Has Bitcoin become just a speculative tool?

[krishnapramod]

Would have used the word investment instead of tool, but from the price movements (doesn't bother me, not in for the price). If bluntly put, it looks like there was no real adoption last year, just speculative bubbles popping through. Yeah, blame the media, blame MT.Gox, Tether report, whatever, but still on the surface it looks Bitcoin is just another penny stock. Manipulation is a real issue, isn't going to override it if legendaries on this forum comes up with counter arguments. Real world adoption, common phrase in crypto community, that's what needs to happen, and Bitcoin had it going in the beginning, now it ain't it. You have to infiltrate the real economy to have adoption. Behaving like an asset (gold argument, it became a store of value thousands of years after it was being used as a medium of exchange) is just 5 vs 1000, 5 replaced by another five still the same 1000, ping pong.

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[qiman]

I think now Bitcoin is just used by day traders and market manipulators purely for their own gain. I also think that we are reaching a new bottom with this price crash and do not see a market recovery for a long time. I think now the market is capitulating and Bitcoin will not see its former glory. Those days the price inflated because of the Tether fiasco so that si the only thing that keep the price of Bitcoin rising at the time. I see it will be manipulated down to 2k USD I guess.

[davis196]

Yep,btc is just a tool used by the big whales for pump and dump.This is the easiest way to any profit out of using cryptocurrencies.Unfortunately no real business will bother with implementing crypto payments,because the majority of the people just don`t use bitcoin for daily purchases.Last year,I purchased a product for 30 USD worth of btc.The bitcoin price increased from 3K to 16K and I was MAD for making that buying decision,instead of holding my btc.

[DooMAD]

Speculation is a double-edged sword.  On the one hand, it gives a steady steam of media coverage and a potentially larger audience.  But on the other, it also often gives the wrong impression, leading some people to believe speculation is the sole purpose.  All people can really give is opinions here.  It's largely a matter of perspective and personal preference.  There are undoubtedly plenty of people using Bitcoin purely for speculative purposes, but equally, there are those who use it because they disagree with fiat ideology and want a safe haven from rampant money printing and generally poor economic policies that plague "traditional" currencies.  Each to their own, in my view.  The traders just have more to lose than I do, since their BTC is at greater risk of being lost.

Personally, my earliest interest in Bitcoin was initially speculative, so had that not been a factor, perhaps I wouldn't have got involved.  But over time I began to appreciate what I now feel are the more important properties.  Now I believe that the freedom it provides is far more important (and valuable) than any fiat appraisal one might ascribe to it.  I no longer have the slightest inclination to sell my Bitcoin for any national currency.  I still believe in purchasing power, of course, so my interest isn't completely devoid of speculation.  It's just that my belief in government issued "money" is waning and I think the world can do better.  

Ultimately, I see Bitcoin as an alternative to an increasingly tyrannical, authoritarian, corrupt and economically illiterate world I wish to distance myself from.  It buckles under the weight of its own ineptitude and folly before my eyes.  Who wouldn't want an escape route from that if that's how they perceive the world?  I doubt I'm the only one here who feels that way.

[disconnectme]

There is no way people won't speculate on asset like BTC, 2017 was a difficult year for the development team and alot of things take people's mind away from the fundamentals and thanks to the hype of ETF and Futures which took the price to new ATH. Bitcoin is solving the problems is suppose to but the adoption rate is very low, because of the influx of new money (ICOs), let's hope thing will get better with time.

[Elachious12]

Speculation is part and parcel of bitcoin, this is what make the bitcoin trading interesting and fun. But I think the effect of speculation is doing more harm than good.

[richan]

Bitcoins price behavior has make analyst forecasting its price to be cautious because it has prove to be a less reliable currency which is too volatile for investment.

[Stratlaunch]

I think that the crypto market will end up being divided up into 2 sections. The first section may be similar to the stock market, while the second section will be comparable to different fiat currencies.   In order for these currencies to be adopted they will need higher transaction rates and lower transaction fees. There are already a few coins that are at the level where real world adoption is plausible. If we can go to a coffee shop and have near-instant transactions then we can start thinking about adoption.

I read somewhere yesterday that Komodo recently outperformed Visa's systems.