Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin was created to be a universal currency and lightning makes it possible to make completely P2P micro-transactions for a few pennies paid in fees.

Now let's assume for the sake of this poll that you could now spend your bitcoin that is under your control on your wallet, anywhere, by just tapping your bitcoin wallet (hardware or mobile) against an existing credit card machine and you are able to pay with bitcoin over lightning.

What I'm trying to understand and defend against a lot of the mass skeptics is this exact question - Would you use bitcoin as a currency if it was possible?

I believe, irrespective of the value, anybody that held bitcoin before 2017 would be in a place to spend it.

I spend a fair bit of BTC. I tend to use it to buy items that'll improve my life. That way I won't be sad if the price ever reaches squillions of dollars as I got plenty of good use from whatever I bought.

Unless I had no alternative, and I do, I wouldn't spend it on consumables like food, coffee, fuel. That stuff eventually comes out of my arse, urethra or exhaust pipe never to be seen again, though it was certainly useful at the time.

The key to spending is earning in BTC. And those who bought for a lot less have earned more buying power in a sense too. If you've got it coming in then you'll be more inclined to spend it. If you've laid out your dollars in the hope of doing well, and are yet to, and underwent all that hassle to obtain it then you'll be far less willing to spend. You'll want to hoard.

A lot of attitudes and circumstances will need to change for it to see regular use as a currency. We're nowhere near it now. We may never be.

The problem is though, why? Unless you have a job or a stable income that pays in BTC, there is really no point to make micro-transactions using the lightning network, because you'll need to spend your fiat currency to buy BTC, and then use your purchased BTC to buy an item, when it would be easier for the vendor to accept fiat, so it's just a waste of time to go through that process (even if we are pretending there is no fee).

Bitcoin will likely never be mainstream and used to buy consumables because tap and pay is just easier and cheaper to use. BTC is probably better to be spent on items that are worth a bit, on sites like Amazon and G2a.

For crypto to be used in everyday transactions, the blockchain needs to be able to confirm transactions in seconds and also needs to have very low fees.

from the moment bitcoin was out and then ethereum huge hype *SHADOW* was all over the web  while all of them cannot scale to mass adaption and only experts know this from the beginning and the people behind bitcoin also said this, that there will be problem with scaling,miners, and other very important things with the chain.

lighting network dont solve the scaling problem its second layer , read about it...

top experts and anonymous people together try to slove this as fast as possible, the same problem was exist with scalling the internet in the beginning...but it sloved.

what will crash the fiat money is mass adaption and scaling, btc and ethereum hold around 7-25 max tps per second. still you can buy car or home but scaling its the key to adaption and adaption lead to surge the price of crypto and crash the fiat money.

mit for example regularly communicate with anonymous  people to find a way.

the question is which protocol will solve this??

I don't believe spending bitcoin for small purchases will ever happen. Bitcoin is settling into SoV narrative. It's an important driver for cryptocurrency adoption. Bitcoin will be used for settling SoV type of transactions. For example, I save money to buy real estate in Bitcoin. When I have enough and decide to buy a house, I'd convert my bitcoin into real estate. It encourages HODL behavior. Bitcoin exists because it has inflation nemesis, fiat currencies. If Bitcoin ever gobbled up all of the world money, we'd be in the same dark place as inflationary fiat system. In some sense, Bitcoin is as evil as fiat.

I think the monetary system will consist 2 contradictory forces: deflationary and inflationary.

Disclaimer: I'm working on a digital inflationary crypto (https://bitflate.github.io/post/2019/04/14/bitflate-cryptocurrency-with-constant-inflation.html).

this is one of those questions that can be answered by another question, let's suppose the person had $1000, and took that $1000 and bought bitcoin, when that person bought bitcoin with his $1000 the price was $10,000. Months later this person sees the bitcoin price being at $30,000. this person will be very profitable... will this person take some of his bitcoin to buy a coffee and if this person can pay with fiat that does not increase over the long term? I very much doubt that this person will take your bitcoin to buy coffee. But at the same time we can have a scenario where the person is a miner, so that person will have no problem taking some of their bitcoin to buy coffee

.."if it was possible"... then why not? Besides, I already using it at some of the services.

But for a cup of coffee, how much the cost of it we are talking here? Is using and paying with BTC does make sense here or just pay it instead with some few bucks on our pocket which is for me way faster and convenient.

Will treat it as an alternative payment since on the other hand, I have other payment sources e.g fiat salary, credit cards. As much as possible, I will consider paying with crypto only if I'm run out of options.

Hmm right. What do you reckon is the rationale behind crypto debit cards? For example, coinbase probably wouldn't launch such a thing if there wasn't a large enough user base for it, or not?

I'm sure there are a decent amount of spenders out there. By this point there'll be a lot of people sitting on free money. Spending free money feels jolly nice.

It's not the driver or cornerstone of this whole thing though, it's a byproduct of a reasonable size. And for some it may be the only significant amount of money they have so they may have no alternative but to liquidate some.

I quite often do already spend my coins, both on and off chain. I'm not really that bothered by the $0.50-$1 on chain fees. I'm used to pay way more in fees than that through PayPal for purchases. An advantage is that as long as you include a decent enough fee, the payment processors the merchants use tend to accept them without a single confirmation, which means it's an instant payment on my side.

Lightning actually settles the transaction instantly and that at a fee rate of 1-5 satoshis on average depending on the number of hops.

When it comes to spending it's important to replace every satoshi that you have spent. I know it might not be the most convenient thing to do, but it's a great way to not lose out on future gains.

It depends on the timing - spending during the bear market hurts, because soon afterwards you'll start regretting it, thinking "those coins are worth 4-5 times more now". Spending in the bull run can also hurt, when in one week the price is already 20% up. I currently want to buy a few things, but I wait for Bitcoin to go back to at least $14k.

Coffee is a small purchase, so the effects that I described would only amount of a couple of $$ of potential value lost, but it can quickly add up if we are talking about buying coffee every day. So, to me this perma-bullishness definitely makes Bitcoin less attractive as a currency to spend. Maybe in 5-10 years when the market will stabilize, I'll be buying coffees with no regrets via Lightning Network.

In this situation, wouldn't you want to spend your current profits on a purchase and purchase BTC to cover up the amount you spent? Or are you more interested in HODL-ing?

I convert most of my fiat into BTC regardless, and often times when I want to make a bigger purchase, I have to sell some BTC to get money. So, I can't buyback coins that I spend like many people advice, and it affects my spending habits. I still do spend Bitcoin, because all these years without buying anything for myself would suck, but I'm being very conservative with it.

That is the very purpose of Bitcoin, to become the first digital currency accepted by the whole world. Wherein in every day of our lives, instead of using cash for buying stuff, we use Bitcoin. I cannot wait to see that to happen. Here in our country, many people prefer now to use a credit card or debit card instead of paying in cash because it's more convenient and safe to bring.

It doesn't matter what the original purpose was. What counts is what the collective decides it's going to be. At the moment it's not a currency. Maybe we'll move towards it but it's far from being in the bag. The most likely is still gold 2.0 but things could pivot again.

I would love to see more places where I can spend Bitcoin without having to deal with the main-chain. It's quite sad to see how far away we have moved from the payment aspect because of how small the blocks are.

Especially during a time where the price has gone up considerably, it would motivate me more to spend Bitcoin because it exempts me from paying tax in a legal manner. Much better than paying almost 30% in tax over your gains.

That being said, the motivation to spend coins quickly vanishes the moment we enter a bear market, which means that spending Bitcoin for most people is kinda a seasonal thing.

That's the key question: If the Bitcoin evolves into a circular one, where spenders earn most Bitcoins they have (and do not buy them at exchanges), then - and only then - Bitcoin can also evolve into a currency.

LN can be a crucial element here: Lightning is a tool which is able to facilitate some purchases, and once it becomes established there could be a "domino effect", encouraging spending in a very similar way to what prepaid cards achieve. The coins you have locked one time on LN, are coins you'll be willing to spend eventually. Thus, businesses for the first time have a tool to measure the potential of the "Bitcoin as a currency"-economy. If this economy is growing, then there will be more businesses trying to enter that market, which means more people earn their money in BTC. And so on - the money could start to really circulate, instead of being mainly bought and sold at exchanges.

No currency ever gets its true value without users or holders spending them. I have been living on bitcoin, I hardly go to my bookshop these days because of low patronage. So I have been relying on profit from bitcoin, majorly gotten through trading. I will be glad if I am able to spend my bitcoin in buying just anything.

Its the difference of knowing and not knowing Austrian economics. Once you read how deflationary economy works, you will abandon your project and join Bitcoin.

Sorry to crash your illusions, but the world is full of inflationary currencies, precisely because of the dominant Chicago school dogma, there are even people scared of deflation simply because they don't know better.

The less we want is yet another inflationary coin, constant or not. That is one of the main fails of Ethereum.

You don't know this but I'm a constant user of bitcoin for small purchases, they are not done directly in bitcoin at the shops because its impossible in my country, but i exchange the bare minimum into fiat before going out. I know perfectly well in an ideal world this last step of exchanging into fiat would disappear completely, and i cannot be more happy for that day to come.

Why is that? Because my only source of income is in Bitcoin, no bitcoin no food. Why no change large amount into fiat? Because my country's fiat is the worst of the world, keep it one day and tomorrow has half its purchasing power, you want to get rid of it asap, and hold as little as possible. To me its in the way, but there is still a State and their impositions in the way (not to mention that same State ruined everyone's lives when going hyperinflation, because they can make coins out of thin air whenever they want. This is something Bitcoin erases, something your project doesn't do.

This is why Bitcoin has value, and your project doesn't. Please don't bother bringing more inflationary altcoins, the few that already exist are bad enough.

Bitcoin has already chose a path that enables small purchases, its an off the chain solution called Lightning Network. For me this is more convenient than hitting localbitcoins, so yes, I'd love to use it at shops that way. Not very sure how a light LN wallet would work, but I'm waiting for Electrum to add LN which they are actually doing.

This is a good post and asks a lot of the important questions that we need to consider if BTC was to truly become mainstream.

One of the main issues, why this will likely not happen, is the concept and premise bitcoin's blockchain was built on. Bitcoin was meant to replace the overnight wire transfers and be an easy way to send money overseas and this was combined with the purpose to be something to rival the centralized system of banks. Bitcoin was never made to be used to buy a coffee on your morning commute - there are other projects/coins that are purposely made to do this. Pundi X is a good example of a micropayments system and its blockchain is developed around the idea of using their tokens to pay for small items.

I will spend it. I have no doubt about Bitcoin designed primarily as a currency. If fees are going to reduced to a reasonable amount and transaction confirmation time is also increased to almost instantaneous, I am very much positive that Bitcoin will rise more as a currency rather than as an asset. As a matter of fact, that is the main concern of a lot of people why they choose not to spend their BTC. A fee for a cup of coffee is worth another cup. That is unreasonable.

The masses want to save and preserve their buying power. That's the most likely job Bitcoin ends up with in its present form if it becomes big enough and relatively stable enough. Hundreds of millions have exposure to stock markets. You can't use stocks for payments either.

I have been using Bitcoin already for payments. All of them online payments and purchases. Admittedly, there are currently limited uses, but we are definitely moving forward one step at a time. For now, only few business establishments are accepting Bitcoin payments. Few people are also using Bitcoin to buy stuff. Nevertheless, it is existing already. So how much more if the fees are already low and the transactions very fast? Certainly, that would bring Bitcoin spending to a whole new level.

Simple for me. I use Bitcoin even without it being instant, but Bitpay lets me just process the payment even with 0 confirmation as long as the fee is enough. So the users don't care about instant or not, this is the merchant who has to answer the question, don't you think?

I would since I have a lot of saved up coins and being able to spend freely would definitely move the price up by a LOT, which would be another incentive to spend. I had Bitcoins when they were worth less than 1/4 of their current price and I really could use some premium treatment. At the moment I'm spending just a little on Amazon but that's it. I'd prefer be able to go to a car dealership or eat at a restaurant and not worry about exchange rates and fees. When that happens I'll start spending for real, but until then it's HODL time :P

I remember buying a beer in Berlin that cost 5 euros, during the 2017 peak. The tx fee on that was over 30 euros. I did it to make a statement, though, as not many places accept Bitcoin for payments.

In principle I would be ready to spend it and now if all accepted it.But since in my country, many do not even know what a cryptocurrency is, it is very difficult to implement.But there is also a serious problem in the slow speed of transactions. Not every store will want to wait for payment too long.Therefore, most likely bitcoin is not suitable for micropayments.

I would not mind to spend the funds at all. Where i now can spend pennies online on a fast manner i would do the same at a store.

Wiring over the lightning network takes a few seconds and doesnt has the long confirmation times Bitcoin has.

Yes, I'll use for sure
It's very convenient to use the smartphone for example, with cryptos and pay with you balance of BTC

I have BTC as investment, but I can use as a currency to, it's easy to have both, just like fiat

Lightning Network is built to help instantly send/receive Bitcoins so by that, transaction fees on transferring are reduced. So I don't think it would be burdensome to use Bitcoin for payment.

Even if they say they will, I believe most of the HODLERS will never "waste" their Bitcoins to buy coffee, with, or without Lightning because of the opportunity costs. Bitcoin's strength as a store of value, is also its weakness for adoption.

They might do it once. But don't hope that they will regularly use Bitcoin instead of cash or credit cards.

I understand, how about the situation with people that had bitcoin before mid-2017. For example you have 300% in profits, would you be comfortable spending some portion of that on a purchase while simultaneously purchasing that same amount of BTC so that your net bitcoin holdings don't diminish?

If HODL-ing is the primary mentality of even half of bitcoin holders, what possible incentive does bitcoin even present for usage by the common man?

Using it as a payment method was the sole purpose of Bitcoin upon creation. But the along the line, many people deviated from that motion to holding till when the price is pumped to sell. I have been using my Bitcoin to pay for services online, which for me have been easier than credit cards. From paying for domains to paying for personal services, so for me it won't change. Truth is, even with lightening, many hodlers will not spend it on services and goods but rather hodl.

Though, i still doubt the possibility of having Bitcoin as a universal currency and still remaining 'decentralized'. For Bitcoin to become that sort of currency it will need more modifications from the authorities. Then, I doubt if many might still want to own it not use it since it might loss the quality of been decentralized.

I agree with you and also do they same. I spend some of my earnings when btc is doing well so that I know no matter how bitcoin does I rode some of the high waves and bought some nice things. Without it I would not have the things I have. I would not be able to take my family out as much and all the rest.

I use it regularly though. As I do any other currency. In fact I make more crypto transactions then banking transactions. I only ever use the bank if the people I buy from don't use crypto and even then I still ask them.

nice thought, but it'll still hurt lol. i try not to think too much about all the stupid stuff i spent my bitcoins on back in 2014-15. if i'd only known i was spending my coins at the bottom! that's why i never spend coins deep into a downtrend anymore.

it's still a painful subject. :P

This appears to be what a lot of bitcoin holders think. In this kind of situation, would you be comfortable spending it if the amount of BTC you spent is replenished by an immediate BTC purchase, such that your net holdings remains the same?

How can one incentivize a new, average person to begin using BTC if the only reason that people buy it is with the hope that the fiat value will go up?

Why not? I pay for few things once in a while with bitcoin.
I normally just let my Bitcoin increase in price when I have nothing to spend it on.  Nothing stops me when I need to spend my coins,not even the possibility of price going up soon.

Bitcoins constantly move in and out of millions of wallets, If people don't really spend Bitcoin because of the expectation that price will increase in the future, then things would be a bit stagnant with the wallets.

Ask the owners of online marketplaces that accept Bitcoin whether people buy with bitcoin or not, you will be surprised by the answer I guess.

It's not easy considering Gresham's law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham%27s_law). As long as weaker currencies like fiat money ("bad money") are widely accepted, people will opt to hoard away "good money" like bitcoins.

If/when Bitcoin achieves a sustainable economy where there is no need for fiat inflows and outflows -- meaning supply chains and payrolls are covered in bitcoins -- this can change. If people are getting paid in bitcoins, they will feel more comfortable spending them. As it stands, spending bitcoins and rebuying them later could entail lost bitcoins because of conversion/exchange fees and rising price. For most people, it makes more sense just to hoard their coins and spend fiat money on consumer goods instead.

Absolutely, but this is kind of a chicken and egg problem. To drive out volatility/"bad money", adoption must be rampant. For adoption, volatility needs to be driven out.

There's got to be some kind of gradual, seamless transition from good and bad money co-existing to one being the dominant driver.

Interesting perspective. I do however wonder how long this will be a valid metric with how LN will eventually take over a lot use cases of the main-chain where it's still speculation that is the driving force behind this market.

Another thing is that you can't exactly know what people are doing on LN because it's not as transparent as the main-chain is, which I'm sure a lot of people (including myself) here would consider an extremely bullish development.

Overall, the volatile nature and the insane up side of Bitcoin are more of an obstacle in my opinion. Not many dare to accept even a portion of their wage in Bitcoin if you discard the few geeks working for crypto companies.

Right, but the semantics of a stock are different and their intended use case is for buying power. Bitcoin was created with different fundamental semantics. If it's only exposure is to save and preserve buying power, there would be no need for it to exist. But of course, it's fundamentals are different.

I have been using Bitcoin to pay for my bills ever since I have a chance to own it so, definitely I will pay Bitcoin for my cup of coffee regardless of the availability of lightning network.  I am one of the believer that Bitcoin should be used and spent and not hoard it.

At first I want to mention that if I have option to pay with my card, then why not? They even offer me some cashbacks in various places, it's pretty easy, just take card from pocket, put it on terminal and that's all, transaction is done.
Btw if there is option of bitcoin and I forgot to fill my bank's account or don't have money on that at the moment but have some bitcoins, then I would pay with it. Don't take it wrongly but bitcoin payments isn't as comfortable as payments made by credit card. But if we talk about high transactions, of course I'll use bitcoin because it's fast and cheap, especially with lightning network.

Bitcoin shouldn't be seen as a mainstream payment currency though. The TX fees and confirmations are horrible compared to other options. What's the point of using my BTC and paying a 1 dollar fee on a 5 dollar coffee, and then making the merchant wait 20 minutes for the money to be verified, when I can just tap my card and not deal with all these issues. BTC will never become a viable option for microtransactions, especially in real life because it was never built for that purpose.

This is accurate, but it is much safer to wait for a confirmation, and no matter how small the fee is, why choose an option that you have to pay for when other payment methods exist (fiat, cash)?

I personally only consider using BTC for online transactions (mostly electronics), as there are quite a lot of stores that accept BTC online, and spending 50 cents per 200 dollars is way more afforable then spending 50 cents per 5 dollars.

We can hope for that, but honestly, it's impossible to know what the transition from state-backed to decentralized currencies would look like. We don't have precedent for it. Theoretically, it could be a turbulent event like USD hyperinflation that causes a fast and violent transition. If fiat currencies are crumbling, people will want to be paid in stronger currencies.

I'm not sure that volatility needs to be driven out for mass adoption. A volatile Bitcoin simply needs to be better than the alternatives.

I would just hold the most part as savings, and spent a little for daily things, such as coffee. So the answer was both, the top and bottom.

Actually lightning is only needed for minute things, any other item that could be bought online and confirmed in an hour or later, regular onchain bitcoin works.

O nice at least 68% of the people who voted on this have a clue that bitcoin was meant to be used as a p2p e-cash. (so far)

Gresham's law is fallacious, it simultaneously implies a free-market context, and a context where people are being forced to accept a certain type of money. Both cannot co-exist.

History tells a different story to Gresham:

• bad money is bullied into people's commerce
• bad money is popularized through deception i.e. bank notes
• good money is bullied out of people's hands

if an example exists where people willfully chose a poor form of money for any significant length of time, it was followed by an economic collapse that taught them about the effects of bad vs good money



And we do in fact have just clutch of exemplary precedents: in Venezuela and Argentina, Bitcoin has above average popularity. Even in less drastic cases such as Brazil, there is interest (someone in this thread was making exactly your point, BTC is less volatile proposition than the Brasilean Real).


In fact, Bitcoin's volatility has only seen holders make long term gains. When one considers the full extent to which the price of everyday goods or company shares are manipulated on financial markets (in a so-called capitalist system), it's tempting to say that Bitcoin is one of few (or even the only) traded item that has any real price discovery. So it only appears volatile because we are all too coddled by artificial prices.

And of course, as we know from experience with Bitcoin: what happens when someone manipulates prices? After some time, the market participants figure it out, and the price snaps back, in the opposite direction. Yay price stability.

Edit:

think about that final point.

Your food prices are heavily subsidized, and a part of those huge, growing government debts represent the price you are not paying for your food. That cannot last forever.

I rarely used my Bitcoin at all, in fact I am planning get more. Even if the price plunges it doesn't matter, I will still buy whenever I have the means. In terms of using it daily I don't agree with using it with just some coffee, It is the same as it was way back, the 10,000 BTC pizza, and maybe if someday it will be worth a fortunes millions or trillions then you would be probably the talk of the future people who spend their Bitcoin on a coffee. I would use my Bitcoin only if necessary like there's some grave illness that needs to be cured in the member of the family and there no more options to use.

no, but the problem with your question is that usually these questions focus on two ends of the things you can buy, it is either coffee or a Lamborghini! the thing is, there is a ton of other things in between. so no i won't use Lightning Network to pay for coffee ever. but i will use it for high frequency payments where i need to make a payment fast and safe and also receive it just as fast. for example when i trade specially in altcoin market that it is crypto versus crypto exchange, LN can be a fantastic tool if it gets adopted more.