Bitcoin Forum

I love Andreas Antonopoulos. Having said this, he recently said something in one episode of his podcast that surprised me. He was talking about living on Bitcoin and he said that he HODLs his BTC and basically spends only USD. He gets paid in all different fiat, and he spends this fiat for his daily life. When he can, he buys more BTC and HODL.

While I understand that many of us HODL, isn't this just wrong for the future of BTC. First, Satoshi created BTC as a currency. It is intended to be spent. Second, if everyone HODL and nobody spends BTC, isn't this becoming just a pyramid scheme?

Well not really, if you don't need to spend it then there's probably not much point. A spending culture has been prescribed into a lot of people already, spending on something that's you're going to use or need is fine it's when you start creating waste that's the problem...

You spend inflationary currency because its value drops.


A pyramid scheme like the stock market?

Most things, realistically, become problematic when people have a lot to sell and choose to sell them all at once. Shaving $5tr off the US stock market for example wasn't $5tr leaving thst was already there - it was too many people selling for the order book to absorb (and if people collaborate or have a lot already, they can manipulate the price of things quite well).

You kind of answered the question. He gets paid in fiat. So he spends it. If he has any left over he then buys BTC
Taking it all and converting it to BTC to turn around and spend it is pointless.
As for holding it. I get paid in fiat too. I buy stuff with it, I put some in a savings account, some in my IRA and with some I buy BTC
Some BTC gets spent, but not all.

I am part of a signature campaign that pays in BTC. Some gets spent as BTC other gets saved. If I don't need to spend something, be it fiat or BTC or whatever why should I spend it?
With your question, you are more or less saying he should spend for the sake of spending.

-Dave

I don't see anything wrong with it, what is he supposed to do since he is paid in fiat? Take that fiat and buy BTC, and then do KYC on some of 3rd party service to be able to use their card and pay for groceries, utility bills and all other everyday expenses? He wouldn't accomplish anything beside loosing percentage of that money through various fees.


Using that logic, anything you buy as an investment is pyramid scheme, which is not true of course.

(my wealth is in btc form)

i used to spend btc in like the 2012-2015 period. but when the economics changed of things like fee's and a reluctance to expand the transactions per block. many merchants stopped accepting btc direct.

bitcoin is now promoted as an asset not a common currency.
bitcoin is now promoted as a investment not a store for the unbanked

(pre-empt replies: no dont even twist this into an advert for another network that allows micro transactions. im talking about BITCOIN not altnet 11decimal co-signer requiring non blockchain network)

You got to understand something that happened to Andreas Antonopoulos a while ago to understand why he might have made the decision to hodl and not spend his coins. A few years ago Andreas Antonopoulos announced that he has almost no Bitcoins (BTC) and people roasted him on social media.

I can understand that he might now be hodling coins as a result of that... not that he has anything to proof to anyone... because he is wealthy in knowledge and experience and that is more than money can buy.  ;)

We do have our own choice of spending for the bitcoins that we hold. You can treat it as a currency or as a store of value. Andreas don't have to worry about his expenses if he's getting paid in different kinds of fiat. So in that case, that's an advantage to him and he don't have to touch his bitcoin holdings.

I would do the same if I have other source of income and gets paid in cash.

It's impossible that everyone is going to hold, there's a likely that many would hold but it's very impossible that you and me won't be spending some of our bitcoins. And no, it's not a pyramid scheme. Why it should?

A pyramid scheme doesn't have any volatility and the scheme they promote is continuous skyrocketing investment.

Did gold became any less valuable because it stopped being a currency? No, its value keeps growing and growing. As for Satoshi, he never said that the doesn't want Bitcoin to be a store of value, so how can we know if it's what he wanted or not? And Bitcoin does not belong to Satoshi, it belongs to Bitcoin community, so even if he became active tomorrow and started criticizing the current course, it wouldn't mean that we are moving in wrong direction.

Also, don't forget about Lightning, it will bring Bitcoin one step closer to being a competitive currency.

I think it's not that he didn't invest early on BTC, but he says that he got out of debt through his bitcoin holdings. And then after hearing this, individuals start donating to him and it went as high as $1.5 million, if I"m not mistaken.


Of course not only Andreas, but even majority here holds at least some bitcoins in their wallet for years now. And just spend their fiat, and if they don't have fiat in hand, maybe they can just withdraw some btc->fiat.

It's just that I keep thinking of the words of Satoshi on his white paper:

"A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution."

When was the last time you sent BTC to someone as electronic cash to pay for something (an item, a service, etc.)? I feel nowadays people just buy and HODL and the price keeps on going up only because less and less BTC are available on the market, being HODL by people.

That's what I was thinking while reading the OP's post. But you've only told half the story. The one who mocked him shamefully was Roger Ver (https://qz.com/1151233/andreas-antonopoulos-got-1-5-million-in-bitcoin-donations-after-roger-ver-bitshamed-him/), and what happened is that people massively sided with Andreas and gave him donations for about 100 Bitcoins. That was in 2017 when the price was over $17K.

After that it was easier for him to save Bitcoin, that's for sure.

I watched Andreas Antonopoulos frequently when I first got into bitcoin, he's one of my favorites.
I used to spend bitcoin all the time for anything I could, for now I prefer not to if I don't have to.

Every day of the year and the volume has been in the millions of dollars.
Here is an example of a small case I saw on reddit last night: Bitcoin and lightning have just done something fiat couldn’t for me (https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/qixa2x/bitcoin_and_lightning_have_just_done_something/)

If you hang out in a bar every day you will soon start thinking that everyone in the world is an alcoholic.

Stop hanging out in "speculation forums" where everyone only talks about price and how they HODL to become rich and start going into the real world and look around for merchants whether online and offline and see how adoption (as a currency) has grown so much in recent years.

Certainly Bitcoin was created to be spent, but since its price is constantly changing and increasing, no one will want to sell it at a low price, so the investor seeks to hold the Bitcoin until he gets the highest price, but this does not mean, of course, that he will never sell it, a time will come and he will definitely sell what he owns, what is the use From owning bitcoins in the first place if he is not going to sell it someday. This is the rule to sell at the highest price and then buy back at the low price and then hold and so on.

Well, it isn't exactly wrong, imo. Bitcoin adoption has been ongoing quite well these past few months but it's really not enough to actually be able to integrate it into our daily lives as a currency you know? Most stores that have adopted Bitcoin payments may or may not be the ones that we regularly use in our everyday lives (it's on a person by person basis) so it isn't exactly right that we force hodlers of Bitcoin to spend it since it is a currency you know? Adoption is still growing so I'd reckon usage of Bitcoin as currency would only grow sooner or later imo.

In response to the censorship going on here. We need a blockchain forum where no admin can delete posts.

PS.I buy BTC and shot half in projects.

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I love his smile. I have seen it happen.

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I've posted this before,but I have to post it again.
Bitcoin is "good money" because it doesn't lose it's value in the long term.
Fiat money are "bad money" because they lose their value in the long term.
The "bad money" always pushes out of circulation the "good money".This is called "Gresham's law".
Every smart person would spend his "bad money" and keep his "good money",because the "bad money" have to be spent,before they lose their value even more,and the "good money" have to be kept,because they preserve their value.
There's no situation in which everybody HODLs Bitcoin and nobody buys/sells Bitcoins.There will always be buyers and sellers of BTC.The HODLers are just waiting for a better price,but they will also sell.
Bitcoin can be used to buy goods and services,but if you have both fiat and BTC the smart decision is to spend your fiat and keep your BTC.Andreas is a smart guy.

I think most people took for granted the reason on why BTC was created. The power and innovation brought about by the blockchain technology is the star of the show as it removes the traditional third-party consensus in transactions. Bitcoin, on the other hand, is the currency which is used in circulation through the blockchain.

But if you were in his shoes, you would probably see BTC as a form of investment due to its trend that its price go higher as years passed by. Personally, I see BTC as an opportunity for long-term HODLing and as a short-term investment.

The way you use Bitcoins is almost completely dependent on you, if you do decide to Hold or if you decide to use it as a currency, it's all your decision and therefore at the end of the day if the person is holding it, it's not making it a pyramid scheme, the person is just investing like any other form of investments, when you hold stocks, when you hold gold, it's still the same isn't it now? Therefore we cannot really put the blame on bitcoins now. What we do have to see is how living on Bitcoins can be seen from different angles, some people can use fiat while keeping bitcoins as an investments and there is this family living on Bitcoins, travelling using bitcoins ( you can read about it here :  https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/08/11/bitcoin-family-hides-bitcoin-ethereum-and-litecoin-in-secret-vaults.html (https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/08/11/bitcoin-family-hides-bitcoin-ethereum-and-litecoin-in-secret-vaults.html) )
Therefore there is not one right answer, it's how you decide to live your life, which I do believe is extremely personal and is not wrong. As long as they are not using Bitcoin for all the wrong reasons and for the illegal things, I do think it's more or so good.

I think people who holds crypto (not only BTC), are holding BTC for investment instead of using it as a transaction money because people are get a lot of profit from holding it for a long time. Everything that could brings profit for the people, people will use it as their income and ignored the purpose of the things was made.


It's the same like stock markets when the stock value increasing each time if the demand of the stock is increasing also. So we could say it as a pyramid scheme because it's totally different. The value of BTC in the market is real, not manipulated value.

I spend BTC almost on a daily basis, but I tend to agree that the majority of people just use BTC as an investment and not as a currency.

There is a lot of talk on this forum and other sites like Reddit and Twitter about growing bitcoin adoption, about people looking for new places to spend their bitcoin, about it becoming a global payment solution and replacing banks and credit cards and PayPal and so on. And yet, the majority of people who talk about these kinds of things never actually spend their bitcoin on goods or services, or seek out merchants which accept bitcoin to support them, or talk to merchants who don't about starting to accept bitcoin.

Bitcoin was built to be a currency. If you want to buy and hold it as an investment, then that's your right - anyone is free to use bitcoin in any way they choose. But if no one in the world ever used it as a currency, then it has no point and no value.

I think it all depends on our beliefs and our respective needs because some of us have more income from the crypto world so buy bitcoin and then hold until we get more profit and then just sell it, and nowadays many investors are holding because they believe the value of bitcoin will be higher for the foreseeable future, And this is not classified as a pyramid scheme because it is private and does not depend on others.

I can see why you've described it like that, but since we're dealing with a currency that's quite volatile and not something that would provide various fixed amounts for investing certain amounts, then you shouldn't be considering it as a pyramid scheme!

I do that regularly and I'm sure I'm not the only one ;)

Small correction: Some of the donations came when BTCitcoin was at "$12-$17k (https://theatlas.com/charts/B1X3o1d-f)".

I think that for every bitcoin holder, there comes a moment when he is ready to spend it or exchange it for fiat. It's all about the goal and value that the person himself determines for himself. Also, everything depends on the material condition of a person. I don't think you can compare the holder of their wealthier countries with the less wealthy countries.
Everything matters. Exactly like the awareness of Bitcoin itself. Someone elevates it to the ranks of religion, and someone just spends it as needed.
As for me personally, I spend when I have the urge to spend.

I think not all people will hold their bitcoin and not sell it when the price increases so high. Besides that, bitcoin is not yet fully adopted in all countries and many contradictions about using bitcoin in many countries.

If you check on the exchanges, many traders buy and sell bitcoin because they want to make a profit in fiat and send their profit into their bank accounts. Maybe in this way, bitcoin can be an investment or a commodity in the digital world so people can use bitcoin to trade and make money. It will be almost the same as the stock in the stock trading.

I feel like this is the perfect way to explain how much I hate fiat money system and why Bitcoin is a better alternative. Bitcoin is not just a currency but a digital ledger for trust. In a fiat money system, governments have the power to print money at will, and destroy or devalue it whenever they want.

This is what has happened in Zimbabwe and Venezuela, as well as in my former country, Yugoslavia, as the governments have printed more money to fund their corruption and failed economic policies.

It may sound strange, but a lot has changed since Satoshi introduced Bitcoin to the world, and the idea of BTC being a currency is something that is fading, and not just because many complain that their fees are too high, but also because it is promoted by all those influential players in the crypto world who buy BTC as a long-term investment. 

Personally, I don't think it leads in the right direction, because sooner or later most of the BTC will end up in the hands of those who will have the most money - and it will happen in a completely natural way, on the way up ordinary people will sell, the rich will buy.

10 years from now let’s imagine the following scenario :

- Mr. Mars and its companies own about 1 million BTC.
- Saylor and his Microstrategy own 2+ million BTC.
- Various other companies around the world own another 2 million BTC.
- Grayscale and similar funds that will soon become ETFs own about 10 million BTC.
- Several dozen countries have declared Bitcoin legal tender owning about 2 million BTC.
- Between 2-4 million BTC is irretrievably lost.

The question is what will eventually remain for the average Joe? Probably a lot of worthless fiat...

There'll always be people willing to use it as a currency. This is the fact where most of us rely on. We see it as a store of value, but the only value it stores is its future usage as a currency. A similar phenomenon happens with gold. Most of the gold owners, keep it as a store of value asset. A minority uses its useful properties.

All the world's gold is imagined to worth so much, because people know that some will always acknowledge its intrinsic value. That there will always be people who'll use it essentially. And yet, countries hold most of it (https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/gold-reserves) without using it essentially.

This is how store of value assets work and I find it completely normal that bitcoin isn't used otherwise. It has the characteristics of the most efficient asset we've ever had.

And if more people used it as a currency, then it would fuel adoption, would fuel growth, would fuel demand, and would fuel a rise in price. It is a shame that the majority only want to use bitcoin as a means to increase the amount of fiat they have, especially when we see rampant money printing, endless inflation, and Quantitative Easing Round 9001. We could be on the way to a monetary revolution, but instead we see centralized exchanges turning themselves in to crypto-banks, and legacy banks and financial institutions offering bitcoin ETFs and other products, creating more centralized control which most people seem absolutely happy to buy in to as long as they can make some fiat profit.

Bitcoin is a decentralized, peer to peer, currency. Not a centralized, third party, investment vehicle, which is sadly what it is turning in to.

Not spending Bitcoin as a currency does not make it a pyramid scheme in any way shape or form. Many people believe bitcoin to be a hedge asset and not a currency. Personally I see it as both and use it as a form of payment as often as possible. I don’t like the fact that he said this however.

You probably mean that it'd rise the purchasing power of bitcoin. Price rise is usually meant as rise in the exchange rate which conflicts the rest of your post.

I've said this before, it's not going to change the way this world has used to work. Alas, the people would rebel when few of them are financially educated. At least, you can enjoy the constant rise of your wealth.

You know a lot about bitcoin. Can't you just enjoy what you've obtained? Taking it a step further by demanding from the rest of the world to behave same way you do and expect to all follow is unrealistic. Protesting it is the most you can do as far as I've concluded.

I'm glad you re-posted this analogy because I think it sums us Bitcoin spending perfectly and it certainly nails it on this topic.

It makes sense to first spend the assets that depreciates in value over the assets that appreciate in value as a function of time.

Everyone has their reasons for HODL-ing or selling their assets, and let's not forget that there is no right or wrong answer. The fact that BTC isn't being spent by many not just Andreas is a sign of future prosperity and belief that it will do well in the future. Yes, it may limit the availability of the coin but that's all an economy is about - supply and demand.

That's the supply and demand effect you just described. The demand rises or stays the same at worse, but the supply keeps decreasing. it's true what you are saying. Not that long ago I read a post somewhere that says that the amount of bitcoin on cryptocurrency exchanges hasn't been this low since the 2017/2018 era. That news came out around bitcoin's recent rise to the $67k mark. Even with a new all-time high, people (especially miners) don't want to sell. That tells you that the community is confident that the price will increase even further.

In addition to that, many merchants use payment processors that immediately swap crypto to fiat for various reasons. So, even if a store accepts crypto, their end-goal is converting the coins to fiat.

There are always people who spend. Also, many people trade rather than hodl. As for those that hodl, they might be waiting for the time when they can properly spend it, so it's not a scheme in any way. I also intend to move to this approach of spending fiat and keeping BTC when I can, but I would love to be able to spend it as money, and I believe in it as a currency. Perhaps Andreas also wants to wait till more adoption. Or maybe he thinks the price isn't high enough, so it makes sense to him to wait longer and thus increase the purchasing power.

Well, having just one person in the whole community that is holding his Bitcoin and not selling it is not going to affect the market. There are already lots of people who are making use of cryptocurrency daily for their  daily transactions.

Everyone have what works for them, I might decide that it is best for me to just hold Bitcoin and not use it for any kind of transaction, it is all about what works for me and whether there is a need for me to be making use of Bitcoin for such daily transactions. As for me, I make use of Bitcoin for both transactions and also I hold them as an investment in my wallet, while I wait for the price to increase.

I agree, which is why I'm not demanding that everyone go out and spend their bitcoin. As I said above, everyone is free to use bitcoin as they like, and one of the great things about bitcoin is precisely that everyone is free to use it in any way they see fit without influence or control from external third parties. But that doesn't mean I can't lament that a lot of people are only here because they heard crypto will make them rich.

Sure, but what about if everyone just held their bitcoin and never transacted with it or used it for anything? What is going to drive adoption and growth if nobody is using bitcoin for anything? Why would bitcoin have value if I can't spend it anywhere or for anything?

While his point may have been that if you want to spend, you better spend fiat and keep the bitcoins, he should have also emphasize that he also spends bitcoin, just because he is a model, a trend setter.


Not necessarily. Gold is also a store of value and it's being used only as an asset, bitcoin may also go on this path. I don't say it's a good direction, I only say that it's possible. And it won't make it worthless/pointless.


In 10 years from now people may spend Satoshi or sub-units of that. Bitcoin can still function as a currency, the 8 digits after the decimal point is a lot.
It all depends whether people will still spend or will be convinced to just HODL.

He knows that BTC value will continue to rise even when its price fluctuates wildly. He does have a business online and he is a motivational speaker as far as I know. If he has USD which he earns through his business then why should he be spending his BTC?  Nothing is forcing him to spend his BTC. Whether we agree or not people don't just look at BTC as currency, it's an investment due to the value that goes up.

It looks that way and it is partly true but mostly because those people who are so vocal on social media (like what you said about people Reddit) are those who are mostly interested in price (BTC as investment) and are trying to increase the hype so their investment grows in value.
On the other hand those who seek financial sovereignty through bitcoin (BTC as currency) aren't really participating in social media expressing their opinion every day so they go unnoticed.
There is also the fact that during bull markets we see more investors coming in rather than others.

The other problem with this statement is that we have no statistics to prove it or reject it. The payment processors like BitPay (even though they don't represent the whole used as currency thing) stopped publishing their detailed stats but still what they do release shows a growth in bitcoin usage as a currency.

There is actually nothing wrong if one will be holding his Bitcoin for the long-term...now if the the term holding does not sound good then convert it into saving. Saving money is certainly a very important backbone to one's economy and without it then it can be hard for a country to experience real progress. No, having said that, I can understand the message that Op is trying to bring us to: that cryptocurrency like Bitcoin to really go mainstream they must be spend like the usual fiat money and people should stop speculating its value. The thing is that if we limit Bitcoin alone on this aspect then what can be its difference with the fiat money? There is no easy answer here but the most important feature with Bitcoin is you have now many options as to what to do with...with holding as a major choice by the many.

I have the same attitude as you, but if you just take this forum and its active user base, I believe most have never used Bitcoin as a currency and consider it just a tool that will allow them to one day have more fiat than they used to have. Maybe that's why the world's elite is somewhat mild in their attitudes towards Bitcoin, if we take into account that most coins will still end up where they can control them.

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I have no doubt that there will always be enthusiasts who will try to follow Satoshi Nakamoto’s idea, but I think there will be far fewer of them in the future than there are today. Most people still have their exit point, so I've already written that with price increases, coin ownership will change in favor of wealthy individuals, companies, funds, central banks, to the point where the average Joe will no longer have anything in his crypto wallet, and the price will be so high that he may not be able to afford to buy even 1000 sats.

What you have described here is a well-known economic problem called "The problem of hoarding." However, many economists, especially those of Austrian school, argue that this is not actually a problem at all, but, instead, beneficial to society. Let's take your example, companies accumulate bitcoin and keep it in their cash balances, right? But why do they do that in the first place? Obviously, they expect bitcoin's price to increase, so it will be easier for them to overcome any obstacles in the future. Like the average Joe, they have no idea what will happen with them in the future, but they at least can slightly alleviate its uncertainty by keeping cash in their balances. What is important here is that they don't need bitcoin itself, they need goods and services they can buy with it in the future.  What will happen when most of the coins are in the hands of those companies? Right, the price of bitcoin, or more strictly, its purchasing power will skyrocket, so the companies will have a huge incentive to spend it.

Rothbard wrote:


People will almost always say, if asked, that they want as much money as they can get! But what they really want is not more units of money—more gold ounces or “dollars”—but more effective units, i.e., greater command of goods and services bought by money. We have seen that society cannot satisfy its demand for more money by increasing its supply—for an increased supply will simply dilute the effectiveness of each ounce, and the money will be no more really plentiful than before. People's standard of living (except in the nonmonetary uses of gold) cannot increase by mining more gold. If people want more effective gold ounces in their cash balances, they can get them only through a fall in prices and a rise in the effectiveness of each ounce.



Companies' demand for bitcoin will likely result in an increase in the effectiveness of each bitcoin, which will allow the average Joe to satisfy his needs more productively.

I'd say the exact opposite. As they observe their asset skyrocket in the long-term, they're discouraged to spend it, because they can accumulate more purchasing power in the future if they do. This is the problem with deflationary currencies. You're not incentivized to spend them, but rather keep them safe or as we've modernized it, to HODL them. This slow downs the economy.

And why should you prove this statement? Do you have to convince someone with strong inferences? Isn't it obvious for everybody you're talking that observing a 10x within a year means we had more investors?

Gold has other uses - jewelry, electronics, chemistry, healthcare. Even without it being used as a currency, there will always be demand for gold for these reasons. Now, if bitcoin could not be used as a currency and could not be spent anywhere, why would there be any demand for it? It cannot be used for anything else (or at least, any other purpose for it is exceedingly inefficient).

I don't think it's necessarily a difference between how vocal each category is, but rather a difference between the numbers of users in each category. Why would bitcoin spenders be quieter than bitcoin holders? I obviously want the price to increase too, because it increases my purchasing power. I want more people to use it as a currency so I have more places I can spend it myself. I want increased adoption so I can move ever more away from fiat and towards financial sovereignty. Why would people like me not be vocal?

Even on this forum, users here for these reasons are in the minority.

The price of gold has nothing to do with its usefulness, it's more related to the hoarding of gold by banks, states, ...
And I see this similar with bitcoin too: I don't think that those hoarding it as a store of value would care much whether bitcoin is used as a currency or not, as long as they can use it as an asset, even if not traded so often (and bitcoin price is also a result of hoarding more than actual usage).

And with the rise of LN, with far too many keeping their coins in custodian wallets, the users who want to spend may soon not even use bitcoin, they may use IOUs without knowing it.

What he's telling you is that the price of gold and its usefulness are implicitly connected. Yes, the price isn't directly related with it, it's a matter of supply and demand. But, if it wasn't useful, why would it be demanded? People evaluate goods by their utility. If they all had the properties of a store of value asset, they could also be used similarly by the belief that they will be used essentially in the future.

Gold does have these properties and is, thus, stored with the conviction that someone will use it to either create jewelry or experiment with it in chemistry, or use it into electronics etc.

Sorry, I disagree. I think that the price and the hoarding are more related to the (perceived) scarcity than usefulness.
And that's what I try to express, but maybe I'm failing to do that, or maybe I'm wrong. I guess that we have to agree that we disagree on this and just move on  ;)
Thanks for the attempt to clear it up though. ;)

BHC summed up my point pretty well. The price of gold is absolutely driven by hoarding and people using it as a store of value, but people hoard it and use it as a store of value because they know in the future there will be a demand for gold from various industries. If there was no demand from anyone anywhere for gold, then there would be no point hoarding it as a store of value.

People hoard bitcoin and use it as a store of value because they know they will in the future they will be able to use it to buy goods or services, either directly or indirectly (by selling it for fiat to someone else who will use it to buy goods or services). If there was no one anywhere who would accept bitcoin in exchange for goods or services, then there would be no point hoarding it as a store of value.

Bitcoin has value because it can be used to buy goods or services. If no one could ever use it to buy goods or services (i.e. it failed to function as a currency) then it would be worthless.

Scarcity only makes an already valuable or useful asset more valuable - it does not create value out of nothing. There are trillions of completely unique objects in the world, none of which are valuable in the slightest.

That's my issue. I live in Los Angeles and I have never seen any store displaying a BTC sign. Wait, I might have seen one, and it was a sketchy jewelry store.

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That's my issue. If BTC has value because it can be used to buy goods, what happens where everyone is HODLing and nobody is using it to buy goods? It will most likely see a continuous decrease in adoption and, as a consequence, a decrease in value because at that point you own a digital coin that is completely useless.

And now that I think about this, one solution could be to introduce a system in the Bitcoin protocol where a small, but increasing portion of BTC that are not moving from an address are transferred automatically to a "community address" for other users to buy, or maybe it goes to active nodes as a way to incentivize network security. The more you hold, the more BTC are transferred to this community address or to nodes.

This would solve the hoarding issue and would also re-appropriate tons of lost BTCs.

[moderator's note: consecutive posts merged]

The main thing to realize is that money is useless for people if not used for exchange for goods or services. It is nonsense to assert that people will hold their bitcoin until they die. What's the point?


First of all, there is no hoarding issue because every bitcoin that is lost or not moving adds to the purchasing power of each unit. Given that bitcoin is a highly divisible currency, any "active" supply of it is able to satisfy all economic activities that take place in the world.

Secondly, we don't need socialism in bitcoin where the property of one productive person would be seized and shared among unproductive assholes.


How do you know this will slow down the economy? We haven't had deflationary currency yet. In my view, deflationary currency incentives people and businesses to be more productive, offer better services, build better houses so that they can obtain more of scarce money.

We will never reach a point where nobody is using it to buy goods. There will always be at least some people like me who use bitcoin primarily as a currency. And indeed, I think the number of people using it at least partly as a currency is increasing - certainly I personally know of far more merchants accepting it and I spend it in a much wider variety of places than I did 5 years ago. But I still think those people are very much in the minority and are growing at a slower rate compared to the percentage of people that are only here to make fiat profits.

I would be against this proposal 100%. One of the basic principles of bitcoin is that you can be your bank, hold and secure your own money, without any intervention from third parties. As soon as you start effectively stealing other people's coins for any reason, then you have violated this principle and bitcoin is little better than seizable and freezable fiat.

He's actually said quite a bit on this, as he frequently gets asked on podcasts and interviews about the rumour (or myth or whatever) that he lives chiefly on Bitcoin and crypto, and he says quite forwardly that he doesn't because it's simply not possible to.

It's not wrong for the future of BTC -- he encourages use, he has a shop that accepts it and uses Lightning, and he teaches people how to use it as an alternative.

Remember, he didn't actually have significant BTC holdings for a rather long time, think it was a few years back that someone kicked it off by sending him BTC. Think he's more than "paid" his dues as an educator.

I think there is not right and wrong, and no one way. Any of us have a way to do things, and it depends on our circumstances (country, job, income, family, ...).

Best wishes

It can be and is all of those things which goes to show the adaptability of bitcoin (another added value)



It's interesting that anyone could think of introducing a "solution" like that into the bitcoin protocol? It wouldn't be bitcoin anymore. Do you have any btc?
You realize there are fees to move coins from wallet to wallet and that plenty of coins from the early days haven't moved--if they want "the community" to have it: they could choose to give it.

Create your own coin that functions that way.


P.S.
I also hold as much precious metals as I can afford---I'm a guilty little gold bug
Some of gold's value is in our perception of it (beyond its utility) for thousands of years
Homes and property also have value and their prices are subject to speculation and market whims as well

It might also change more towards Bitcoin being used a currency when there are more favorable tax laws all around the world. Right now using Bitcoin can lead to capital gains taxation if the BTC you use increased in value. That makes it quite cumbersome for all the accounting requirements if you have to list buy and sell/use prices for every coffee you purchase or every package of chewing gum. I think that is one major aspect that would have to change in a number of countries in order to see Bitcoin circulate much more as a currency at least for everyday purchases (Lambos and stuff, you know...) ;)

We cannot talk about a financial pyramid (scheme) because no one has guaranteed profits. We all know that this is a free market and anything can happen there. After all, Andreas will also start trading Bitcoin normally on the market. He will just do it after a longer time than most of HODLers.

Not only that, but the proposal doesn't actually solve the problem of people not spending their bitcoin - it only incentivizes people to move bitcoin around between their own addresses and clog up the network with unnecessary transactions.

Agreed. In the US, at least treat it the same as any other foreign currency in which there is no tax for any purchases under $200. Unfortunately our legislators don't understand the first thing about bitcoin or cryptocurrency.

It seems to me that the US authorities understand cryptocurrencies very well, but that such laws are in place to deter people from using Bitcoin as a means of payment, and the impression is that this affects most of those who would otherwise have such intentions. I might expect a misunderstanding from a third-world country ruled by a dictator, but I would not agree that politicians and institutions are more intelligent in El Salvador than in the US.

Ok, that is quite good then already, but correct if I am wrong, that wasn't always the case was it? Has that regulation officially been applied to crypto recently? The European Union is much more complex in that regard.

Oh and the under $200 rule, is that nationwide or does it depend on the state?

Not everyone who does HODL, on the other hand traders often use Bitcoin to transact. We know that at this time Bitcoin has several uses such as trading and as a means of payment for countries that have legalized bitcoin.
Bitcoin was created as a currency but over time the demand for someone to buy bitcoin is increasing so that the price of bitcoin continues to rise from year to year, therefore many people use the HODL strategy.

Partly. I would bet that only two or three Reps or Senators could even give you a definition of a cryptocurrency, let alone explain what they are or how they work. But even then, they are quite happy to pass laws or regulations regarding it, not understanding the implications or ramifications of these laws. See, for example, the infrastructure bill which tries to make everyone collect the tax information of everyone else they trade bitcoin with.

You misunderstand my post. I'm saying that they should at least treat it that way, not that they already do. The tax situation here is a complete mess, with every trade between fiat and crypto or crypto and crypto generating a taxable event.

Being elected to Congress does not necessarily mean being intelligent, but that is the way it is everywhere in the world - because recently journalists in my country have asked politicians in my country to try to define Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies, and they have all heard about it but cannot give any meaningful answer. However, it seems that those at lower levels still understand a little better what it is about, because the state post office has been providing the service of a physical crypto exchange for a long time.

I am lucky to live in a country where politicians have no idea what Bitcoin is, but I can sell or buy a cryptocurrency for cash without KYC up to approximately 2000 EUR per transaction with a fairly reasonable fee (around 3%).

You don't need to be particularly intelligent, but rather just have a little bit of common sense, to realize that passing laws and regulations on something you don't understand will not be effective and will just lead to more confusion and issues further down the line. But yet, that's exactly what they are doing. The US government is trying to apply laws which were written to regulate wheat, Irish potatoes, and concentrated orange juice to bitcoin, as if these things are in any way comparable.

Every member of Congress has an army of staff who are supposed to research and advise on issues like this. This is as much their failings as it is the member of Congress themselves. They propose these ridiculous laws, and then it is up to us to contact and educate them and change their minds or try to force amendments. Which will last for a few months until the next ridiculous proposal. The whole thing is a mess.

Although bitcoin has been created to be a replacement for current failing and ever so inflated finical system that has been always controlled by the government, but that idea has been started to fade away little by little ever since bitcoin started to reach some high prices, bitcoin has become just an asset and a way to make some quick and big profit for the majority of the new people who are investing it, and i am sure the majority of them if asked about what is the concept of bitcoin is they will just say its a digital currency and yet they don't use it as a currency and they don't even know the reason behind its creation.