Bitcoin Forum

I'm sure there's a new thread every day asking which Alt-Coin is going to be the most profitable and what you should invest in today. That's all fine, I'm interested in that too. Today however I'd like to cast a wider net.
As a n0ob with cryptocurrencies, I'm convinced I'll make some errors and I'm sure there are things that I've misunderstood; Feel free to correct my if I mess things up.
From what I've seen, Bitcoin is without a doubt the dominant cryptocurrency out there. Bitcoin is also fairly slow and resource hungry. Bitcoin also has a cap at 21MBTC.
Could it be that Bitcoin will become the equivalent of digital gold?
Everyone recognizes gold as very valuable but it's not used for everyday transactions.
I've seen people describing LiteCoin and Etherium as digital "silver" if BTC is the digital gold.
But silver isn't used in everyday transactions either.
Is there a cryptocurrency out there that has what it takes to become the "digital dollar"? A cryptocurrency suitable for everyday transactions...
What makes it/them suitable?

IMHO the concept is a bit awkward.
The Dollar (and any other Fiat currency out there) is constantly being diluted with freshly printed Fiat, and that is the exact opposite of what we want from a cryptocurrency.
But if a currency only has a fixed amount of units, it'll be in a perpetual deflationary state, that's not necessarily a positive thing either.

Digibyte could meet the needs of very fast daily transaction with almost no fee. It's future is bright

Isnt USDT already took a cryptodollar position?

Comething like:
https://wmx.wmtransfer.com/

but on goverment control, like gold standart Dollar but BITCOIN

It took many centuries for the fiat to replace the gold, can we give at Btc a few years?

Hard to do only 1st time.
Now all will be faster, here is some https://wmx.wmtransfer.com/ , but not only this.

it is the fastest thing you can hope for. when you send a transaction it takes about 3 seconds to propagate through the whole network and for the receiver to see it in his wallet.
the confirmation is what takes time and that time is 10 minutes on average for 1 and for making it un-spendable 1 is 99% irreversible because of the high difficulty and 3 is more suitable for bigger transaction sizes. meaning time is between 10 to 30 minutes.

in comparison i have never checked the propagation time and never seen any studies (the 3 seconds above was a research) so i can't say anything about that.
some altcoins have faster blocks even in seconds but because of number of orphans, lower difficulty and some other things everyone asks for much higher confirmation which means the total confirmation for an irreversible transaction is usually the same 30 or in some cases 1 hour.

this is only a positive thing!

No. despite everyone wanting to see it that way, bitcoin was made with the purpose of being a digital currency and it is doing exactly that.

gold used to be used as a currency for transactions. and now it is used as a backing for the fiat in many countries.

they call litecoin the silver to bitcoin's gold never before anyone called ethereum as such.
ether is not even a currency to be compared with bitcoin. it is a platform for smart contracts that happens to have a token which is only supposed to be used for smart contracts nothing else. and it can not and is not designed to be used as a currency.

nobody uses a precious metal for transaction (aka as a currency) you can make coins out of them like the old ages and use  those coins as currency though.

i don't quite get this part.
if you want a digital crtypocurrency which is decentralized, has a large supply without an end (no cap), has a solid blockchain and network, is secure, fast and cheap then i guess off the top of my mind i can name Dogecoin.
i believe they removed the cap!

but the problem is always adoption. it doesn't matter what the coin is, as long as nobody uses it as a currency, it will remain useless.

Literally it is yes, but I think OP was looking more to compare an altcoins usability to the dollar rather than an actual virtual dollar.

Bitcoin is or will act as both digital gold and digital dollar too. Bitcoin might take over dollar and act or work as the single accepted currency all over the world. Also the value of most of other cryptocurrencies like eth, dgb, xem etc are assesed on the basis of bitcoin's current price so bitcoin is already working as digital dollar as far as other cryptocurrencies are concerned. So bitcoin will remain at the top and everything else gold, dollar, eth, etc, dgb will remain subject to the king bitcoin.

Indeed, I was thinking about what would make a cryptocurrency a good candidate for everyday transactions. What would make it as serious contender to the dollar.
And yes, I was talking the slowness in validation for Bitcoin. If you're at the grocery store, waiting 10min for confirmation isn't an option.
There is an other difficulty to address. The government will always seek control of the currency and transactions. How do you deal with such an obstacle?
IMHO the people and the government are at the opposite end of the spectrum on that one.
In order to become valid for mundane transactions, you need stability. How pricy will BTC have to be for it to be stable enough? At current price, it's way to volatile...

I don't consider bitcoin to be digital gold, because the growth percentage of gold and bitcoin vary in a large scale. Other than that bitcoin has got various forms, whereas gold has got two forms as an investment and as a ornament.

BITCOIN overtake GOLD now

I suspect more people consider gold suitable as money than cryptocurrencies. The reason the markets behave so differently is partially because of the regulations in effect. Just wait until the US gov't start messing with the cryptocurrencies in earnest...

the next step, and this is being worked on by groups like openANX and others, is tokenizing FIAT. The problem with Tether is you don't know if they are keeping a 1-1 ratio. In other words is one dollar held in an account for every tether created? However, groups are now tokenizing FIAT and working to follow regulations which insists actual money is kept in an account for the coin. This allows tokenized FIAT to be traded across platforms with the guarantee (I use that term loosely) that you can trade your token in for a dollar at anytime.

We should have the option of using regulated and deregulated currencies and then evaluating the risk associated with each.

First thing is bitcoin is not digital gold and its just a currency and also why do we compare anything with digital dollar already the real mode of dollar exists even people trade on dollar in forex . I think bitcoin has to be mentioned and will be called as original crypto currency .

The reason why I refer to Bitcoin as digital gold is...
- It's the oldest crypto. Gold (& silver) is the oldest money still carrying value.
- It's so highly valued that only tiny fractions would be needed for everyday purchases. Same with gold.
- It's currently not suitable for quick transactions due to the time needed for validation. If you were to buy groceries with gold, validation would make it unpractical.
I know very well that BTC is just one among many currencies, but it does hold a dominant position.

The reference to digital dollar is just a way to summarize a crypto that would work well for quick everyday transactions.

China seems interested in combining Fiat and crypto and I thing Russia has also shown interest in blockchain technology.
India I believe recently legalized BTC, but I haven't looked into the specifics. Considering the stunt they pulled with banning the highest denominated bills, they might be interested in blockchain technology since it would advance the "cashless society".
(Interesting counterweight are the U.S. states that are making precious metals legal tender.)

RandomEvent> Remember how the U.S. used to be on a gold standard. You used to be able to trade your dollarbill in for gold until one day they decided you couldn't.

The original question remains, what would be needed for a cryptocurrency to gain acceptance, stability and usage in peoples daily lives?
Are there any currencies that could pull this off today? That is, any that has the technology needed...

Cryptos will become the doorway to a full corporate take over and rebranding of the monetary system to appease society.  The perfect plan. In 20 years time we will have a series of well established corporate currencies as they all move to the blockchain and worship them like football teams. 

USDT is already digital  dpllar but I wouldnt buy that stuff anyway.. Its not as widely accepted

i suggest you to in the real world and find these shops (grocery store or coffee shop or whatever) that are accepting bitcoin. and then ask them two questions.
1. do they require confirmation before we can leave with the goods
2. have you ever been scammed by someone paying with bitcoin

the answer to both these questions are no.
it may surprise you but double spend is not easy and also figuring out the risk of a double spend is a piece of cake. and the computer running a wallet application in front of the cashier can tell him/her in about 5 seconds.

I would say Litecoin is the best candidate of being a true global cryptocurrency (USD version of a Crypto). It has huge capacity, its a true cryptocurrency (not a dapp or ico platform), it has antispam tech inbuilt (so no one can spam it like they did on Bitcoin), it can scale on a near infinite scale, the west and the east love it, its stable (unless its climbing in value),  Litecoin is ready to go!  All it needs now is more adoption.

No, if blockchain can replace old system payment and currency, the International Bank will creating a coin with technology from Blockchain and distributed to the global, because they need control the value and create stability. I think this is best choice for use blockchain for people all the world

Agree with this one, bitcoin need more time to become more famous and used in various sectors of economics, but confirmation time maybe the main problem if we compare to cash transaction which is instant.
There is no any cryptocurrency will ever replace dollar or state as "digital dollar", as dollar already has it own digital obviously. Fiat currency has designed perfectly, it has digital form issued by banks and third party platforms, people use it everyday through credit cards or something similar.

I am pretty sure that's what they are working on right now since Bitcoin is getting a large number of people interested in paying for things electronically.

If Bitcoin gets up to a higher price then there would be a bunch of Government officials that will want to use that electronic payment system that Bitcoin has because they can literally build their own currency and have free virtual money that they can receive physical money from.

We can say that bitcoin has similarities with gold. For example, as gold used to be the best guarantee of money, bitcoin is like a guarantee of cryptocurrencies. Another thing is that btc doesn't suffer from inflation and the same holds for gold. As for dollar, we may speak only of the past when dollar was backed up by gold. Analogically, if btc is gold than litecoin would be the dollar, because it operated on the same platform.

Bitcoin does not really need to be a Digital Dollar in order for it to go against the currencies that were built from the Government since there is a large quantity of people that are using it to purchase things already. The more that people use Bitcoin, the easier it gets for Bitcoin to go against regular currencies because it’s a very new product and the Government will want to begin playing with it as well.

BITCOIN classic - Gold
BITCOIN segwit - Dollar

Won't be talking about everything you said. Just few things that got my attention.
You send bitcoin from one wallet to another wallet which is situated on a different part of world, it just takes less than few seconds for the receiver to receive the coins. With just few clicks, nothing could be more simpler. It's only the confirmation that takes time currently which can be avoided by paying higher fee. A solution is about to come soon!

No cap = high supply = less value.

Gold is used as a form of storing wealth. Bitcoin is also used by some people to store their wealth, so it can be equivalent to digital gold.

So basically, "digital dollars" will be some kind of crypto currencies that are optimized for micro payments with no fees or a really small fees (just like dollars) so that I don't think there is any kind of coin like that in this moment./

When do bitcoin gained the title of being a digital gold? I cant really think of that this thing can be considered knowing that gold do have somehow a strong price it not too volatile unlike on bitcoin. If we are talking about US digital dollar then the thing comes to my mind if USDT and next is DigiByte. Seeing on peoples choices here we do have different views on this one.