Bitcoin Forum

Seems to me that the next key step for bitcoin is true mass adoption. The day my dad uses it to buy something is the day I know we've made it.

Problem is if everyone is holding rather than spending, I am not sure how we ever get there. I know that there are many people spending, but the main game is still buy and hold expecting profits through price appreciation. My question is is this changing now that the price feels like it is settling down a bit? Does anyone have the stats?

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I tend to spend a lot of mine at TigerDirect.  I always keep a reserve though.

I'm hoarding TO spend, unless I think there's a really good deal somewhere. Then I'll buy.

But I am holding my BTC to spend on items that cost more, not trinkets or anything, but things that require big investments.

Now, I am also holding in hopes the value will increase, as this would allow for less BTC to purchase said items.

I'll start circulating coins soon, however.

This has been talked many times. Many people tend to hoard due to the deflation character.

Meanwhile, every time I turn around, some douchefuck does a market sell of thousands of BTC on Bitstamp with massive slippage, which triggers bots to sell, and BTC is never able to deflate, only tank. Who in their right mind would spend BTC when it's worth less than when they acquired it?

I think the deflationary characteristics are an effect of hoarding rather than a cause (or worse still it's a loop). the other question is do any retailers price their stuff in bitcoin (as in truly price, not adjust each day as the BTC price changes)? This would potentially change things.

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I would only start to spend when bitcoin reaches over $1000. I feel like if I spent it now it would just be a waste of money.

I just bough a new laptop from dell yesterday

Spending bitcoin will not help with adoption.

In order for bitcoin to go mainstream two things need to happen:

1. Bitcoin price needs to be higher, i.e. above 100k per coin

2. bitcoin needs to bring value to society. there needs to be some kind of killer app.

These two will be interrelated, the price will not go up without value of the technology and the killer app will automatically increase the price.

The worst thing you can do for bitcoin is spend it, because spending BTC increases velocity or even worse leads to immediately selling of BTC on the market. I.e. if you buy your dell pc with BTC you are effectively selling BTC.

In order for bitcoin to be a real currency it would have to have a massive size, I.e. a few trillion then it would be also able to replace other currencies, however to get there people need a reason to move out of existing money and into bitcoin. that will only happen with a true killer application.

You can do both. When you spend it purchase an equal amount to maintain your reserve. I have been doing it pretty frequently through gyft and a few other merchants.

The stats in this article only go through 2013, but I think this is the kind of thing you're looking for:

http://www.coindesk.com/mit-report-bitcoin-more-likely-spent-hoarded/

In 2013, the vast majority of bitcoins were spent within 24 hours of being bought.  If the pattern in that article has held, then there isn't much hoarding of purchased bitcoins going on.  Of course there are also mined coins...

I agree. I do pretty much the same except I tend to focus on merchants that accept bitcoin directly. Haven't used gyft a lot.

I'm mainly hoarding for now, won't start buying stuff with them again until BTC price > $900.

I bought it when it was $430 so I would spend it when it actually doubles in value and then I would look for stuff I can actually buy using btc, which is always a bit hard to find. I was looking for the dell laptops, coz I had a friend who was looking to buy it but as far as my research reveals it is only available for dell usa.

Still in hoarding mode as I see more alt coins will go down the sink not long from now.

The value in those years is growing exponentially, in my opinion buying things with bitcoins isn't a nice move,
you should use FIAT instead.
If today you can buy a car with btc, probably the next year you can buy 2 or 4 cars.

At the moment I mostly spending Bitcoin, not holding.
First, because I need money right now and can't wait
and second, in my opinion, nobody really knows what will happen with the price of Bitcoin in next period, if this price will rise or not.

Short term bitcoin price is unpredictable, but long term is much more likely to go upward because the adoption is still at its early stage.

been accumulating since 2011 - been spending since 2011

i probably buy ~10% of things with bitcoin now.

1 - Attract people saying bitcoin price increased by 1 million percent in the fast 4 years, and they can get millionaires if they have some bitcoins.

2 - Complain they don't spend bitcoin, and for this the price is not rising.


Seems some people are doing the wrong propaganda of bitcoin.

Maybe I'm misreading what you're saying, but for #2, hoarding will increase the price, not make it fall.  If you spend bitcoin, I think most merchants will convert it to fiat very quickly, which will lead to a drop in price.

If the merchant also sells his BTC as soon as he receives it, effectively there is no movement in BTC.  ;D

Still holding. Will hold for at least the next 2 years. After the next halving, I'll reconsider.

I spend all the time and NEVER "cash out", in fact  have spent about $1000 so far this week. Honestly, I don't know how hoarders understand the real power of bitcoin if they have never even used bitcoin. They spend all their time and profit trying to convert back and forth with fiat. Do they not realize that once you have bitcoin you have money? just spend the coin.

I use Bitcoin for digital purchases.
I can't really ship anything , because the shipping fees mostly outweigh the item cost.

My digital purchases end up being pretty small though.

So my answer would be hoarding , with only small purchases.
No trade for Fiat in either direction though.

I spent most of bitcoins on gambling, and i spent some on a single purchase, maybe i would be buying more in future if there are more shops accepting bitcoins, or maybe more people accepting it.

I try to use Bitcoin whenever possible to make online purchases, but I also immediately buy more to replace any that I spend.

This ^

If I'm not misreading OP, he said we need use our bitcoins to bring mass adoption.
Since mass adoption = bitcoin value skyrocketing, he's saying that we need spend bitcoin to make its value rise, at least in the long run, but bitcoin is sold by many people like the investiment with biggest return ever created(the HODL people from the speculation subforum), so there is no incentive to use it(= lose big money in the future).

If no one wants bitcoin, the price will plungue even if everyone just hold it.

I spend bitcoins but still not enough places to buy with bitcoins

Somebody needs to go out and buy a pizza or something with BTC.  ;D

This sounds a lot like the 'what comes first, the chicken or the egg' question.

There already is a killer app for bitcoin, or the potential of one, anyway.  It's remittances, or the possibility of them anyway.  Sending bitcoins to another country is orders of magnitutes cheaper than sending money via Western Union.  Even with price fluctuations, you usually come out ahead sending with bitcoin instead of dollars (for example).  The only real issue here is that I think not all countries have bitcoin -> fiat exchanges.  When that happens, or a large majority anyway, we should really do some serious marketing of bitcoins, for this is really the area in which it makes total sense for bitcoin to totally take over.

As far as the original question, I have a stash of bitcoins that I don't plan on spending.  I may trade them if I'm fairly certain I can make a profit (ie, sell high, buy low, and get more bitcoins without spending more fiat).  But otherwise, I'm holding these with the hope that bitcoin will continue to appreciate.

That said, I'm seriously thinking of starting a bitcoin-based business, and if it's successful, those bitcoins I would definitely spend.  Aside from that, the only time I'd spend bitcoins are in a time where I'm buying stuff off a place like bitcoinstore.com where the price is enough lower than it justifies the bit of a hassle of buying bitcoins over just buying stuff on Amazon.  So far, there's only really one thing I want where I'm planning on doing that, a 16 GB RAM chip that was $20+ cheaper on bitcoinstore.com than Amazon.  While I can't speak for everyone, that kind of price difference definitely justifies buying a bit more bitcoins to me.

If the price stabilizes, there will be an opportunity cost associated with holding bitcoins.
This could prompt people to move out of bitcoins, and get interest on their money from banks.

Of course, if we are able to deposit our BTC holdings with banks and earn interest on that, then there would be no opportunity cost associated with holding bitcoins.

Of course, the good thing here is that the opposite of this is also true.  If the price stabilizes, there won't be a cost of spending bitcoins.  Right now, the reason a lot of people are hoarding is that, over the long haul, bitcoin has consistently gone up, rather substantially.  If you have a choice of spending two currencies: one that goes down in value consistently, and another that is highly volatile, but also goes up rather rapidly, which would you spend?  I'd spend the one that goes down, and I think that's why a lot of people hoard, because obviously, they want their bitcoins to become more valuable.

I am holding most of my coins, but I do spend some of them. Overall, I buy more bitcoin than I spend, is that hoarding? For me that it saving. I have to agree we need to spend more to keep the bitcoin economy going.

I feel that it is now investment BTC is correct. From a long-term perspective BTC
prospects for development is good. I am not willing to spend some btc
Most of the people are hoarding BTC! The BTC expenditure of only a small part!
Buy a pizza is an exception :D :D

I usually pay for items I buy with my credit card. And oh well, guess why. Last time I bought something small with bitcoin the price was ~200$. And it was on a rally at the time so I thaught it could be down on the very next day. I spent most of the coins I had at the time to games only to see the price rise to 1000$ in the same year. Thankfully this somewhat small loss taught me to not use my hard earned bitcoin for unwise purchases. Besides that, I've never bought bitcoins with FIAT, I've earned everything I have through mining and freelancing. So there is no need for me to spend my coins unless I trade altcoins.

Hmmmm, I see.  That is an interesting conundrum.  I'm curious...I've seen many people say that mass adoption => bitcoin value skyrocketing.  I'm not saying that I necessarily disagree, but I don't fully understand the reasoning behind that.  Could you please explain?

I'd say that the value would skyrocket because people would start buying BTC eagerly, at a bit more than it's price (Value at the time is $600, they offer $601, goes up from there), since they think that they can buy anonymously.

It's common with stocks, a stock everyone wants is $10, people offer $11 to get it first, etc.

That's true for investing, but doesn't mass adoption mean that everyone is using (i.e., buying and spending)?  If that's the case, then we're talking about a lot of people spending what they buy very soon after they buy, which should be relatively price neutral.

Seconded, the Parent Adoption will really be a sign of success.

The day my Dad sends me a Motley Fools article about it I'll know we've made it.

it all depends on how we view bitcoin, if we assume bitcoin as a means of payment it will be better if bitcoin dibelankan to be spent, whereas if bitcoin is considered as something that will have a high value, bitcoin better then backfilled with the expectation value of bitcoin will be much more better future...  ::)

Hoarding is not bad, cut that bullshit please.

Whenever I want to buy something, I check if I can pay with bitcoin in that company or similar, but...

...I am not going to spend my bitcoins left and right only because some dude on the webs want the statistics of bitcoin transaction per day bumped.

+1

When people like it, it is "saving".  When people don't like it, it is "hoarding". 

When someone wants "saving" the "consumer culture" is attacked and people need to spend less; when they want spending, it is "hoarding", people have bought too much and need to do something else with it.

Prices are going to hit $330 this autumn, then $305 ultimately before attemps to reach old higher levels can be made. So sold all my coin.

Someone in China is going to know better then us when BTC will rise or fall as they hold so much productive capacity and spare savings?     Speculation alone wont determine a market long term, both 300 and 1300 is possible but I dont think USA or Europe will be why it moves alot

I spend BTC when I need something and it does something more useful then keeping cash based on hope.   I hold some 'stock' which pay btc and I'd buy more if I thought their business would increase.  People have to look at both expenditure and earnings as it depends why people are putting cash in BTC.  
I expect that would result in a bull run and when its that common, the standard advice is to sell.   I'd swap some to gold probably and anything unpopular.     When your cab driver starts giving you advice on something, its overdone and the trend is likely soon to end

Somewhat legit, even tho hoarders only hoard bitcoin because of its continually increasing value, derived from widespread adoption and ever increasing "use" value.

I have imposed myself to spend no more than 10% of my btc incomes, the rest is in the hodling cold wallet.

I spend it when there are good opportunities to do so
An example was the newegg promo where my coins were given a 20-30% boost from the market value when I used them to purchase products on newegg
Those type of deals offer good returns and sweet deals to get some swag at an effective discount :)

I have spent to buy a motherboard.

cr1776 is spot on here.  I live in the USA where people, on average, have a terrible savings rate.  Of course, the dollar itself discourages savings through inflation, if you toss your money in a bank account where it'll earn maybe 1 - 2% at best, you won't even be keeping up with inflation.  Obviously, the opposite is happening with bitcoin, though it is much more volatile than the dollar, the long term trend has been consistently upward. 

I consider the saving trend with bitcoin to be an absolute net positive.  Would I spend my bitcoins?  Yes and no.  I'd have to see an attractive deal to justify spending bitcoins personally, and if I did, I'd buy more and spend the new ones rather than saving my investment stash of bitcoins.

Bitcoins should be holded, not spent, expecially in this period.

I spend them when I need to, mostly digital purchases (liek games). It's very convenient to have part of your savings in something that tangible, so you can spend it anytime.

If BTC is useless, it is worthless.