Can any of you explain to me, as if I’m a third grader, what the end plan is with BTC? Meaning are you envisioning a day where retailers scan some device of yours and deduct some amount of BTC for a bag of groceries?
Acceptance as payment has been growing steadily, and I believe bitcoin will some day be readily accepted most places in everyday commerce.
Inflationary concerns associated with fiat currency aside, I know what the US government is and its backing means something to me. Gold means something because folks find it pretty and it’s used in some manufacturing. Isn’t BTC just a nebulous idea floating around out there backed only by hope and opinion?
What backing is there to the US dollar? You can't go to your local bank and trade your dollars in for gold. If there were any real link between the dollar and gold, you should be able to take a Benjamin ($100 Federal Reserve Note) to your local bank and exchange it for two 1 ounce American gold eagles (each stamped with a face value of $50). If you find a bank that will make that trade, please let me know
. The dollar was officially decoupled from gold in 1971 (the decoupling began decades earlier but was made official when Nixon "closed the gold window").
The "backing" to bitcoin (the token) is the value of the Bitcoin blockchain as a decentralized, immutable record of transactions. The token allows you to utilize the blockchain. I concede that this idea is nebulous and can be difficult to wrap your mind around but would contend that there is "real" value to the Bitcoin blockchain as a store of information. The price of bitcoin (denominated in US dollars) is still very volatile right now and is being driven largely by speculation. Bitcoin is still young (15 years old) compared to other media of exchange (Federal Reserve Note = 111 years, gold = millenia), and price discovery is still taking place. I believe bitcoin's value relative to other currencies will eventually stabilize as it gains adoption and as the halving cycles become less impactful.
What about concerns regarding digital theft, not only like what that weird Bankman Fried guy pulled off but how about some moderately talented hacker at the corner Starbucks?
Valid concern. Most folks aren't accustomed to financial responsibility. They rely on their credit company to protect them from fraud and rely (usually unknowingly) on the FDIC to secure their checking/savings accounts. Bitcoin has fewer safeguards, but anything of value is at risk of being stolen and precautions should be taken accordingly. Online exchanges are not a good place to keep large amounts of bitcoin. Companies offering any sort of yield on your bitcoin (à la FTX or Gemini) should be treated with caution. A software wallet is a pretty safe storage option, and a cold/hardware wallet is even better.
I mean, I can stuff my mattress with hundos or bury some gold in the pasture, BTC isnt tangible, right?
You could bury bitcoin in the form of a cold wallet and its associated private key (in a waterproof box) and keep it safe indefinitely.
Asking out of genuine curiosity, can’t disagree with the gains but just can’t wrap my head around how this isn’t digital tulip bulbs.
For one thing, Bitcoin has already lasted significantly longer than the Dutch tulip bubble and has survived multiple runs up and down.
