Comment by fastball | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fastball | Hacker News Reader

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Bitcoin is currently the crypto equivalent of gold. It's not reasonable to use it to buy a coffee. However, Bitcoin is trying (but many would argue, failing) to upgrade the network with something that will allow cheaper/faster transactions and make it a reasonable currency again. However, (imo) in-fighting has seriously hampered this. That being the reality, many people hope that Bitcoin will remain a store of value into the future, even if most people are using some other crypto for actual day-to-day transactions.

There are "old-school" cryptos with lower transaction fees (Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash). There is not much reason to use them as an actual currency except for the fact that they have more inertia than most other projects (and therefore more things have been built around them). In particular, most places that had some sort of Bitcoin integration can very easily switch to Bitcoin Cash for much lower tx fees.

There are many cryptos that are trying to be currency in a permanently scalable way (IOTA, Ripple, Stellar)

Other cryptos are trying to be cash, i.e. anonymous (Dash, Monero, ZCash).

Most others are either A. intended to be more platform than currency (Ethereum, NEO, EOS, Tron) or B. too small to mention.

No, Bitcoin is the crypto equivalent of Monopoly money: it is unreasonable to use it for anything but little fun. For real world use cases there are better solutions, including other cryptocurrencies.

Gold isn't reasonable for the average Joe to use for anything either.

There was a recent bit on NPR (Planet Money?) where they interviewed young people in Seoul - they had so little faith in their ability to earn a living and save money by working a regular job in Korea they were putting all their savings into Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and hoping to hit the jackpot. It was alarming.

http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/73...

> Low-income South Koreans are finding it harder and harder to rise to the middle or high-income classes through their own efforts and abilities, a recent study shows. Just two out of every ten households saw their economic status rise through increased income and assets over a three-year period, the findings indicate.

Crypto provides an alternative economy where class mobility isn't broken in the same ways. Youth will continue to flock to it until the local economies sort themselves out.

I wonder if young folks in the same situation in America are doing the same thing.

https://www.pri.org/stories/2018-01-23/why-some-young-south-...

Thanks - same print source it seems, maybe different radio story - that's dated today! South Korea now sounds like Japan of a few years ago before China got in the WTO, Japan was the "big threat" to US manufacturing/exports of that time, so Japan got a close examination for things the US could learn to copy. But it also sounds a bit like US today or maybe it's all around the world - the college grads not seeing a lot of opportunity for the average or even superior college experience from those examples. It feels like the world is in a lot of trouble if this is true for most college grads everywhere.

It's not gold. Gold has a long history of being a stable store of value. I could buy gold now and sit back and not worry that the price was about to fall through the floor. Owning bitcoin is not the same. At any moment it could tank. If all the investors suddenly got interested in Pokémon cards they would be just as useful as a store of value.

> I could buy gold now and sit back and not worry that the price was about to fall through the floor.

Lots of people have believed that in the past. Sometimes they've been right, sometimes not. The future supply of commodities doesn't always follow expectations.

> Bitcoin is currently the crypto equivalent of gold.

Why is this a good thing? Nobody uses gold as a store of value anymore because it just wasn't viable going forward. Why would Bitcoin be any different?

Most of the central banks have gold reserves as a store of value, some of them expanding them (most notably China and Russia). For individuals it is less popular, but still I wouldn't say "nobody uses gold".

But aren't those gold reserves a tiny fraction of the actual cash circulating in the economy? What use does Bitcoin serve in this aspect? And I don't think that Bitcoin and Gold are really comparable. In the event of some national/international crisis, the gold is still going to be there. I don't think you can reasonably make the same guarantee about something like Bitcoin.

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