ages. Bitcoin could be usurped overnight with a new pretender, or by changes in computing, or by something else. Or it could last a long time, but as an otherwise unproductive asset, it will someday go away.
Pet rocks could at least be held in your hand. They came with a box. As the old guys used to say sagaciously, “real estate is real”. Sad pet rock, what happened?
The issue seems to be whether digital currency has any utility. I recall this was discussed to death with respect to NFTs and real estate purchases. The fact that a year or so later the usefulness of crypto is still not obvious suggests that its value is more virtual than tangible.
