It is used as a toy, as speculation, for criminal activity, and for money laundering.
There is not much actual legitimate usage. It is pretty bad for privacy as the whole idea is that the entire transaction history is public and permanent.
There is not much actual legitimate usage. It is pretty bad for privacy as the whole idea is that the entire transaction history is public and permanent.
To make an definitive statement like this, with no sources, shows the inherent bias you have.
In reality, apparently a lot of people use BTC for quite a bit of actual business.[1][2]
[1]: https://bitpay.com/blog/bitpay-growth-2017/ [2]: https://news.bitcoin.com/bitpay-reports-processing-over-1-bi....
The trading volume yesterday on the other hand was nearly $2 billion.
So that would mean that the demand for bitcoin in bitcoin markets for actual usage of bitcoin is one part in 700?
I think that counts as not much actual usage.
you are thinking of the US Dollar :)
Anyone saying it was just porn and drugs would just be disingenuous.
But Bitcoin, I'm not sure I've encountered a single "Pay with Bitcoin" option in any online shopping I've done. So where are the legit use cases hiding?
More recently (last year) I came across a VPS provider accepting BTC. I think there are VPN providers accepting BTC, but I'm not familiar with that market space.
That's just what I've stumbled across. Google searches seem to bring up more, but... yeah. Seems to me to be a pretty large chicken-and-egg problem. Something that could take off, but needs a substantial catalyst.
[1] https://blog.dell.com/en-us/we-re-now-accepting-bitcoin-on-d...
Yeah, I get that there aren't a lot of options besides Bitcoin for unbanked transactions, but there are a lot of potential ramifications around the radical publicity inherent in blockchain-based currency.
If whoever held the coins 3 transactions ago ends up getting in big-time hot water, should I expect the feds to try to confiscate them? I would at least be under additional scrutiny in order to determine what association I had with the illegal enterprise, being so close in the chain. Bitcoin tumblers and mixers only do so much to prevent this, especially as people have started discriminating against "tumbled" btc.