Progressing adoption

[Aura]

Lately, I have not been hearing much about Bitcoin, other than media mentioning that the value is decreasing. In addition, the transaction volume processed by payment gateways is also decreasing. I feel that adoption has come close to a standstill. What is your opinion about this?
I think we should look at benefits of Bitcoin for merchants, to increase the active circulation. For example, bitcoin is a cheaper alternative to debit- and creditcards as merchants have to pay less interchange fees. Therefore we should contribute as a community by helping merchants to implement this system in their store. Merchants could possibly attract customers by giving discounts for paying with Bitcoin. What is your idea for progressing adoption of Bitcoin?

[TimeHacker]

Hm, hard to say how the broad picture looks like.
Maybe the transaction volume processed by payment gateways is decreasing, but the number of BTC transactions per day seems to be growing according to https://www.blockchain.com/charts

[hatshepsut93]

Merchants don't want to adopt Bitcoin for 2 main reasons: there's very little demand for it from their customers, and it has somewhat grey legal status or even outright banned in certain places. Users don't want to adopt Bitcoin, because it's volatile, hard to use, few merchants accept it (so, there's kinda a feedback loop here), and very few people are "woke" in a sense that banks represent a risk to their financial freedom.

[Indamuck]

Bitcoin needs that one killer app to bring in new users.  Look at how many of these video games gets hundreds of millions of users per month.  If some revolutionary service or game only takes BTC as payment that would be groundbreaking.

[kingpin4321]

A topic similar to the one in which the OP has started has some time ago been discussed broadly on the forum
It would be wise you take a look https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5095408.msg49151869#msg49151869

[snipie]

Random and fake altcoins and tokens have a negative impact for the adoption of real cryptocurrencies including bitcoin...
The adoption will be more important in the feature in a cashless society for sure

[abojamal]

Lately, I have not been hearing much about Bitcoin, other than media mentioning that the value is decreasing. In addition, the transaction volume processed by payment gateways is also decreasing. I feel that adoption has come close to a standstill. What is your opinion about this?
I think we should look at benefits of Bitcoin for merchants, to increase the active circulation. For example, bitcoin is a cheaper alternative to debit- and creditcards as merchants have to pay less interchange fees. Therefore we should contribute as a community by helping merchants to implement this system in their store. Merchants could possibly attract customers by giving discounts for paying with Bitcoin. What is your idea for progressing adoption of Bitcoin?

Decreased value may be the last step of adoption or for a pump
Whales are waiting for very low prices and they seem to be getting closer
The market can no longer go down
Banks, and the traditional financial system, are waiting for many concessions from a BTC society in order to maintain their leadership and huge gains.

[proTECH77]

There are series of blockage that hiders the progressing adoption of bitcoin which ranging from it legal framework which differs from countries to countries also there is issue of usability of the said bitcoin. The use and adoption will come but in near future i presume.

[harizen]

Therefore we should contribute as a community by helping merchants to implement this system in their store. Merchants could possibly attract customers by giving discounts for paying with Bitcoin. What is your idea for progressing adoption of Bitcoin?

That concern was already in the table for a long time now. It was being discussed. As far as my knowledge is concern, I think other merchants implemented the crypto payment system while others still not accepting even it's been years now since they got some request. And because of the bearish dominance that strucks the whole year of 2018, it's now not in the priority list anymore. I think if 2017 hype continues until now, we can see a big progress on "adoption".

As usual, just let the adoption grow without any hype. Trust the process.

[passwordnow]

We can't tell them what they should do about discounts or promo's just because they are accepting bitcoin as a payment. It's already a privilege if ever most of these merchants you'll talk to going to start accepting and adopting bitcoin as payment. But that's just it, we can't do something about it if they don't have the nerve to adopt it. If they see it profitable and helpful to their business, they'll adopt it but if there's no use to it and their customers aren't aware of bitcoin, they won't use it.

In addition, the transaction volume processed by payment gateways is also decreasing.

I don't think so that the volume is decreasing. $5B daily volume is too low for you?

[squatter]

Lately, I have not been hearing much about Bitcoin, other than media mentioning that the value is decreasing. In addition, the transaction volume processed by payment gateways is also decreasing. I feel that adoption has come close to a standstill. What is your opinion about this?

That was true during the last longer-term bear market as well. It wasn't until 2017 that Bitcoin started regularly making headlines again. Before that, the media hype was pretty dead.

I remember seeing some chart from Bitpay that showed that consumer spending spiked a lot when price rose in 2017. Consumer spending might follow a similar pattern -- transaction volume might rise during bull markets and fall during bear markets.

[o_e_l_e_o]

For example, bitcoin is a cheaper alternative to debit- and creditcards as merchants have to pay less interchange fees.

This is only true if the merchant accepting crypto is either keeping it as crypto, or trading it to fiat manually. If they are using a service like BitPay, which will allow them to accept crypto but instead be paid in fiat, there is a 1% charge which is pretty comparable/only marginally cheaper than most credit card transaction fees.

Therefore we should contribute as a community by helping merchants to implement this system in their store.

Agreed. I often hear people lamenting the fact that bitcoin adoption isn't more widespread, whilst simultaneously doing nothing about it and not trying to spend their bitcoin. Speak to your local grocer, coffee shop, corner shop, tradesman, whoever and ask them to accept crypto. If they don't know there is a demand, then they have no incentive to start using it.

[bitart]

A different perspective:
Merchants, who can afford to accept bitcoin and let it sit in their cold wallet now (that means they have to provide liquidity from elsewhere) so if merchants can afford not to just accept bitcoin and exchange it on the fly with payment processors, they would gain a lot in the case when the price of bitcoin will start to go up again. But until then, if they want to keep their accepted bitcoins, they have to put in some cash in order to let their business run... So basically they could just buy bitcoin directly if they want to accumulate some, there's no need to accept it, it's much more hassle and no gain on the short run.
They can choose to accept bitcoin and only exchange a part of it, to cover their costs, so in this case their net earnings will remain in bitcoin, so they can multiply their earnings on the long run, if they choose this. But in this case, the owners of the business have to wait some time if they want to get some cash out from their company as a dividend...

[dothebeats]

Adoption halts whenever bitcoin also halts on development within its own ecosystem, and also the price as well. As long as services and merchants don't hear anything about bitcoin on the news or even see it on the internet, they wouldn't bother and just go on with their merry way using fiat transactions on their services and merchandise. Should the trend and hype of 2017 carried on until now, we might even see small businesses integrating bitcoin and crypto payments, however that isn't the case.

[Indrawan77]

Since vitcoin got huge correction there hasn't been a lot of news, there are few adoption news in US and othee countries but all in small scale, if the government hasn't agree to legalize crypto there won't be any adoption, and from the bitcoin itself the volatility is too high when the bitcoin popularity hit the peak in 2017, there are merchants that try to receive btc as payment, but because of the volatility they said it's not suitable to be used for daily transactions yet, the progress of the adoption in ongoing but it moves in a slow phase

[aoluain]

Is it not just a simple case of merchants nit being aware that people
would like to pay with bitcoin and or crypto?

If we all have the attitude of holding bitcoin then we are not spending
it so there is no incentive for merchants to accept it

Bitcoin works great as a peer to peer payment system, there are no
borders and and transfers are quite quick but IMO the ecosystem
is not complete because people are buying bitcoin with FIAT so
what would be the point of buying a bicycle for example with
bitcoin which was bought with FIAT.

If there was more earning opportunities then there would be more
inclinations to spend. IMO

[bartolo]

The ball is in users court. What incentive did merchants have when they started to accept credit or debit cards? They even lose money when they are paid via credit cards, but they knew there were a lot of customers who wished to pay with their cards, so they had to implement them as a payment method. The same will happen with bitcoin. When there are a lot of customers who wish to pay with their bitcoins they will accept it as a mean of payment.

[CryptoBry]

Merchants don't want to adopt Bitcoin for 2 main reasons: there's very little demand for it from their customers, and it has somewhat grey legal status or even outright banned in certain places. Users don't want to adopt Bitcoin, because it's volatile, hard to use, few merchants accept it (so, there's kinda a feedback loop here), and very few people are "woke" in a sense that banks represent a risk to their financial freedom.

These are realities that challenged Bitcoin maybe right from the very beginning and unless something concrete can be done to negate these challenges then these can all affect the long-term viability of Bitcoin. Of course, many hodlers and traders may not agree all with these facts but we can never bury our heads in the sands for too long. While we have to be dreamers we also have to be pragmatists...as we can't just wish things away and they are gone for good. Bitcoin can still be a shining prince though and the next few years can make it or break it. Let's all work to make the former a big reality.

[pooya87]

when you compare things with the ATH it obviously looks like decreasing. it is like saying bitcoin price is decreasing because it came down from $20k instead of looking at the bigger picture that it has increased from $0 to $3k+ in a short time.
the payment processors are actually seeing an increase in their usage but when you compare it with the ATH which has always been also the ATH of payments, it obviously looks like decreasing.
as for the adoption, it is not something that stops. it is always ongoing but since the price is not moving the media doesn't cover it much and consequently people don't hear about it. for example did you even know that a US state recently adopted bitcoin as a legal currency?

[Yaunfitda]

Lately, I have not been hearing much about Bitcoin, other than media mentioning that the value is decreasing.

Obviously, the hype died down. Specially when we entered the bearish zone in 2018 and up to this day.

In addition, the transaction volume processed by payment gateways is also decreasing. I feel that adoption has come close to a standstill. What is your opinion about this?

I guess it really boils down to the volatility of the market. Business wise it's a downside, but who knows, maybe merchants are still at lost as to how accepting bitcoin will benefit them, (i.e increasing customers).

I think we should look at benefits of Bitcoin for merchants, to increase the active circulation. For example, bitcoin is a cheaper alternative to debit- and creditcards as merchants have to pay less interchange fees. Therefore we should contribute as a community by helping merchants to implement this system in their store. Merchants could possibly attract customers by giving discounts for paying with Bitcoin. What is your idea for progressing adoption of Bitcoin?

I think it will be a long process. And unless someone big, like Amazon started to accept bitcoin as payment and set the precedence, it will be a difficult road for bitcoin to be even become one payment options.