Utility Uses of Bitcoin in General

[Z_MBFM]

1. Investing: Speculation on increased value and arbitrage.
2. Store of Value: No intent to sell at higher price or higher price after inflation accounted for.
3. Business contract payments including regular bill or invoice paying
4. Retail and service/virtual purchase transactions
5. Banking: Transmitting value overseas among different banking jurisdictions
6. Banking: Temporary holding for banking needs, or acquiring to sending money to others without a specific bill or retail transaction involved.
7. Tokenization of assets by tying Bitcoin ownership to ownership of another asset.
8. Public Statements using Bitcoin's comment feature.

Do you think this list is in the correct order of most to least likely uses of Bitcoin? How would you rank or change this list?

It wont be as easy as you describing, I think by not considering this daily use of money we can use bitcoin as future gold. Where inflation can never reach. To make this happened I think bitcoin spot etf need to accepted by all over worlds government and peoples.

[caroasi]

I guess in current times the best use case of Bitcoin in my eyes and in the eyes of most hodlers is that it works pretty well as store of value and can grow in value overtime as more investors start investing money in Bitcoin.

Although, it can still be used as a payment system and it's used that way on daily basis but the best one can do with Bitcoin is by holding it for long term to gain some profits from it.

I think Bitcoin ended up sort of accidentally having a strong use case as a store of value. People make vast gains with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, then they cannot easily sell without getting extreme levels of taxation. So, people stand pat on their fortunes with the intention of simply spending it more directly rather than exchanging it for fiat currency. But because of the high transaction fees preventing retail adoption, that might be even more of a focus in the future as extreme returns are no longer considered a strong prospect at some point in the future (whether that point is months, years, or decades in the future). And it seems like Bitcoin is actually being adopted more quickly for more things than in the past. Store-of-value long-term holders are using Travala and gift cards quite a bit to spend some of their assets on an as-needed basis. So in that respect store-of-value holders really pairs with retail and contract use cases.

[Zlantann]

I guess in current times the best use case of Bitcoin in my eyes and in the eyes of most hodlers is that it works pretty well as store of value and can grow in value overtime as more investors start investing money in Bitcoin.

Although, it can still be used as a payment system and it's used that way on daily basis but the best one can do with Bitcoin is by holding it for long term to gain some profits from it.

If we survey the use of Bitcoin, I guess a majority of respondents would attest that they are using Bitcoin as an investment. Some people do not care about privacy or controlling their finances, so the decentralised attribute of Bitcoin is not appealing to them. Most of us just want to keep our money in a safe asset and wait until it appreciates before we sell.

Few businesses accept Bitcoin as a payment option but most people still prefer using Fiat for daily transactions since it is stable and widely used. Maybe in the future Bitcoin's value might be stable and more nations will legalise it, which might make its daily use more popular.   

   

[kryptqnick]

The order of priority would be different for each Bitcoin user, depending on what they focus on. The order could also be based on actual usage, but I honestly don't know where we could get reliable data on that. I assume investing is the most common use, followed by trading, gambling, and then the rest from the list. I wouldn't make two banking points, and I think both trading and gambling deserve to be on the list but aren't there for some reason. Unlike investing, trading means doing lots of operations with Bitcoin regularly. And as for gambling, I still believe it's among the top uses of Bitcoin as a form of money.

[Minor Miner]

I guess in current times the best use case of Bitcoin in my eyes and in the eyes of most hodlers is that it works pretty well as store of value and can grow in value overtime as more investors start investing money in Bitcoin.

Although, it can still be used as a payment system and it's used that way on daily basis but the best one can do with Bitcoin is by holding it for long term to gain some profits from it.

If we survey the use of Bitcoin, I guess a majority of respondents would attest that they are using Bitcoin as an investment. Some people do not care about privacy or controlling their finances, so the decentralised attribute of Bitcoin is not appealing to them. Most of us just want to keep our money in a safe asset and wait until it appreciates before we sell.

Yes, most view bitcoin as an investment rather than any of its use cases. I asked some people if bitcoin became stable, would they continue to stick with it and use it? Or they will quickly look for another alternative investment account. Even though many people say they will continue to stick with it even when it stabilizes, I'm skeptical of what they say.

I would like to add that I think investing is completely different from storing value. Investing means we can have profits or losses but for a store of value it needs stability so I don't think bitcoin would be the ideal store of value.

Few businesses accept Bitcoin as a payment option but most people still prefer using Fiat for daily transactions since it is stable and widely used. Maybe in the future Bitcoin's value might be stable and more nations will legalise it, which might make its daily use more popular.   

   

Some people are excited about businesses or organizations accepting bitcoin payments, but how many people would use bitcoin to pay instead of traditional payment methods? Because as I see it, we all just want to hold bitcoin for profit, very few people want to use it except in emergencies. So I never expected or believed that bitcoin could become a popular currency or payment method.

If in the future bitcoin becomes stable, it is also unlikely to become a payment method, it could be a store of value, a safe haven like gold, IMO.

[el kaka22]

I do not think that eight is really that much used, or at least that much cared about, nobody really cares if you sign a message using the chain because that's rarely that important and we could just ignore that if we do not want to be part of it. However, we are going to end up with a good result if we know what we are doing with this, since that means we have the first four, which are the by far best uses of it.

It's great for investing for obvious reasons and I do not need to explain to them because we are all here and know it already, we all know gold type of investments has been used for a long time so it is not a shock, but at the same time we are talking about payment process at third and fourth which are great too.

I have used all four so far in my life and I can tell you that it is far greater than anything in fiat and everyone should be incredibly happy with it, there is no doubt about that and we can only make this work perfectly whenever we get some time.

[Zoomic]

Do you think this list is in the correct order of most to least likely uses of Bitcoin? How would you rank or change this list?

What may be important to you, may not be important to me. With this, we do not need to bother about what comes first or last in terms of Bitcoin's usage. All the points stated above about bitcoin are actually accurate, I will also love to add that bitcoin has been very useful in aiding payments through escrow where trust and transparency is paramount.

There are lots of things yet to be discovered we can actually use bitcoin for,  it will only take time for these uses to unfold. Some years back, many didn't know that bitcoin can actually be used as an investment aside just being used as a means of payment.  Now, almost every bitcoiner is trying hard to take advantage of the bitcoin price fluctuations to make money for themselves. Every bitcoiner is at liberty to use bitcoin the way they will enjoy maximum benefits from it, provided the usage is legal and does not cause harm to the next person.

[Wiwo]

No.  The order is very subjective.  For me, the best Utility of Bitcoin is definitely not the arbitrage and Investment but that I can use it to my liking and with out having to explain to anybody what, where from, how, why, when, to whom.  Arbitrage is of course an advantage because after all our lives depend on Money but that is not the strongest point.  The strongest points are still the ones it has been created for.

Privacy, decentralization and the rest of all the anonymousity in bitcoin are bitcoin primary and core utility, anything aside that is just an addition just like a second layer bitcoin usage, but the main points and those that you mentioned and that I mention above, unlike some shitcoin that are tie to one single platform to provides utility, bitcoin on the other hand have such a fundamental responsibility to protect the privacy of it users.

[SamReomo]

If we survey the use of Bitcoin, I guess a majority of respondents would attest that they are using Bitcoin as an investment.

Yes, the survey will always result that way because most people who have invested in Bitcoin don't really know much about it or its history. All they know is that it's a good asset and the ones who invested in early have made good money and that's why they might also make money by investing in it.

A few weeks ago one of my friend told me that he invested $40 in Bitcoin in hope to get 2x return from that investment. After holding his investment for 4-6 months he only profited $3 and then he somehow converted his Bitcoin back to USDT and withdrawn it as fiat.

He told me that someone from his friends has told him to invest in Bitcoin and that's why he invested in it, and when I asked him that how much you know about Bitcoin? He replied not much but his friend said it's a good asset for the investors and nothing else.

[Saint-loup]

I don't understand why you're talking about markets now? The topic is about the "Utility Uses" of Bitcoin, not about how you could try to make money with Bitcoin.

Making a profit from Bitcoin is what perhaps 95% of Bitcoin users do with it today. This is not what Satoshi envisioned, but that's the reality of Bitcoin circa 2024.

Helping unbanked people, is maybe not what you care about the most, but Satoshi wanted to build something allowing to transact without the need of using banks.

No, he made Bitcoin for people who could not safely use a bank or other institution for fear of government prosecution or persecution. Surely most people who use Bitcoin--now, as well as in the beginning--already had some kind of bank account. They merely wanted to put... certain assets... out of the reach of their government, and/or wanted to be able to trade in such a way that could not be traced by their government.

If you wanted to make a developing world solution, it would be rather strange--especially 15 years ago--to create something that requires the internet and a computing device in order to use.

I'm not saying Bitcoin can't be used this way--it can, and is--but it wasn't made for that in mind anymore than it was made for what Bitcoin is mostly used for today e.g. an investment instrument.

Anyhow, the original point I was making in my OP (such that we can reel the conversation back on track here ), is that it's important not to look at what Bitcoin "can" do, but rather what can it do that nothing else can do. Bank cards etc. work well for much of the world's daily transactions, and Bitcoin was never intended to replace those transactions. Monero works correctly as a government-proof means of value transfer. Haypenny currencies are far faster and cheaper than credit cards. Bitcoin's only meme is "Bitcoin". Etc. etc.

We're trying to answer, "what can you use Bitcoin for", and... I think we're answering that, right?

If he just wanted to create a money for people who could not safely use a bank or other institution for fear of government prosecution or persecution as you say. Why did he created a currency based on a public ledger(the blockchain) allowing anyone to track all the transactions from(or to) any address? Cash money is way more safe than Bitcoin to transact without risks of being tracked by anyone.
In addition Bitcoin can be used without internet, you can just give one or several private keys from addresses containing funds to pay someone you trust. Or you can simply give him a signed transaction to broadcast later if he trusts you.

[legiteum]

If he just wanted to create a money for people who could not safely use a bank or other institution for fear of government prosecution or persecution as you say. Why did he created a currency based on a public ledger(the blockchain) allowing anyone to track all the transactions from(or to) any address? Cash money is way more safe than Bitcoin to transact without risks of being tracked by anyone.

Physical cash can't be easily transmitted on the internet. There's obviously a strong need for electronic means of value transfer.

As for the public ledger, I suspect that was a design trade-off, and I also suspect Satoshi didn't quite anticipate the effectiveness of chain analysis. You have to remember that in the beginning, by far the biggest challenge for Bitcoin was establishing trust since the notion of digital tokens was quite strange at the time. Also, the encrypted ledger ala Monero is another layer of complexity on top of what--again, at the time--was already an incredibly complex system.

[Hamza2424]

There is no order in my opinion but all are true about the uses of Bitcoin in general, depending on each individual's point of view, their perspective on BTc itself.

Hmm, OP had complied with most of the things in general but if we check out some points specifically they seem to be UN-realistic utilities at least for a person like me, especially point no 4, it will be impractical with the passage of time because, with the increase market valuation, most of the people will lose affordance to use Bitcoin as a payment option for virtual purchase and service transactions.   

[Saint-loup]

Physical cash can't be easily transmitted on the internet. There's obviously a strong need for electronic means of value transfer.

As for the public ledger, I suspect that was a design trade-off, and I also suspect Satoshi didn't quite anticipate the effectiveness of chain analysis. You have to remember that in the beginning, by far the biggest challenge for Bitcoin was establishing trust since the notion of digital tokens was quite strange at the time. Also, the encrypted ledger ala Monero is another layer of complexity on top of what--again, at the time--was already an incredibly complex system.

Those are pure speculations on your part in order to try to grasp at straws. Bitcoin exists since 15 years now, and it's still using a public ledger allowing anyone to track any transaction, it's still way less safe than cash money for hidding transactions. So if its goal is to be a tool against government surveillance and persecution why it has never evolved to integrate any obfuscation feature till now? In addition Satoshi doesn't talk anywhere about governments in his white paper, but he describes Bitcoin as "A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash [allowing] online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution." Financial institution means banks...

https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

[legiteum]

Those are pure speculations on your part in order to try to grasp at straws. Bitcoin exists since 15 years now, and it's still using a public ledger allowing anyone to track any transaction, it's still way less safe than cash money for hidding transactions. So if its goal is to be a tool against government surveillance and persection why it has never evolved to integrate any obfuscation feature till now?

Authorities being able to do chain analysis is fairly new. I recall the first 5-10 years of Bitcoin's existence, most people considered it pretty private. And lots of cyber-extortion crimes were committed using Bitcoin, which is pretty strong evidence that people--in this case people who were literally betting their lives on it--thought Bitcoin was government-proof in terms of privacy.

In addition Satoshi doesn't talk anywhere about governments in his white paper, but he describes Bitcoin as "A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash [allowing] online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution." Financial institution means banks...

Clearly that implies a financial institution that cannot be audited by a government. You must be pretty new to the Bitcoin community if you aren't aware of the anti-government theme of creation of Bitcoin .

[Saint-loup]

Oh, you mean this red tagged Full Member account from december 2023 is a sock puppet account actually?   What a surprise. Anyway bro, if Bitcoin has been designed to be an anti-government currency then we can wonder if it didn't fail. Because it's now fully accepted and regulated in most countries, some of them are officialy holding it, and it is even a legal tender currency in few of them. Despite that, Bitcoin hasn't changed and it still doesn't obfuscate its transactions. So maybe during its "cypherpunk" era, in its very first years, it has been seen as a tool against governments by a part of its community but I don't think it was the initial goal of Satoshi and I don't think it's still the goal of its current community either. For me, it has mainly been designed to be an alternative to the central and commercial banks system before anything else.

[legiteum]

Oh, you mean this red tagged Full Member account from december 2023 is a sock puppet account actually?   What a surprise.

I don't know if you are talking about my account or not, but if you are then you... need to calm down? My account is... my account. This is the only account I have or have ever had. And it's not "red tagged", whatever that means.

And I'm really not seeing why this discussion is so extremely emotional that you are making it personal like that.

So maybe during its "cypherpunk" era, in its very first years, it has been seen as a tool against governments by a part of its community but I don't think it was the initial goal of Satoshi and I don't think it's still the goal of its current community either. For me, it has mainly been designed to be an alternative to the central and commercial banks system before anything else.

If you don't care about government oversight into transactions, then the utility of Bitcoin, as compared to existing transaction mechanisms, it greatly diminished. Bitcoin is much more expensive than ordinary transfer mechanisms for all but a tiny number of very large transactions. For most of the billions of daily transactions, Bitcoin is far more expensive and far slower--and most developed-country consumers have a bank account already, and have access to things like credit cards and other bank-based payment methods.

Perhaps your perspective is different: maybe your business requires a lot of large-scale money transfer all of the time. But that isn't a problem that very many people have.

[Churchillvv]

Your point of view on bitcoin utilities is very correct but perhaps their is no hierarchy among them all because basically everyone is entitled to their opinion on whatever use the deem most vital of all so that's how they would rank it's utility too.

There is no order in my opinion but all are true about the uses of Bitcoin in general, depending on each individual's point of view, their perspective on BTc itself.

Hmm, OP had complied with most of the things in general but if we check out some points specifically they seem to be UN-realistic utilities at least for a person like me, especially point no 4, it will be impractical with the passage of time because, with the increase market valuation, most of the people will lose affordance to use Bitcoin as a payment option for virtual purchase and service transactions.   

Maybe you haven't looked at the collectible board in this forum where members purchase goods and collectibles via bitcoin even though I haven't made such purchase but I know that people do it frequently, it's just your own point of view or it's just that you're ignorant towards that part of bitcoin but apparently everything op mentioned here is very realistic but only to those who use them base on what they want.

[davis196]

1. Investing: Speculation on increased value and arbitrage.
2. Store of Value: No intent to sell at higher price or higher price after inflation accounted for.
3. Business contract payments including regular bill or invoice paying
4. Retail and service/virtual purchase transactions
5. Banking: Transmitting value overseas among different banking jurisdictions
6. Banking: Temporary holding for banking needs, or acquiring to sending money to others without a specific bill or retail transaction involved.
7. Tokenization of assets by tying Bitcoin ownership to ownership of another asset.
8. Public Statements using Bitcoin's comment feature.

Do you think this list is in the correct order of most to least likely uses of Bitcoin? How would you rank or change this list?

I don't think that the "public statements using Bitcoin's comment feature" are particularly useful for the average BTC user/investor/trader.
Also the "tokenization" thing is not useful at all and has nothing to do with the core features of the BTC blockchain.
You could summarize your list in basically two or three points. Store of value(even though the price is volatile) and medium of exchange.
Those are the main features of every currency and BTC is supposed to be a currency(but unfortunately it is still being viewed as "digital gold"). The third most important feature of BTC is "being your own bank" and not relying on a third party to store your wealth, but not a lot of Bitcoiners are using this feature.

[GreatArkansas]

(....)
2. Store of Value: No intent to sell at higher price or higher price after inflation accounted for.
4. Retail and service/virtual purchase transactions
(...)

For me, this is the main use of Bitcoin for me, because I already experiencing it and that's how I am using  Bitcoin right now. Most of the time is for transactions and modes of payments.
Bitcoin being the store of value is already given to me because since I owned Bitcoin, I have already considered it always as a store of value and I continue to hodl Bitcoin.

[MeGold666]

1. Investing: Speculation on increased value and arbitrage.
Correct.

2. Store of Value: No intent to sell at higher price or higher price after inflation accounted for.
Correct.

3. Business contract payments including regular bill or invoice paying
Incorrect. Reason: Most businesses need financial privacy (due to competition).

4. Retail and service/virtual purchase transactions
Incorrect. Reason: Too expensive to use and too slow.

5. Banking: Transmitting value overseas among different banking jurisdictions
Correct.

6. Banking: Temporary holding for banking needs, or acquiring to sending money to others without a specific bill or retail transaction involved.
Correct.

7. Tokenization of assets by tying Bitcoin ownership to ownership of another asset.
Correct but also: All tokens are worthless.

8. Public Statements using Bitcoin's comment feature.
Correct but also: No one needs this.