I wouldn't be overly optimistic about that

And yes, I know about the famous saying credited to Baron Rothschild, the founder (if I'm not mistaken) of the Rothschild banking family, that tells you "to buy when there's blood in the streets, even if the blood is your own" (no plagiarism intended). Everything becomes cheap after a crash, but it doesn't in the least make it worth "buy them all"

You should still be choosy what to buy. So while a crisis certainly makes everything cheap and you can in fact buy worthy assets for pennies, it won't make you rich if you buy trash which is not going to survive. In short, regular and time-tested rules of due diligence still apply even in the streets filled with blood, and still more so if it is your blood

So there is no reason to disagree?

Okay then. Anyway, it is a vicious circle of sorts, in fact, it is even a double vicious circle. It is kinda self-explanatory that merchants are not inclined to accept a highly volatile currency as a means of payment but prices won't become stable unless and until speculation is massively subdued and overshadowed by adoption, i.e. when most coins are used for buying and selling goods. But there is another circle of vice which is less apparent but that doesn't make it less ugly. In fact, it makes the first circle far worse as it just adds more injury to injury

The second circle is, volatile prices discourage people from spending their coins as it makes no sense from an economic perspective. What makes sense, though, is relentless speculation by riding volatility waves. Obviously, most coins end up on exchanges, not in the wallets of merchants. This, in turn, means merchants are disincentivized further from accepting crypto as payment since there is no demand for such payments from the buyers. So the coins end up being speculated, not circulated, which adds more fuel to the furnace of volatility. This closes the vicious circle


Just like you can't force love, you can't force people to spend their bitcoins in a "productive" way. Economically, you would be better off exchanging bitcoins to fiat, then spending some part of the money and buying back if prices drop or exchange more if prices soar (and then buy back when the prices finally drop). You simply can't beat that, and no amount of proselytizing is going to change this simple reality


Personally, I don't feel like we need these subunits as anything less than a few thousand satoshi (otherwise known as dust) is not collectible anyway

They may well be

So I have to take your word for it as I don't know if they really do. Regardless, do these markers really show the expansion in adoption? All of them can as well point in the opposite direction unless we agree adoption equals speculation. If not, all these numbers rising can be easily attributed to speculation expanding, which you should in fact expect given the half-year Bitcoin rally as of recent. You can't seriously ascribe the explosive growth from low 3k to high 13k within just a few months to adoption spreading like weed. Most certainly, what we see is the same old-school speculation at work here


And here we go again (one more time)

How many of these merchants are in fact accepting crypto? If next to none, then this is not adoption. Well, we could indeed consider it half-adoption (for the lack of a better term) if people were actually paying with crypto there (as this is still a good start anyway). But we don't know that. Just adding the payment option is quasi-adoption at best. You can call it a required condition or prerequisite for future adoption but that in itself doesn't guarantee it just like Lighting Network doesn't guarantee it either


Personally, I'm already in that future but it doesn't magically turn Bitcoin into a means of payment. There is a huge distance (and difference) between that and using Bitcoin as a store of value or a hedge (but I repeat myself)

There is nothing less stable than Bitcoin's price

Other than the prices of altcoins, of course. If history teaches us anything (I know, it doesn't but still), the longer the price is locked in a certain range, the stronger and more brutal will the next price action be. It is up for debate whether the price will go higher (though, in the light of the coming halving, there are good chances to actually see that coming) or it will crash to the levels from which the recent rally had started (i.e. down to 6k). In fact, both options are quite possible, and in an arbitrary order at that

I seriously doubt about the "burn" part

Actually, this idea is nothing new as there were attempts in the past to implement it in practice. Quite naturally, not a single one succeeded because for money to be money it should keep up its purchasing power for long enough so that the loss of that power wouldn't be felt (too strong). But what you suggest is in stark contrast with the idea of money as such, the inference being that the whole scheme looks contrived and not natural (read, it is not viable unless forced)

I have a ready and easy to understand explanation if you are curious

It is just a human nature to consider shady anything that people can't grasp and thus fail to understand. Basically, it is just an instinctive (read, kinda automatic and uncontrollable) reaction to events and situations which don't fit their idea about how things are or should be. People implicitly assume they are right, so when they are indeed proved wrong and there is no recourse to an imaginary Ignore button, the only option left is to assume that something shady is going on or taking place, i.e. someone deliberately trying to pull a trick against them. In other words, it is a protective mechanism for the ego which would otherwise get hurt and humiliated by the incomprehensible reality

That's a false dichotomy

As there are other alternatives and some of these alternatives overlap at that. Most experienced traders can be both and definitely not in the extreme form as you describe them. Bulls are not always only putting money into the market and never withdrawing it, while bears may be reinvesting some or all of their income. Further, you can be bullish on one coin and buying it while at the same time bearish on another and selling it. In simple terms, it is unlikely you will find a real person that would match your description perfectly (an ideal bull or an ideal bear)

If this rumor is confirmed, then it can't possibly affect the global financial system. It will just be a convenient way to use fiat by aggregating a few major currencies in one token. Other than that, you can do anything with these currencies taken separately which you can do with Libra, though maybe in a less convenient way. So how is it going to disrupt the global financial system? Besides, we already have such a currency (sort of)

It is called SDR and its value is based on five major currencies

I think there is not much of a difference among cryptocurrencies

At least, not in, say, the first dozen of them (regarding the source of their value) as their value comes through speculation anyway, so it just happens that Bitcoin is pumped now while altcoins have been dumped (rather, it was pumped and now it is about to stagnate). And technically, OP is not quite correct as altcoins had been surging for a couple of months or so in the first half of this year by far outperforming Bitcoin, which was lagging behind (even though this growth was evidently fueled by Bitcoin itself). I refer to such coins as Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, EOS, maybe Ethereum, to a degree (the latter performed more like a lame horse on juice until it finally crashed)

That's what most people fail to take into account

But the crypto aspect in cryptocurrencies is just a technical peculiarity, not a defining feature, so depending on your definition of "crypto", fiat money can also by considered "crypto" as cryptography is definitely involved somewhere in the modern fiat too. In this way, the difference between fiat and cryptocurrencies lies elsewhere. If you ask me, the great divide is in who controls the money. With cryptocurrencies, there is no central entity or agency while with fiat it is the government or whoever controls it from behind the scenes (power elites, masons, aliens, etc)

That's yet another nail into the market cap coffin

Yes, Ethereum might have come close to Bitcoin in terms of their market cap numbers, but how many coins of both camps have been actually traded and what percentage did that make of the total supply back then? It may turn out that we must divide the Ethereum market cap by a factor of ten to make a coherent and meaningful comparison between the two coins and their market share. To put it in more mundane terms, Ethereum was still far behind Bitcoin even when it was at its top in the summer of 2017


It was far from overtaking Bitcoin no matter when unless we take the market cap metric seriously

Well, there are different options (as well as opinions)

And Trump is known to keep his open leaving him enough room and space to maneuver. You couldn't actually expect him to be any different given his business background. He is totally pragmatic, through and through, even if that requires him not to look like he really is

What I mean to say is that he doesn't burn bridges behind him, so we shouldn't really expect him or someone like him (which is the majority of the power elites anyway) to outright ban crypto. More likely, they will try to weaponize it and use it for their own purposes and agendas (whatever those might be)

And even fewer remain in it (as you note yourself later)

Many so-called early adopters were totally random people (like drug addicts) who got into Bitcoin purely by chance, and most of them had disposed of their bitcoins long ago, likely as early as 2013-2015. I'm actually curious if there are any of these adopters left at all, at least those who got their feet wet with Bitcoin in 2011 (not even speaking of 2009). As this forum shows, there are only a dozen active accounts that old (like theymos and his buddies), while some of them might have been sold (and then resold) in the past


You're welcome

Okay, let's call it square two

Yeah, I know it is still better than none (or just one), but we still have 62 more to pass. The point is, one swallow doesn't make a summer (two swallows don't make it either, just in case). It is mass adoption that counts (the grand scheme of things, in your terms), and I don't see us moving in that direction, slowly or otherwise. Personally, I can go as far as to say that Bitcoin has failed as a means of payment, even though it doesn't mean that it failed in general as you can't seriously consider something worth 10k per unit a failure. In essence, that means Bitcoin is not to be spent, it is to be hoarded or used as a hedge (dealer's choice). This is the direction we are moving in


See? I can definitely feel your pain


I'm totally cool with that but for most of us it is just a welcome bonus of sorts. In other words, it is not something extremely important that our entire life depends on or turns around. Being able to cash out is, though

This is not the first time this question is raised

If you look through topics created 4-5 years ago, you will find quite a few suggesting to divide Bitcoin further (as if it could help its price), as well as discussing different names for different subunits of a whole bitcoin. Does it make any sense? I guess not much as the lowest sensible denomination would still be defined and determined by the amount of fees required to confirm a Bitcoin payment within a reasonable timeframe. And that, as of now, is about a few thousand satoshi, which turns the whole idea into an exercise in stupidity and futility

It is a difference that makes the difference, right?

The point being that even if you didn't mean it that way, it still resonated like adoption is anything including what actually constitutes a fiat payment. More specifically, you may think like you are paying with crypto while your coins simply get converted to fiat in the process. And how is it different from you converting crypto to fiat yourself and then spending the proceeds? I don't know about you, but to me, conceptually, it is six of one and half a dozen of the other


Yes, I understand your pains

But you can't really expect people to go out and demand cryptocurrency payments. People want adoption, I mean real adoption, but they don't want to do anything to that effect themselves, i.e. to actually promote such adoption. If things were different, we would have already been there by now. But since we are not, that instantly sends us back to square one (read, no adoption of crypto as a full-fledged and self-sufficient means of payment)


I'm not a holder, and far from being one

I'm more of a trader type (if that makes any difference in your internal hierarchy of the cryptocurrency folk), so crypto for me is like capital. Well, it is indeed working capital for me and spending it is a big fat no. If I didn't have a fiat option, I would be forced to spend coins, of course (as I sometimes still do in the way described above), but other than that, it is the last thing that I would willingly do

There is a catch, though

As it almost always turns out, whenever you start buying a highly hyped and pumped asset (whether it be Bitcoin or Litecoin, or whatever), you typically end up buying it at its peak price (or quite close to it). On the other hand, it is buying at or near the bottom that makes people rich in due course (provided they are patient enough and can wait through hard times). But there's another catch to watch for. Not every asset at its bottom is worth buying as it may just be at the end of its life cycle without any hope ahead. The good news is that Litecoin is not one of such assets

Let me guess

People who receive their salary in bitcoins, first have to convert the coins to dollars (or whatever) before they can actually spend them. In this way I also spend some coins every week, then buy back when the price turns sufficiently around (a lifehack, you can live off that difference if your volume is high enough). The same story goes with Bitcoin credit card cards and payment processors - merchants are still accepting fiat only, end of story. If that relates to you as adoption, I think you have to reconsider your perspective

Further, you can assess almost anything either by its presence as well as absence or by the presence as well as absence of something else. As we see that Bitcoin's volatility doesn't subside (in fact, it has been at pretty high if not to say record levels recently), there is no plausible reason to believe or expect that the real adoption is indeed rising. And while I totally agree with you that the only way to stabilize prices is to make speculation irrelevant (the thing I've been telling here for years), the reality can't be ignored unless you deliberately choose so

And the next bottom line in this series of posts is that whenever given a choice, people will hoard their coins and spend fiat instead (as per famous Gresham's Law). Obviously, if you don't have that choice, Bitcoin becomes your only option and recourse. But that's not the case with most people apart from completely unbanked ones and deprived of a fiat income source at that. Hence no way people are going to spend Bitcoin en masse

Well, this is not what I meant

The problem is not with Lightning itself but rather with "the grand scheme of things" as you put it. In other words, even if it is brutally efficient on its own (fees and all), it can't further something when there is nothing to further. You see, there are only 21M bitcoins and given that, why would folks want to spend their precious coins? No way if you ask me

In this manner, OP is technically right, though not for the reasons stated. Bitcoin is inherently deflationary (despite its total supply still increasing), and no Lightning Network is going to change that. Long story short, people don't spend gold, digital or otherwise. That's why it can't serve the world as it is more like the world is to serve Bitcoin

Why do I have a feeling that some bias is at work here?

So you basically assume that since we don't know the real number of Lightning Network nodes, this number must be huge. To me, this is a loose assumption. Further, even if you agree that capacity is not the same as volume (the point which I agree with too), it does in fact say nothing about the number of transactions or the amount of bitcoins being moved using this capacity. The meaning being that there can as easily be none (or next to none). Assuming otherwise, and otherwise being a multiple of that capacity, seems even more far fetched to me

The bottom line is that we don't know the real situation other than what we see at 1ml.com. But what we know for certain is that Lightning Network is not widely used where it is expected to be used, i.e. in places like cafés, pubs, bars, maybe even brothels, and similar institutions. This is what counts in the end as Lightning Network is supposed to fix the innate problems which prevent Bitcoin from being used as a means of payment (read, private nodes are completely inconsequential). But if it is still not used for that, how can Lightning Network actually help here?