HODL mentality destroys the currency aspect of Bitcoin

[bitkanu]

kinda agreed with your point in the last of your post. the currency aspect of bitcoin kinda forgotten these days because of the HODL mentality like said before too. i think that there is HODL mentality because of the bitcoin price had gone too high. because of many people that greed of much amount of profit and many people heard from others how beautiful its profit. then, HODL mentality born.

Hold mentality also can be found on another currency like USD, GBP, and many more but the interesting fact is that none of them get affected. Bitcoin as a currency is divisible into decimals amount so why worry so much?
Even if the price of bitcoin could just go to 1 million dollar, you can still spend an amount equal of $1 by using bitcoin, so there's nothing to worry.

[Scallywag]

the volatility is what attracted people to bitcoin , 99% don't even care about the uses it has/can have. so this what you get , a market driven by greed. that isn't solely the reason , bitcoins own scalability and transaction time problems certainly did their part in that.

[Menawi12]

It seems like only a small fraction of bitcoins as well as other cryptocurrencies gets earned while the vast majority of the coins are bought. But when people buy coins, they obviously aim exclusively at selling them later at a higher price, which is what speculation basically consists in because it makes no economic sense to buy a cryptocurrency to spend it on goods when people can easily spend fiat instead. However, if the price goes down, people aren't going to spend their coins either. And whenever someone complains about prices going down, the only reply they receive is just to hold to their precious bitcoins, no matter what the price could or would be. I have yet to meet anyone telling these bag holders to spend their stashes on something useful.

Apparently, the HODL mentality kills the currency aspect of Bitcoin.

I think its about speculation on cyrptomarket. People want to make profits from their speculation and thats normal because people want doubling their money. Bitcoin or crypto now unspendable to purchase but with crypto market capitalisation growth, price must be rising too

[Bellator]

Rightly said, HODL has destroyed the real purpose of Bitcoin. BTC originally invented as the alternative payment source not as a Financial saving instrument. Rising Price of BTC made people forget the concept behind it and start buying and HODL it to earn huge profit.

I agree with that holding bitcoin vanishes its purpose,we practically used it for long term investments,thinking that it would reach more higher than today.People take advantage to hold and buy since the price goes dip and hold for long.Instead of using it in paying online transactions of different goods and as payment of bills.
I just thought that people had already opened up some ways inorder to make bitcoin as a useful tool most specially on making profit.Bitcoiners used to go with the flow on the current usage of bitcoins.People mine,trade,hold and make it as a form of payments.

[Falmera]

Im a hodler of spendable crypto, Bitcoin, Litecoin and Monero but I actually cannot easily spend them on goods I want.
I might be corrected now after this post but I am looking to buy a used camera and I actually dont mind spending some crypto for it.
My dilemma is where can I get my camera in exchange for crypto?

thats the problem there are not enough retailers accepting crypto and i do agree that hodling is not what Satoshi meant for bitcoin
it has become a speculative tool because of the volatility of the markets.

What you are telling us is so true. We can rarely use crypto coins in buying goods that we need and want. In our country I still do not notice that crypto coin is already used for payment transactions and much more in buying things.
When the price is low, it is expected that everyone will not trade their coins. Of course no body wants to lose his money. Everybody wants profit.

[Sled]

I don't think that there is something wrong with the HODL mentality because it is up to the people if they are going to stick to that mentality because it is a good mentality to just hodl their bitcoins because that is how we are going to minimize the supply of bitcoin and that is how we can reach more and more high prices in the future. So i don't see anything wrong about hodl mentality.

[September11Myth]

True, this is a contraddiction which well depicts why Bitcoin has so far failed as a currency. Adoption is finalized to speculation, not to real use, for 99% of the people. Difficult to foresee where this will lead to.

[Canis Majoris]

Yes, great point! The catch is that for something to become a currency, it has to have much much lower volatility than bitcoin has now. I'm not going to buy coffee for bitcoin if I can see that it can possibly 1) buy 2 coffees using the same amount in a week, or 2) I could have bought 2 coffees for the same amount a week ago. When the price stabilizes then it will be much more viable as a method of payment. Although to be fair, I do use bitcoin as a method of payment every now and then, by converting fiat into btc, and buying the thing right away, so it doesn't have time to change value significantly. That works, but it's cumbersome, can have a lot of fees and of course, that's not the point of crypto. So, I guess we'll be waiting for some big institutional money to come into crypto, which will cause more adoption, which will cause the price to stabilize in the end after having a big climb

Myself, I don't believe that prices are going to stabilize if - and this is a big if - institutional money comes into crypto. Really, why would high-caliber investors want that? Some have tried, like the Winklevoss twins, and how much did it help stabilize prices? Not in the slightest, I daresay. On the contrary, there is strong empirical evidence, as the Mt. Gox trustee has shown us, that at high prices whales are more willing to sell off and get the fuck out. It looks like we need many more such cycles to shake them out of their coins. And the positive outcome is still not set in stone.

[Kayla]

We can not blame others for keeping their bitcoins at a low price. It is a normal person's trait to hold the bitcoin to the desired price. Moreover, he bought at a high price, surely he will sell it when the price is higher than the price when buying it. Surely people do not want to lose, really not. Actually I want to use bitcoin to buy the things I want. But in my country it is forbidden to trade using bitcoin, because the state will crack down on bitcoin users. So it's not necessarily the ones holding back the bitcoin because just to wait for the high price.

[CrazeCoinz]

This is not a problem of mentality, but simply to make the choice that - from an economic point of view - is considered more convenient.
And at the moment it is better to preserve what one has.

Yeah, you can not please everyone as we all have our own strategy to make a good profits on this technology. Many people thinks that holding your coins will give them fortune in the future because it's a decentralize currency and in the coming years the supply will become few. Besides, it is not a mortal sin to hold your coins as no rules about it.

[Notcalculator]

It's just that it's more convenient to hold than to spend. Not much stores accept btc as payment anyway. Additionally the underlying technology so far doesnt support day to day transaction. Blockchain is really slow so far and We have to wait for improvements.  When btc gets more popular and it becomes profitable to accept it as payment, people would start accepting it as payment.

[Canis Majoris]

This is not a problem of mentality, but simply to make the choice that - from an economic point of view - is considered more convenient.
And at the moment it is better to preserve what one has.

Yeah, you can not please everyone as we all have our own strategy to make a good profits on this technology. Many people thinks that holding your coins will give them fortune in the future because it's a decentralize currency and in the coming years the supply will become few. Besides, it is not a mortal sin to hold your coins as no rules about it.

I agree that it is not a deadly sin, at least none of the established seven of them, but it can still be deadly to the coin being tightly held. Many people think that the more coins people stash away, the higher will be the price in the end. Personally, I don't think this is or will be the case in reality. If there is a real need for a cryptocurrency, scarce supply will only lead to the emergence of alternative coins which are going to offer essentially the same benefits transaction-wise. As a matter of fact, it is the way things already are in the cryptoverse.

[Semosuchi Tesongrato]

It doesn't make sense to talk about mentality. When trading, we simply try to get the best possible result, based on the information we have available. So, sometimes it is better to keep the coins, other times it is better to sell them. Simple.

[Canis Majoris]

It's just that it's more convenient to hold than to spend. Not much stores accept btc as payment anyway. Additionally the underlying technology so far doesnt support day to day transaction. Blockchain is really slow so far and We have to wait for improvements.  When btc gets more popular and it becomes profitable to accept it as payment, people would start accepting it as payment.

I came to the conclusion that stores don't accept crypto because people don't want to spend it in the first place - they prefer to hold their coins - and not the other way around. Shops are eager to accept anything if that contributes to demand and leads to higher consumption. Some people say that volatility is the major issue with wider adoption of Bitcoin as well as other cryptocurrencies but I doubt that as you can easily hedge volatility, and this is what payment processors are likely doing anyway.

[kingkonjac]

in one aspect you are right, hodl is making btc an asset and far away from being a currency but in the future if the price would be stable than no one would hodl it and it can become like a dollar,.

[Canis Majoris]

in one aspect you are right, hodl is making btc an asset and far away from being a currency but in the future if the price would be stable than no one would hodl it and it can become like a dollar,.

I'm afraid these times lie in a too-distant future that we could make any reliable prediction about their coming. Other than that, I don't see what is going to change that would make Bitcoin into a full-fledged currency. Fiat is not going away anyway, so it will be used as a primary means of exchange, while cryptocurrencies will be used for speculation and, in the best case scenario, as a proxy to fiat, definitely not as a self-sufficient means of payment.

[nightways]

You offer a perfect example of what is called a non sequitur.

You offer a perfect example of someone who doesn't understand something so therefore thinks it is illogical.

High price for genuine jewelry doesn't mean that people buy it for the purpose of investing.

I'm not saying they buy it for investment but that the choice of precious metals and gems performs that function. If they just wanted it for ornamental purposes why do they pay hundreds of times the price they need to?
What I am saying is the reason jewellery has been made from gold since time began is because of its limited supply and therefore its function as a store of value.

It is simply pointless from an economic view-point. Those who are investing in precious metals buy coins and bars.

Actually, serious investors will do it through ETFs as that makes much more sense if viewed purely from an economic standpoint. But again that misses the point. The only reason there is demand for gold through jewellery is because of its function as a store of wealth.

Or do you seriously believe that when two people marry, they buy gold rings for investment purposes?

Do you seriously think that is what I'm suggesting?

Note that I don't reject the fact that high demand for gold and low supply of it account for the high prices of this precious metal.

So you understand part of the picture.

But the demand comes mostly from the glamor and personal adornment industry, but that has nothing to do with investing in precious metals.

And that industry only exists because gold acts as a store of wealth.

In my opinion, there is a slightly difference in between an asset and a currency and that they cannot be termed as the similar terms. Bitcoin is having so many advantages and features that it fulfills the criteria of being an asset as well as currency at the very same time. this is the reason why it is being used as both the ways and that this thing will keep on happening in the coming days as well.

[cherrymobile]

It seems like only a small fraction of bitcoins as well as other cryptocurrencies gets earned while the vast majority of the coins are bought. But when people buy coins, they obviously aim exclusively at selling them later at a higher price, which is what speculation basically consists in because it makes no economic sense to buy a cryptocurrency to spend it on goods when people can easily spend fiat instead. However, if the price goes down, people aren't going to spend their coins either. And whenever someone complains about prices going down, the only reply they receive is just to hold to their precious bitcoins, no matter what the price could or would be. I have yet to meet anyone telling these bag holders to spend their stashes on something useful.

Apparently, the HODL mentality kills the currency aspect of Bitcoin.

no holding destory a lot of people because theyre assuming that they will get a lot of money in the future but they didnt know that short trading is more ggoood than holding it for a long time its too late to hold your bitcoin because it pumpso very high but its more good if you have a bitcoins in 2015 i think holding will destroy a lot of people their mind if they loss.

[TheQuin]

~

In my opinion, there is a slightly difference in between an asset and a currency and that they cannot be termed as the similar terms. Bitcoin is having so many advantages and features that it fulfills the criteria of being an asset as well as currency at the very same time. this is the reason why it is being used as both the ways and that this thing will keep on happening in the coming days as well.

I absolutely agree as I pointed out in my first post in this thread https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3183958.msg32995370#msg32995370

It is well worth reading that article I linked to and downloading the research report it references. I was focussing on the asset side of things in the post you quoted as the OP rejects the obvious similarities between Bitcoin and Gold.

[sundul]

Well, HODL is a form of investment and I don't think it destroys the Bitcoin but rather it will strengthen its value. There is also the volume in circulation that is actively being traded, making the market alive.

I agree with you. I also think that holding it does not destroy Bitcoin but actually increase the value of Bitcoin. With our continuous hold, of course, the value of Bitcoin will continue to be high.