[2017-12-08] Yahoo Co-Founder Jerry Yang is a Believer in Bitcoin as Currency

[Terraformer]

Yahoo co-founder believes digital currencies will play a significant role in the future of society, even though bitcoin isn’t “quite there yet”.

Speaking at the sidelines of the Fortune Global Forum in China, Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang drew parallels to bitcoin’s volatility and technology stocks from the “early days of the internet”. Refreshingly, the early internet pioneer opted to speak about bitcoin as a currency rather than the go-to narrative of its value at a time when bitcoin price struck a new all-time high of $15,000 today.

“Bitcoin as a digital currency is not quite there yet,” he told CNBC. “People are not using it to transact. People are using it as an investable asset.”

Notably, he added:

"I personally am a believer in where digital currency can play a role in our society. Especially in, not only the front end of doing transactions but also in the backend of creating a much more efficient system and a much more verifiable system."

Yang’s remarks about digital currencies like bitcoin ring a similar tune to those offered by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak who sees bitcoin as a cryptocurrency that is “more genuine and real” than the U.S. dollar and superior to gold as a store of value.

“But for now,” Yang added, “it seems like [bitcoin] is more driven by the hype of investing and getting a return rather than using it as transactional currency.”

The technologists’ opinions on bitcoin are in marked contrast, however, to that of JPMorgan chief Jamie Dimon who labelled bitcoin a ‘fraud’ recently. A noted bitcoin skeptic, Dimon has previously said bitcoin “is worth nothing” in 2015, at a time when bitcoin was trading under $300. Yesterday, bitcoin’s soaring price helped propel the entire cryptocurrency market cap ahead of JPMorgan’s $360 billion.

https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/yahoo-co-founder-jerry-yang-believer-bitcoin-currency/

[kueyen]

I agree with his statements about btc being an asset, but to be honest I don't see bitcoin ever becoming a currency with which you can pay daily. Altcoins are more suited for this I think, they are faster and the transaction fees are less. There is nothing wrong with bitcoin positioning itself as an asset instead of a currency, in my opinion.

[Guardian.P]

Everyone found his own in bitcoin, someone for investment, some for transactions, some who store their savings in it, you can still give many such examples. Since we live in the digital age and the discovery of new technologies, this is the right unit for this time

[Samarkand]

I agree with his statements about btc being an asset, but to be honest I don't see bitcoin ever becoming a currency with which you can pay daily. Altcoins are more suited for this I think, they are faster and the transaction fees are less. There is nothing wrong with bitcoin positioning itself as an asset instead of a currency, in my opinion.

The problem with your argument is that if altcoins would be used for transactions in the future,
their transaction fees would rise as well. Most altcoins scale even worse than Bitcoin.

Just look at Ethereum, the 2nd biggest cryptocurrency by market cap. The CryptoKitties hype
has grinded the complete ETH network to a halt. Now imagine what would happen if there
were several other successful applications of the ETH network.

The main reason why transactions with coins like Dogecoin or Vertcoin are so cheap in terms
of transaction fees is that nobody is using them and therefore the blocks are basically empty.

The rise in BTC transaction fees is just proof of the attractiveness of Bitcoin. People are actually
paying many $ in fees, because they have a use for Bitcoin transactions.

[TheKeyLongThumbI]

Of course it is a currency. People are just used to having currencies that are printed on papers and it will take time before they will embrace that concept. And it should really be because currency represents countries but bitcoin will represent as a whole that bond us all together.