a commodity is a raw material used to create other produce..

this is where people get confused.. because of the 'gold comparison'

gold sits in more than 1 currency sub-category
commodity:- the market for buying and selling gold to use in industry for jewellery and electronics creation
asset:- gold investments (holding in a vault)

just because gold asset has been compared to bitcoin. does not mean bitcoin has the same attributes/utility/function/tangibility as gold commodity.

bitcoin is nothing like wheat, beef, oil, cocoa, potato (commodity)
bitcoin is an ASSET not a commodity

anything can be a currency (its an umbrella term)
legal tender/fiat/money are the same sub category as each other

asset is a different category from money
commodity is a different category from money

currencies can be used even in places where its not accepted as 'money'
EG
in america retailers and tax agents do not consider the euro as acceptable 'money'/legal tender. they only want to and are legally obliged to accept the dollar as money..

yet to hundreds of millions of people across the ocean away from america, europeans accept the euro as money. but not the dollar.

that said..
the local bitcoin traders getting fined/imprisoned for running a illegal money business has nothing to do with bitcoin. but to do with the other 50% of a trade.. the fiat they handle.

yes when they buy/sell bitcoin they swap it for fiat. and its the handling of fiat that gets them in trouble.
EG
if they swapped bitcoin for a tin of baked beans they would not be a money business, but instead a retailer

money and currency are 2 different things

think of currency as a umbrella term for anything people want to trade.
married couple, exchange sexual favours for gifts at valentine/birthdays is a currency.. yes sex is a currency
prisoners, exchange cigarettes or chocolate pudding between inmates.. yep cigarettes and desserts are currency
friends, exchange a bottle of beer for having a friend help them with fixing their car or doing a bit of DIY. yep favours and alcohol are currency

anything can be a currency. and yes bitcoin is a currency.

now that part is sorted.
..

"money" is a sub category of currency with specific limitations, definitions and utility.
for instance its just a widely known and accepted medium of exchange usually accepted nationally by that nation wrote on the banknote.
(yes some retailers dont do cash transactions and only want credit cards so even bank notes are not 100% accepted everywhere)
(yes some retailers dont do credit cards and only want cash transactions so even credit cards are not 100% accepted everywhere)

an asset is another sub category of currency. with its own definitions and utility, this is more of a value store with only the occassional use as a medium of exchange
antique furniture/art
gold coins/jewellery
company shares
bitcoin

bitcoin is essentially an asset currency

firstly the title is misleading.. the real title should mention its about using credit cards..

secondly the reason credit cards are banned which people fail to explain properly..

credit cards come with credit limits. pre-agreed limits of spend ability based on how much a person can repay. it does not matter if its bitcoin that might get returns or a car that may never make returns and end up in a scrapyard never to be resold.. it does not matter.

the real reason is not about "investment risk".. its about chargeback scamming. because unlike a debit card or wire transfer that only costs the sender/recipient losses.. a credit card chargeback costs the credit card company money.

but they cant advertise that chargeback scamming exists as thats an advert for everyone to do that with every purchase they make when buying anything.

i find it funny
ofcourse coinbase has to follow fiat regulations.. they handle fiat


firstly people use FIAT exchanges but then cry about fiat laws of those exchanges
then people blame bitcoin and say bitcoin was birthed by government
then lastly they say just treat bitcoin as a investment to get more.. wait for it.. fiat
(triple facepalm)

instead of crying about fiat laws and blaming bitcoin.. how about go ask you local retailers/landlords to accept bitcoin so you'll never need to touch fiat.

in 1984. a japanese bitcoin prophet predicted what the price of bitcoin would do 30+ years ahead, and he done this while painting a fence
click the imgur link to see the punchline
https://imgur.com/UfxyGcU

not mentioning my total hoard. but the difference between christmas 2017 and january 2018 would be considered a 'loss' of millions .. but i dont care because to me personally its not a loss until you have sold for less then you bought it. and i have never sold for less than i bought

thats rule one on any market

hundreds if not thousands of guys

based on christmas 2017 high... $1m is 50btc

so you will find many people from 2009-2018 that lost 50btc+ at some point
a guy in the UK threw a hard drive in the trash that had over 50btc on it a few years back
bitcoin pizza guy in 2010 wasted 10,000btc on pizza
thousands of guys who lost atleast 50 btc in mtgox and other 'exchange hacks'

its very common occurrence actually

there are many users, hundreds infact that can be considered millionaire losers.
its what will always happen. for every winner theres an equal and opposite loser.

though i only consider it a few coins out of my hoard.. i have experienced similar. but so have many others.

i bought a rig for 60btc back in 2013-4 which didnt make ROI due to a mega difficulty jump just weeks after that, which pretty much literally rendered my rig to become a slow hasher and thus more efficient at heating my apartment than hashing btc.

though back then 60btc was not worth much.. so in reality it was only about $1k

at todays value i could say it was worth a 'loss' of over $1m at christmas 2017 prices.
but everyone moves on and ensures they dont mess around with their main hoard. and if they lose out on their few coins they dont value much at the time.. then thats that.

i think there are many hundreds of early adopters that could say similar stories.. oh well. we all move on. atleast some of us are smart enough to still have a bigger hoard we will not touch and will do everything to protect. including not let devs mess too much with bitcoin code

its not that simple
if pools drop off.. block solves take a lil longer than the 10min average for a while... then the difficulty drops making it easier to mine. and also with less pools, means that the remaining pools get a bigger slice of the pie.

..
the reality is that pools have mining equipment hashing NON stop. even if their pool has not won that particular block.
because there are only ~144 blocks a day. thats only 144 slices.

imagine if there were 144 pools of all equal hash rate. they would only get (theoretically) 1 block each.
imagine if there were 72 pools they would only get (theoretically) 2 block each.
imagine if there were 36 pools they would only get (theoretically) 4 block each.
imagine if there were 18 pools they would only get (theoretically) 8 block each.
imagine if there were 9 pools they would only get (theoretically) 16 block each.

so lets say 36 pools now and it dropped to 9 pools
each pool went from 50btc a day to 200btc a day

so even if the price went from $10k to $5k the income would be from $500k but then upto $100k after pools dropped off..

..
there are many facets to the economics of mining. but be sure mining pools will not all give up 100%.. there will always be some that mine
but i simplified the basics of mining pool economics, though could have gone into further detail in regards to how the difficulty drop also affects income

its actually both...

depending on what your looking at.

if your only looking at the HIGH price of a given time. its a bubble.. the speculative hype and air which can inflate prices aswell as burst prices,
.. like a bubble.

but if you chart the data and draw a line along the LOWEST prices long term you will see the true value. the part that no one is
stupid to sell below.

think of the long term lowest line as a water line in a bath.. its a point of resistance.. anything above that is speculative hot air that fluctuates (grows and pops)

we are still in the first decade of a many decade life of the coin. which based on things like coin supply (block halving events) and population saturation will  have the waterline in a S curve.. and then variable amounts ontop for the speculative bubble

anyway here is an image for the younger generation that can only understand images

nope im seeing the bigger broader picture. and this idea is not new, and has been laughed at, tried, tested and failed and laughed at again and again many times (see my p.s at the end for a hint)

i have all my funds in cold storage.
my private keys are locked away to avoid me getting tempted to spend.

my PUBLIC key is my identity. i can paste that into a explorer and check the value without needing to touch my private key. i do not want to change my identity just to keep some mining pool from robbing me fast or slow.

my analogies of banks(pools) where your hope that banks(pools) will trickle the funds out to the community is obsurd. taking coins from 1 person does not guarantee the community are better off.. it guarantees the bank(pool) is better off and the community is worse off

in FIAT and bitcoin trickle down economics does not work.

it just ends up as a banker(pool) bonus

P.S your idea is not new, and your desires are not new.
research: freicoin demurrage

lol
transparency of the market

just look at the buys and sells order books.. you cant get more transparent
one BIG thing you are missing the point of is this:

even though there are 16.9mill coins produced. guess what.. it does not matter if 10 coins or 1 million coins are lost.

market movement is not about the 16.89999mill coins that are active or the 15.9m coins that are active

market movements are based on the 0.001btc to 5btc on an order line.
yep exchanges are not hoarding all 16.9m coins. and prices are not based on entire circulation. its based on a small subset amount of coins that are actually visible on exchanges.

so moving coins from hoarders to mining pools wont make a blinding bit of difference to the market transparency. its just giving mining pools a free 0.1% bonus while making savers 0.1% poorer

ok in 3 years time from today. if you have not changed your mortgage deed into your spouses name.. the bank gets the house.. even if its fully paid for and in your name
ok in 3 years from today. unless you changed your car or changed the car registration into someone elses name.. the bank gets that too..
oh and the savings you want to lock today for your kids college in a decade.. well in 3 years time the bank gets that too.. same with your pension pot that usually has a 40year lock on it.

do you see the point
it makes you poorer and banks richer.
its not redistributing wealth to the needy..
trickle down economics does not work

oh and that family hierloom thats stayed in your family for 5 generations.. you better having kids every 2 and a half years so they can play pass the parcel with it.. else the bank will be round with the removal trucks.

so.. let you practice wat you preach today.. before trying to suggest its wat the community should be forced to do

OP
you start first. please hand your retirement/pension fund to the community. you have not touched your pension pot in 3 years so its time you start handing it out.. your not allowed to keep it safe. your not allowed to hold it for inheretance. you have to hand out any pension funds or life savings after the third year that you have deposited it..

you have no say in the matter. if any funds gain 3 years maturity. its no longer yours. no one cares about your personal choice to have locked your funds in a time vault burried in your back garden. no one cares that you wrote it into your will that only your offspring can get it. no one cares that you are waiting until your 60yo to touch it... its time you started giving your pension/life savings to the community.

oh and make sure you give the money to your bank and hope that they do the trickle down economics rather than them hoarding it and laundering it every 2 years 364 days to prevent them losing it.. oh wait.. they wont. because if they forgt the 3rd anniversary.. they just pay themselves again.. thus only the banks win..

majority of "exchange hacks" are not hacks at all. they are exchange CEO exit/retirement plans.

but lets deal with the few cases that are exchange hacks
the key solution is not to have private keys stored on the system/server that customers link to(public servers). this can be achieved in many ways
but the simplest way is instead of programming a server to make tx's when a customer wants a withdrawal and the server has the privkey..
instead the server just has a 'request database' for withdrawals. and its then a separate remote system that listens in on the database, that makes the tx's.

to secure the requests. a customer link/register a personal fresh public key as their identity.. and then when they want a withdrawal they sign a unique message on their home system using their pubkeyID. and post that signed message to the exchange.

so all the exchange server stores is
username|publickeyID|withdrawal message|signature
(withdrawal message includes destination and amount)

where no private keys are stored.. thus a hacker cannot make a tx or even make a withdrawal request/alter a withdrawal request

and doesnt even store data about the exchanges remote system because its not pushing out withdrawal requests, its just storing withdrawal requests..

then its upto the remote system listen into the exchange, validate the ID+message withdrawal request and make the TX's separately

the main gripe is that people cant really spend their funds until the chain is uptodate. which can be days-weeks to set it up

if only there was a smart dev that could think of some simple solution..
like

an uptodate UTXO set of (lets say current blockheight minus 1) gets its own hash. and that hash is set in the current block data.
making the UTXO set of 1confirms+ verifiable as part of block checks

thus people can then have their wallet grab a very recent UTXO set FIRST. so they can actually go ahead and spend their funds, the same day.
after all sending out a tx using the UTXO set wont hurt the network. if it contains a input that is actually spend or non existent it wont get relayed/accepted into a new block anyway..

...
this way it is also good for light wallet users that just want the UTXO set have some faith that the UTXO set has some checks and validations by the network.

and then it makes downloading the blockchain if they want to part of the networks full validation/data archiving, more of a background feature..
thus then alleviates the requirement for some people to not have to wait 2 weeks or so to download the blockchain before they are upto date enough just to spend funds.

i understand and accept everything you say. smart phones and 4G/5G signals have bypassed the arguments about PC's and landline issues.. that was the positives back in my promoting days. that getting on the internet was not the biggest concern or much of an issue..
they actually laughed at the idea of phone companies spending billions to install cable to every house, like it was some out dated concept that they were proud to have skipped.

however the issue was about the transaction fee of just moving bitcoin. which is why there was alot of scepticism against bitcoin being useful.. but many then started talking about making their own local (alt)coins to compete against things like mpasa

i more recently re contacted a few contacts from the region who also feel that LN is not suitable either. as again to just get into a LN channel costs a fee and also its not as unlimited as previously promoted. so they still feel if something is going to happen it would b via an altcoin or a confederation of altcoins(IMF type of thing)

i seen you had pictures taken with "the natives" but have you done any investigation, promoting in the more modern-day villages/shanty town area's or even the cities

have you spoke with any mpesa stall owners about doing crypto, as i found they would have been the pivitol point of entry into people getting crypto. especially when they said it cost them $350-$1k just to set up a mpesa system but found out they could start exchanging crypto without all the mpesa delays/red tape(before the discussions moved onto bitcoin tx fee's which then dampened their mood)

as for the promo/stunts... back in my day i think i gave out about $1000 worth at that time ($400k at this weeks value), but left feeling that they just seen it as a one time handout eventhough i set a few of them up as if it could be a business.
analogy: i taught them how to fish but they just seemed more interested in the fish id give them when teaching them, than actually wanting to fish for themselves tomorrow

which is why im wondering if its worth me giving it another shot over there, or just slapping some bitcoin devs with rotton fish for disregarding the needs of the unbanked(low fee's onchain) that i feel is the root cause of not much african bitcoin adoption

im just asking to see if things have moved on from a couple years ago, or if its still the same initial optimism about bitcoin as if they never heard of it before you enquired, but then reluctance when finally trying it. (like i experienced)

gotta laugh at page 2 of the article

they dont want federated(masternode) blockchains. they want decentralised blockchains..
..but then

they talk about layer 2 things like lightning as the solution to holding all the data of 7billion people.

but here is the kicker
peoples names may only change a few times(marriage) in their life.
their date of birth never changes
credit rating may only change once a month/year

so layer 2, is not the solution. plus layer 2 is not an immutable blockchain, nor permissionless, nor individual control

i think microsoft is just throwing out buzzwords to garner investments before even having a prototype/design idea ready

all i can see from this article is speculators shouting "big corp mentions word bitcoin.. to the moon".. rather than anything revolutionary

Rodeox

its been a while since i was involved with any african promoting. back then i was not aiming at altcoins. nor was i aiming at the rich guys.
i was aiming at the unbanked/average population.

the summary of my experience was that bitcoin was not for them. (fee's were 95% of the problem)
where the majority were more interested in making their own crypto with low fee's and able to control volatility by having their own local swap shops(exchanges)

i am just wondering what are your 2018 findings specifically regarding bitcoin desire/utility (i already know the altcoin community is busy)

banks dont care about 'debt risk' of thier customers

after all a credit card limit is in place to cover what the card holder can afford to pay back. so it doesnt matter if its a car, or a bitcoin. the credit limit secures the debt risk limit.

the real reason is to avoid costing the banks lots of money because of chargeback scammers.
they wont say that though because it would be just advertising to scammers that performing a chargeback is an option to get bitcoin and money back