Bitcoin Forum

we hear about cool and new bitcoin ideas every day and also how these ideas will improve the standing of bitcoin. a cool feature that makes it better than fiat.
i want to talk about one such feature. bitcoin can reduce the trust we need when money is involved. let us say i want to bet a friend of mine and to make sure we pay after the bet is resolved we use a smart contract.
this sounds fine and reduces the trust needed.
but in fact we just shifted the trust to the coder who made the smart contract. sure we could verify the code, but how many people can do this (remember the DAO)? my mother can certainly not.
so in order to make smart contracts a big point for bitcoin we will need generations and maybe even have some sort of basic smart contracts training in schools. so this is not very likely.
even today nobody reads the fine print and just trusts that everything will work out fine (most people think they can sue to get the money back is something fishy happens). but all we need with smart contracts is just one misspelled letter and the money can be lost without recovery.
people are dumb, so fiat works just fine for them. bitcoin might be to advanced for people to really go mainstream without destroying many peoples lives, because they made a small mistake or trusted the wrong code/people.

can we solve this problem? should we get used to the losses? or is this one of the reasons bitcoin will never go mainstream?

Bitcoin will not go fully mainstream in the developed world until governments ban cash, because then and only then people will see the magic and value of bitcoin. Until then, we are the pioneers of this thing. Poor unbanked countries will maybe jump on bitcoin before the developed world does.
It will keep growing as a better gold anyway. Also smart contracts in the bitcoin will be solid and very simple, none of that ETH/DAO bullshit.

Government will never prohibit cash but bitcoin will play an important role in the future although appeared new crypto currencies.

Please do not mention DAO or other piece of shit coin in the same sentence with bitcoin. Bitcoin existed way before those shit coins. The only coin worth mentioning is Litecoin. (and maybe monero for its anonimousity advantages) The others were/are obvious scam.

Bitcoin isn't there to replace FIAT in the first place. It is there to make our lives eaiser.

Bitcoin will never become a mainstream currency.This is the sad true.

The lack of trust stops bitcoin growth and mass adoption.

Unfortunately bitcoin is still a "scammer friendly" digital currency.

And in my opinion, government banning fiat is not as close as possible as of now, or maybe even after several years. Why? Because they regulate it, they have the power to control it unlike with bitcoin. In addition, there will be a big adjustment not only for the government but also for all the people. Bitcoin doesn't need to be the one and only currency. For me, awareness and usage of people (even not all) about bitcoin is just fine, knowing that they can use it anytime and anywhere, accept it on most stores, trade it etc.

If people stuck with fiat, then it's like the ancient human who stuck with the barter system because they don't want to use a better system called currency.
This actually shouldn't be a problem for us (human), because we can always get to used to new things.

Smart contract is not related to bitcoin till now, i think OP misunderstood about ethereum based smart contracts with bitcoin.
The DAO fails was failure for ethereum not for bitcoin as DAO is based on ethereum. Bitcoin have its own uses and already have got adopted by mass as payment method so i don't think bitcoin even require any smart contract like feature.

I can only speak for myself, but bitcoin surpassed fiat seven years ago for me. Using a credit card or fiat system seems ridiculously archaic and dumb now. It's like switching to a smart phone, no one ever goes back to a flip phone.

If it wasn't a "scammer friendly" currency then it wouldn't be bitcoin, and by that am talking about the trustless side of it. Yeah it's boo when stupid people lose their money but that's life. And yeah we are not building something for the snowflake generation but for people that use their minds and pride their freedom. You can just keep cash and wave off if it doesn't fit you.

You got some good points specially with the training in schools. This needs some permissions from the government for they cant just disobey to what is written that will be taught to the students.
It can be done if the teacher himself will provide some projects into knowing what bitcoin is. But it could cost his or her job.

Well Bitcoin is what ?

Nothing but combination of cryptography and blockchain. Bitcoin already have proved its existence. As well in todays world many of thing are going to be decentralized. As already steamit with decentralized social media, Decent with decentralized, content distribution and so many of are going decentralized.

Even governments also testing blockchain technology for better administration and governance.

But most important thing is how blockchain works ?

It works with computing power.

It means it needs energy.

In short overview world is becoming digital.

But at grass root level there is need of fiat currency. And it will be.

Because without Fiat Currency Bitcoin also have no value.

Using bitcoin can be difficult for a newcomer and people generally do not like difficult things so they tend to stay away. For bitcoin to go mainstream, developers have to somehow make the process of sending and receiving coins less technical.

The whole idea is to get more developers to start developing secondary technologies to make things like Smart contracts easier for the

general public to understand. When the internet started, we had very primitive tools to do things, and as time went by, and more people

started to develop Apps, we started to see more user-friendly tools. So just give it some time to mature.  ;)

i agree on this people are really dumb and needs paper money to keep a hand track on their money as this will reduce many money lost chances but lets face it we are using it because we make many mistakes so its time to develop our self we should move to bitcoin and should learn from our mistakes and i do not think i have ever send any of my balance to any wrong address maybe that has accidently happen to anyone in the whole world

For today maybe yes, due to still there are not support and good innovations from developer, enterpreneur and bitcoin is not too famous, but if there are much users who use bitcoin Sooner or later bitcoin will surpass fiat.

I think if we relay in the price of bitcoin its already surpass fiat for the price but in the other thing i couldn't imagine that bitcoin can surpass fiat since bitcoin is just an alternative currency online that you can use online..

We don't need to solve this problem. Contracts can be relied upon by one's word, good old fashioned trust of another human being. Escrow is used all the time for bitcoin purchases. It doesn't require a coder, only a trust worthy non-involved third party.

While having confidence in contracts would be ideal, we don't need it. It doesn't kill the integrity of bitcoin.

Further, the real reason bitcoin will not surpass fiat is because the people who have the power are vested in fiat. No country is going to cede it's currency for bitcoin. And that should be fine with all of us, because as soon as it happens the powers of this world will control and pervert bitcoin.

reasons bitcoin wont replace fiat.

1. devs think an hours wage of 10 developing countries is ok as a transaction fee
think long and hard about that, and how developing countries wont and are starting to realise, dont like bitcoin already.

2. devs think $7 transaction value (a weeks wage in many many more countries) is just spam and should be priced out of being acceptable

3. bitcoins 1mb (~2500tx) block can only cope with 360,000 people using it once a day, or at current metrics about 2million people using it 5 times a month (far less than Visa/mastercards 42 times a month)

4. developers solution to global capacity.. offchain, middlemen involved things called lightning network hubs
in short a hub that sets up lots of multisigs so people can sign transaction with the hub. allowing the hub to then sign with another person(in short making a hub into a bank) that just registers the bank statement back to the public at the end of the month.

your describing 21st century banks..
basically replacing middle men.. with............. middlemen

smart contract can be useful.. but smart contracts should NOT be the bases of bitcoin capacity growth, for the reasons i explained above.
smart contracts remove independence and replace it with third parties.. which basically brings back the old world banking concept into bitcoin

Bitcoin will not surpass fiat because most people feel insecure about safety of bitcoins.Unless all governments approve bitcoin as a payment option, it will not surpass fiat

but by making bitcoin into the middleman (lightning hubs) so people understand and trust bitcoin, because its managed for them... its no longer the bitcoin that was originally designed. and is just another fiat currency. meaning only fiat has replaced fiat

Because most people don't like changing their way or conception of real hard cash. BTC is for a minority of people like us only.

Maybe it seems dumb to us but the problem is we need money to be universal and 99% of people still dont care for crypto.  Better then 99.9% though like it was a few years back.

It won't because the government and banks won't let that happen.

Bitcoin will never surpass fiat since bitcoin itself doesnt have value. It's value derives from fiat. Fiat's value comes from gold reserves.
Second, governments wont allow it to surpass fiat since for all they know, there is one man who holds a whole lot of bitcoin. When Satoshi mined the genesis block, he accumulated a lot of the coin, enough to destabilize the currency when he wishes to. For that reason alone, governments wont allow a currency that would drop its value the moment a person with a lot of it dumps the whole thing. It's like a government federal reserve printing paper money without a gold reserve. Useless.

bitcoin is like the internet

*the promise of anyone being able to make their own webpage in the early days, and able to have their own webaddress
*people not understanding it.
*they then taught to make myspace pages where their address is linked to a site
*then taught to upload their life to facebook, have less control of how their information is used, even less/none control over how its displayed "coz its free"

*if people want their own address they have to pay to have it and the costs increase over time
right now bitcoin is at the second * and things like sidechains and lightning is the third *

Don't get me wrong but your rhetoric is not helping anyone. And since you are an active member here you should at least take some efforts to help the code instead of critisizing it. I for once started learning code to be able to HELP this community instead of criticizing the devs or anyone else. HARD work stays, words get thrown to the garbage once a thread is deleted or just forgotten.
And no hell no I don't think anyone's intention is to deprivate them selfs by making BTC just another way to spy on people except if they are being paid to do that in which case let dem burn like original bears :)

Very interesting point... I'd add to it that not only do we have to trust the coder who created the contract but he'll also be very expensive.  He has to be trained as BOTH a lawyer and a programmer.  Two of the most expensive professions out there and he basically needs to be an expert in both or you need to hire both to work together.

I guess you could argue there will likely be some standard contracts out there and users could pick and choose clauses they want to see.  That could kind of work.. but forget about any kind of customization, which seems to be pretty typical.

Bitcoin will go mainstream if it's easy enough to use for mainstream. That's already the case with some applications. What's still missing is the motivation for the uninformed to move from fiat to Bitcoin. This motivation is currently being generated by the quantitative easing policy of central banks which will bring us significant fiat money devaluation at a rate that is even felt by the dumbest Joe in town. When people feel that they are loosing purchasing power they are eager to learn about alternatives. That's where Bitcoin comes in to play...

Bitcoin's main use case are not smart contracts. Who ever claimed that? Bitcoin's main use case is sound, decentralized, freely movable cash. Everybody understands that. - And speaking about "smart" contracts, these are easy to understand, too. It's just automatic execution of a contract based on fulfilling certain contractual conditions.

ya.ya.yo!

Yup.  But I don't see bitcoin replacing fiat anytime soon.  Cash transactions are pretty damn anonymous if you need that, excepting the security cameras that are everywhere.  And the cell phone videos.

Don't know about smart contracts.  I leave that sort of thing to people who are much smarter than me.  Bitcoin as a currency?  It's much better as a store of value IMO, but I know folks are passionate about spending it.  More power to them.  If mass adoption happens, it's going to be years in the future.  Governments don't want to abandon fiat!  Look at Zimbabwe, look at Weimar Germany!

Unless governments accept bitcoin,it can never surpass fiat.When it comes to monetary things what matters is trust of people and people trust things which are backed by their governments,If any government openly and clearly support bitcoin,then number of users of bitcoin in that country will go up

Well that is will never happen, and I never think the government will ban fiat. how about the destiny of bitcoin? if in this time the value of bitcoin depending on the fiat.

No government would ban cash in future just for bitcoin? lol. Bitcoin wouldnt surpass in any ways  even how bitcoin would  be very successful in upcoming years to come. Fiat  does play a  big role on economic state and  activity  on a certain country which money is  encircling to this process.

Fiat will remain in the future this is for life time and it is very useful for each person even you are poor or rich, while in bitcoin even in the future not all people can used this because it will required some gadgets and internet connection which is not all people can afford that.

I dont think bitcoins will surpass FIAT; but I think it will work alongside FIAT. if that makes sense.

Belief. Many people believe that it should not be harder when using money. Should be easy to undrrstand. Works for lazy people. Dont want anything that will need some definition, introduction amd knowledge. With that they wont use this bitcoin, it is not really that easy to understand specially when you are a technical guy.

Best thing: no smart contracts. Solves literally all of your issues and we don't have to worry about any of that. Let some other software make that a reality, and just have Bitcoin be one surrogate of it. There is no need to force a smart contract into the blockchain, and there are a ton of other things that can be better easily. Let someone else figure out what the best fixes for everything are.

Just to give a slightly different view. I do not think that Bitcoin was meant to surpass fiat. This only my personal opinion, but I think the main reason why Satoshi created and developed Bitcoin was to make a political statement. We have seen the things the bankers did that caused the 2008 financial crisis making ordinary people lose their jobs and their homes. Bitcoin is showing us a way that we do not need banks and that we have the option to take control of our money thru the use of technology. We may take it for granted because we deal with Bitcoin everyday but the statement made is very very powerful. We should feel lucky that we are taking part in it one way or another.

Agree, no matter how bitcoin would  progress in future its not possible to replace fiat as you said not all people would afford to have an internet and a good  cellular phone to switch directly on bitcoin.  Thats why people would surely use fiat no matter what anytime soon.

Yes, there is enough scope for everyone to participate to their strong points in the financial world, but greed will push some entities to try and push technologies like public blockchains into a corner. You will soon see the emergence of private permissioned Blockchains coming from the banking sector, and they will become even more hostile towards any competition in this field.

Shill activity will increase, misinformation about public Blockchains being spread in mainstream media will increase, and governments closing doors for public Blockchains will be global. ^hmmmmm^

There is no-one who would want to change their way of money and their concept of money unless they wanted to, and for a majority of people they simply do not want to change what they see as valuable because otherwise it fucks with everything they know, and a lot of people are resistant to change and don't want anything to happen with it. Which is understandable.

I guess one of the main reasons why Bitcoin will not be able to surpass fiat is the fact that a lot of people hates Bitcoin. They basically hate what they don't know. Also, our ideas about Bitcoin, all the integration in our minds will surely not be implemented due to lack of funds. But maybe some day somebody will go such trouble to implement the most brilliant ideas out there.

yes it's true because maybe bitcoin users in the whole of this world only less than 10% rather than all the people in the world and that mean almost 90% of people using cash for their transactions every day and most of them also not interested and don't know what is bitcoin and on my thought even for next 20 years bitcoin will never surpass fiat

I do not believe in the term 'surpass' but when considering the potential of bitcoin, it will dominate fiats.
Yes, bitcoin will lead the list of highly being used format of money in future. In this e-commerce world, even developing countries also having very big market for online shopping. For online shopping, bitcoin would be the right choice.

what is smart contact of bitcoin anyway?

the reason why bitcoin is not fully mainstream because it's not known by a lot of people out there, there are a little people who use it as well.

beside that, we need government to legalize bitcoin as payment.

it's just about those problems.

Another reason which I would add is How do you buy bitcoin? the answer is through fiat (mostly) so bitcoin is way too far from fiat and can't surpass the fiat never (in the next few decades)

Yes and unless we won't be able to buy anything with bitcoins, fiat will always rule the world, as if we want to spend our coins then we need to convert it to fiat first to use it anywhere.

For the simple reason that fiat is easy to use and anyone can easily understand it while bitcoin is complicated for those people who are computer literate, that is also the reason why fiat is more popular than bitcoin now and in the near future.

A few hundred years ago the total majority of population had been illiterate and couldn't even read. Does it mean that people were more stupid (or less clever, if you want me to put it this way) in general than they are today? I guess no, so it still boils down to proper education at proper age. For example, it is next to impossible for an adult to learn a foreign language (which is really foreign to his mother tongue) up to the level of fluency (skills in aural comprehension and speaking ability before all) that children growing up in a multilingual environment naturally acquire seemingly without much effort on their part...

In this way, I deem that what you consider as an insurmountable problem can still be efficiently solved if addressed in a proper manner

Because the most of people not usually use bitcoin everyday in their life so easy as they use fiat for. If you want to bitcoin can surpass the fiat it is a big work to do. Bitcoin should accompanied by fiat in the dissemination

Bitcoin never will be fiat.Government will never accept Bitcoin as a currency that's the reason bitcoin will never go mainstream.Only we can easier our lifestyle with bitcoin.fiat currency have more bound we can not use fiat currency as bitcoin everywhere accepted.

People think that Bitcoin is a competitor for the fiat money, while it is not. bitcoin is a store to save the money value like gold, do you think that gold can surpass fiat?
Even when you want to buy something with bitcoin, the estimated amount will be calculated by dollar, but you pay equivalent amount of bitcoin, so bitcoin isn't independent currency.

Yeah it was a thought, some people who do not know for sure about the bitcoin. everyone has an opinion each and can prove all of these opinions is the fact that it already exists. so, we just enjoy what the pleasure or profit us in the bitcoin

Common man, seriously? You mean to say you don't use fiat/cash/cards/bank accounts at all anymore?? If you do, then you should try not to bite the hand that feeds you. Also, the "smart" phones of today could learn a thing or two from their ancestors. I remember a time when I used get over a week of battery life from one full charge.

I beg to differ (while in reality I just push your claim a little further). Bitcoin is not a dependent currency. To the degree that it can be claimed otherwise (i.e. inasmuch as it cannot be considered an independent currency), Bitcoin is not a currency at all. It is a financial (read speculative) asset which is being traded for dollars, euros and so on, but nothing beside that in this respect. Alternately stated, there is no such thing as a dependent currency...

Since it would contradict the concept of currency (money) as such

Gold is the basis of fiat. Countries without gold reserves or smaller gold reserves has smaller value for their currency. Governements cant print paper money if their gold reserve is non existent since it will become destabilized. Fiat is just the paper representation of how much the country has in assets and debts.

It would not be easy for people to having negative thoughts on bitcoin especially people who do not understand the process.  People who cannot understand how bitcoins work.  It is too complex for someone especially those people who are not expose into modern technology and advancement. 

You will be able to have bitcoin for your efforts. I sense a future without fiats when everything is available for bitcoin but after decades. Fiats are already surpassed by electronic cards when we are having banking facilities. Fiats now exist only with/for illiterate people.

Monetary policy - controlling the supply of money - is a big lever in a country's economic toolbox. Letting go of fiat would mean letting go of that - and we can see with Greece how bad that can be for a country. That means that either fiat will always be here or an alt currency where the national (or international, in the case of ECB) bank can control the supply of money will have to be developed.

Gold has long divorced with fiat, for almost half a century already. If you have any scruples about that, I advise you to read more about the so-called Nixon shock (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock) that led to the de jure cancellation of the US dollar convertibility to gold. All other countries dropped gold as an asset backing up their currencies long before that. For example, Great Britain, like a few other countries, abandoned the gold standard during the Great Depression...

And fiat is a representation of the economy of a country as a whole, not how much gold, debt or any other individual asset it has

Bitcoin is the real currency of the internet, so in a way we can conside that bitcoin already surpassed fiat. Today, bitcoin is becoming widely used to make purchases over the internet and the tendency is to increase