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Comment by 1970-01-01 | Hacker News Reader

1970-01-01

>Almost 15 years after the launch of bitcoin and at least tens of billions of dollars invested in development in the space there is still nowhere on the horizon any of this is ready for anything approaching mass adoption.

You hit the nail on the head. Nobody can directly buy water, milk, fuel, transportation, or anything necessary with bitcoin. Its only legitimate use is an exotic and volatile investment vehicle for millionaires to play with.

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I bought 2 whole computers, a 3D printer and many parts for different equipment paid with Bitcoin.

Perhaps not quite "water, milk, fuel, transportation, or anything necessary" but certainly far from "an exotic and volatile investment vehicle for millionaires to play with".

Mentioning some relatively niche gadgets as a showcase example actually supports the premise of Bitcoin being nowhere near being ready for mass adoption. People would want to hear something like "I paid for all my needs for a full week with Bitcoins".

I remember (but very poorly, as this was over a quarter century ago and wasn't that important to me) back when there was a TV show (I remember this being in Japan, but that is quite likely my brain filling in gaps) where they locked someone in a room and they had to figure out how to live off of only things they could purchase off the Internet. Of course, this was extremely difficult, as most of the things you could order online were "some relatively niche gadgets". It was big news when you could order pizza off a website, but that was only in the United States and probably only in some places... I can't remember what he did to get calories but I remember it being interesting and I think it involved a website he found that sold cosmetics? It could very well be I am mixing this story up with something else :(. But like, it isn't as if the Internet was somehow universally useful from the very beginning... 1999 changed a lot, very quickly, but the Internet was already something even normal people could access for a number of years before then.

No, he didn't order them, he had to win them[1] via entering sweepstakes.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasubi

I bought some things a long time ago but none of those services take bitcoin anymore. It has regressed in this area.

Yeah it's just gambling. My coworker explained to me what he does with crypto it's just "investing" it's not a currency to him at all. But it's also not an investment after you hear him explain his reasoning, it's just gambling

Exactly. Any reasonable person who sees crypto for what it is (gambling) doesn't touch it other than making trades in an order book on some exchange - treating BTC just like they would EUR, AAPL, etc.

In Venezuela USDT is widely accepted; though not legal tender people use it freely, as a replacement for fiat USD when the cash is short indeed.

And yes, I'm talking about using it on the grocery store.

More adoption in countries with unstable economies still isn’t mass adoption speaking globally.

Right, because there is not any need for the other countries for that technology.

Does that mean stablecoins should be discontinued because it's not mass adopted at all? even if it's useful for a minority? I disagree

> Almost 15,000 years after the launch of Gold and at least tens of billions of dollars invested in development in the space there is still nowhere on the horizon any of this is ready for anything approaching mass adoption. No one uses gold for store of value or purchases, it clearly has failed miserably.

Except that gold is also obsolete as currency, even if not as a store of value. If cryptocurrencies want to throw in the towel on the "currency" part, then I look forward to them adopting a new moniker, rather than trying to sneakily move the goalposts.

>No one uses gold for store of value

Don’t they?

That’s his point.

Not trying to claim any expertise in the matter, but couldn't you say the same for gold? Any of us would love to have a box of it, but you can't do squat with it at the grocery store or the gas station.

I would love to come across a free box of gold, or a private key holding a large sum in bitcoin, or anything similar. HOWEVER, that is not because I would like to keep holding onto it -- just to convert it to cash and then convert that cash proportionally to cash/short term/long term investments.

I'd probably hold it as is. I wouldn't ever consider converting some of my hard-earned cash into bitcoin or physical gold, but for a no-cost investment I'll take the diversification.

It's not no-cost, there's an opportunity cost.

and more importantly with no "large transaction" record, who is going to come after you?

Gold is an nonreactive and pretty metal, which itself makes it valuable. People independently regarded it as valuable across different cultures for thousands of years.

Fun fact: Technically, you could buy $50 dollars of groceries with an American Gold Eagle. You'd definitely confuse the cashier though.

Most of the people holding gold in a serious sense never actually see or touch it. They delegate that to trusted entities who can provide all the physical security and auditing that an average person can't. I feel like there's a parallel with the blockchain, in the sense that actual bitcoin is "heavy" to move but you can to a lot of IOU deals on the fringe of it.

You can, but gold is a commodity and not a currency in any modern sense.

You forgot black market deals

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