Bitcoin doesn’t need more hype. It needs more adoption.

[I_Anime]

The interesting part is watching Bitcoin move from digital gold to infrastructure people can actually build on.

Native BTC lending, staking, payments, DeFi the next phase is about putting the Bitcoin people already hold to work without giving up custody.

What do you think will be the biggest use case for BTC beyond simply holding it?

Personally , I think Bitcoin’s biggest use case beyond holding it will be moving and settling value globally without relying entirely on traditional financial institutions ( banks ). I’m not a fan of the stress that sometimes comes with sending money to someone abroad. I had to start teaching my loved ones across the globe on how bitcoin works for more faster and smoother transactions.

Many don’t actually know how bitcoin works . Some don’t even bother to understand what Bitcoin is beyond simply holding it. Bitcoin will eventually gain more adoption when many start to see what it can offers ( the utility it’s possesses).

[Cryptomultiplier]

What do you think will be the biggest use case for BTC beyond simply holding it?

Its borderless transaction without intermediaries is the biggest use case for BTC.  If challenged that there are also other cryptocurrencies that have that function, another layer of advantage of Bitcoin is its security, adding to being decentralized on top of that.  

Securely transferring our funds anywhere in the world without the worry of someone freezing our account or paying an extra fee for intermediaries is the biggest use case for BTC than simply holding it and waiting to profit.

It is only when a product is new or something like Bitcoin which suddenly became a thing, that hype was needed as a marketing gimmick to iterate the public and potential investors about it and its use case.

So while hype brought the attention needed, utility makes users stay and explore other use case of which includes across border payments, hedge against inflation and for even small profits if traded on short term in the market.
Real adoption of Bitcoin comes with the real life problems that Bitcoin can and has helped to solve, not just a hear-say scenario and not even by holding it for long term, that's why it keeps evolving to bring in new users to satisfy the ever rising demands for an alternative and more trustworthy currency.

[Sammysmart001]

Not even close! Not with 400k transactions a day in the chain and 70 billion in trading on exchanges!
Trading is first, investment is second, payment might be 3 if we're lucky.

We should be careful with the trading volume comparison, Bitcoin transactions and that of exchange trading volume aren’t measuring same thing. So having to compare 400k daily transactions and that $70 billion in trading volume doesn’t really show which use is bigger.

Trading volume could also count the same Bitcoin many times as traders sell and buy it, so it will be better different users should be look at separately, like payment, holding and sending values rather than using exchange volume only to decide on which one is biggest.

[Royal Cap]

Now, if I ask you what would be the biggest use case of dollar beyond what its used for, I am expecting any useful reply from anyone? Money is money, be it digital or not. The use cases are already established in my opinion.

Comparing Bitcoin to fiat would be one of those typical mistakes according to me. There is no limit to fiat currency and the continuous efforts of central banks devalue it via inflation. On the other hand  the limited and decentralized nature of Bitcoin makes it entirely a different beast altogether, Another thing is that the true potential of Bitcoin comes into play when there are significant amounts of money transactions involved, rather than regular purchases. Traditional banking systems are not just time consuming but also entail all kinds of fees and limitations when it comes to international transactions and remittances. The main issue lies in the fact that your transaction could easily get suspended at any moment in time. In this regard, the Bitcoin network provides an alternative solution. You can transfer large amount of money to anywhere in the world without having to gain third party approval and maintain 100% control of your funds, which is basically self custody.

[Agbamoni]

Well Bitcoin has never been known for being hyped. The only hype that Bitcoin gets itself is that it will forever be the first cryptocurrency. I know what others may say, like its features and its use but saying those stuff in a way that can get other folks interested is hype. But the truth about Bitcoin since its early discovery or early stage, Bitcoin has continued to push on while proving all those who criticise it to be wrong. Best to say when it comes to hype, it's not about what a cryptocurrency offers, but about its reputation, values, and the trust that people put into it......

You're the first person who corrected that error. Glad to see someone who remembers the beginning. Bitcoin, unlike other cryptocurrencies, wasn't built on hype. It was never hyped. The news spread all over the world as a solution and opportunity for people. If it was hyped, the days of fame would be over by now.

The history of Bitcoin started with its invention and implementation by Satoshi. Bitcoin started to become famous when it first increased in price to $10. It wasn't called hyped at that time. As a matter of fact, Bitcoin was heavily criticized as a Ponzi scheme.

[taufik123]

I really enjoy watching on social media X how small cafes and roadside eateries are opening in the USA or another country, accepting bitcoins directly via QR code for sandwiches and drinks. And customers immediately go there to pay and film it. This looks as close as possible to Satoshi Nakamoto’s ideas, where the dollar is absolutely not a middleman, and neither are banks. It’s just a financial transaction from the customer to the business, involving only two parties. And no intermediaries who keep intervening in the regular banking system, causing problems for everyone.

For example:
https://x.com/BitcoinCalabar

But now if these transactions are done on-chain on the Bitcoin network, it is still not efficient enough because
the time may be longer depending on the number of transactions made and the transaction will be completely disrupted when the transaction surge gets more congested and makes it stuck.

Using Bitcoin Lightning is also not the best way due to the unclear development of Bitcoin Lightning to date.

It is best if we talk about fast and more efficient transactions to use stablecoins, if you really want a quick option.
But if it's okay with the longer transaction confirmation time than Bitcoin, Bitcoin could be an option for anyone who wants to wait and stick with Bitcoin.

if adoption is indeed to take place, it will have to be more efficient and decentralized, Bitcoin will still have to overcome the scalability that is happening today.

[LUCKMCFLY]

The use of BTC will be huge, but until now things have to grow little by little. People need to become more aware of the benefits of using BTC, its ease of use, and everything it represents in terms of technology. I don't deny that people have updated themselves to digital payments, but they use stablecoins simply because they believe that fiat money is still very valuable, even more so than BTC, which for me is much more valuable than gold.

The best example is El Salvador. It's the only country that introduced BTC and the people accepted it without question. But they have a president who's on another level. As long as we have corrupt heads of state around the world, it will be difficult. It all depends on the degree to which people become aware of the situation.

[Fiatless]

The use of BTC will be huge, but until now things have to grow little by little. People need to become more aware of the benefits of using BTC, its ease of use, and everything it represents in terms of technology. I don't deny that people have updated themselves to digital payments, but they use stablecoins simply because they believe that fiat money is still very valuable, even more so than BTC, which for me is much more valuable than gold.

The best example is El Salvador. It's the only country that introduced BTC and the people accepted it without question. But they have a president who's on another level. As long as we have corrupt heads of state around the world, it will be difficult. It all depends on the degree to which people become aware of the situation.

Anyone who believes that stablecoin is more valuable than Bitcoin is ignorant. It's just like comparing oranges and apples. Stablecoins are centralised, therefore controlled by an organisation. Bitcoin's price increases, thereby making it a valuable asset and a hedge against inflation. Stablecoins have some good parts like their stability and wide usage, but that doesn't make them, or any fiat currency, more valuable.

El Salvador is a good example, but it seems they have deviated from the initial plans for Bitcoin. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund kept mounting pressure on Nayib Bukele, making him shift some ground.

[jossiel]

The interesting part is watching Bitcoin move from digital gold to infrastructure people can actually build on.

Native BTC lending, staking, payments, DeFi the next phase is about putting the Bitcoin people already hold to work without giving up custody.

Then that becomes the same as those smart contracts, it's good to have it but I don't think bitcoin needs to be like them because it's been unique all of this time.

What do you think will be the biggest use case for BTC beyond simply holding it?

Being used for payments.

I think that's all of these projects are working on and wants to get close to bitcoin. And so, there's no need for any other use case that it has got.

Because people will continue make something out of it even by accident but whatever it is right now is already more than enough.

[PrivacyG]

What do you think will be the biggest use case for BTC beyond simply holding it?

Holding is not an use case.

The biggest use case will continue to be what Bitcoin was created for.  It will continue to offer an alternative to the dying Fiat system.  I remember very well all the times I was afraid of my Fiat losing value due to inflation, I can remember the last time my country printed more money out of no where and it made me afraid of how much purchasing power I would lose, I remember when Trump printed money like rain drops during the Pandemic and every body was happy thinking that would do them any good when it was showing a really bad sign for the future.

I can not really remember the last time I was afraid of my Bitcoin losing purchasing power.  Any time it ever lost purchasing power it was after many surprising gains.  And when it did, it lost too little to matter and recovered later on anyway.

[Italian Panic]

I think Bitcoin isn’t for everyone; it’s not true that anyone can use Bitcoin. Bitcoin adoption has potentially reached one of its peaks; the rest is linked to derivative systems that use Bitcoin. For example, buying Bitcoin ETFs is not adoption but speculation, and the same applies to the whole system linked to futures and perpetual contracts. The true use of Bitcoin involves having a wallet and directly holding sats without any third parties involved.

[BALIK]

I may be wrong, but I think this is the kind of topics that may results to spam around here. Bitcoin is money but in digital form with a unique property of decentralisation. Now, if I ask you what would be the biggest use case of dollar beyond what its used for, I am expecting any useful reply from anyone? Money is money, be it digital or not. The use cases are already established in my opinion.

SMH, I am frankly shocked by your logic.

Dollar is inflated fiat currency with no hard cap, whereas Bitcoin is decentralized, immutable digital asset and infrastructure.

You can't simply pigeonhole Bitcoin as just money and compare it to traditional banking and fiat currency, my friend!

Can you build any trustless smart contract or self sovereign collateral using dollar? LOL, clearly not!

[The Cryptovator]

To be honest, Bitcoin is more considered an investment asset. Really, we don’t need any hype about Bitcoin; it’s not shitcoin, no need for hype. If you want to talk about real use cases, then still it’s been happening. We could make payments through Bitcoin where acceptable. Adaptation doesn’t mean just making payments; adaptation should happen worldwide.

Countries considering Bitcoin as a reserve asset are also the biggest adopters. Institutions seem more interested in Bitcoin investment. However, adaptation won’t happen overnight; it takes time. Countries have to realise the value of Bitcoin despite the Bitcoin price.

[Botnake]

There is already going on with bitcoin's adoption. The fact that we are seeing some people buy stuffs using bitcoin, and create borderless transactions across different countries, bitcoin as a currency has already been working in progress. And despite of the government strict regulations for bitcoin, bitcoin as a currency has not stopped, it has gone better instead.

However, we can't compare traditional fiat to bitcoin. Dollar will always be the widely used legal tender, bitcoin remains the decentralized digital alternative currency to fiat.

[suzanne5223]

The interesting part is watching Bitcoin move from digital gold to infrastructure people can actually build on.

Native BTC lending, staking, payments, DeFi the next phase is about putting the Bitcoin people already hold to work without giving up custody.

What do you think will be the biggest use case for BTC beyond simply holding it?

Right from the get-go. Bitcoin doesn't need hype for it to reach previous and the next upcoming phase of acknowledgement. If we look around us, the monetary policy use for fiat, the cross-border transfer fee/time span, and more, I don't think anyone needs to doubt that more adoption of BTC is inevitable.
Back to your question: beyond simply holding, I think the biggest use case for BTC, based on what you listed, will be self-custodial collateral and liquidity, because it sticks to the BTC concept of not forcing people to sell or hand over their keys.

[BitMaxz]

Anyone who believes that stablecoin is more valuable than Bitcoin is ignorant. It's just like comparing oranges and apples. Stablecoins are centralised, therefore controlled by an organisation. Bitcoin's price increases, thereby making it a valuable asset and a hedge against inflation. Stablecoins have some good parts like their stability and wide usage, but that doesn't make them, or any fiat currency, more valuable.

El Salvador is a good example, but it seems they have deviated from the initial plans for Bitcoin. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund kept mounting pressure on Nayib Bukele, making him shift some ground.

Well, I think since the USD is widely use compared to local currency, like here in my country, the value of the USD has risen a lot already. This is, I think, that they think that USD currency or any stable coins are valuable because the value also rises, but they don't even think that the differences of rising the price are high.
Bitcoin could increase more than 100%, while USD to local fiat increases just around 1% to 3% just based on what I observe after 4 years.

There are big differences bitcoin these stablecoins since it mostly paired with Bitcoin; we calculate them based on USD meaning having BTC still gives you more profit holding than holding USDT.

[Questat]

Bitcoin is already heading to that, but we can't force the people to maximize bitcoin as a currency when they can make more money from buying and holding itself. Making profits with bitcoin is still the focus of majority, and those who only dare to spend their bitcoin are probably those who are already saving sufficient amount of bitcoin in their wallet.

Bitcoin's adoption is already on going, but as long as bitcoin remains a profitable investment, people will stick more to bitcoin investment rather than spending their bitcoin as a currency.

[Hamza2424]

If you mean staking, bitcoin is using PoW algorithm. So that is not possible with bitcoin. You can stake those altcoins that are pegged to bitcoin price.

It's possible OP refer to staking approach that lock your own Bitcoin with locktime for certain duration. When it's locked, you may get altcoin as reward or voting right on certain altcoin network. But the APY rate is very low (below 1%) on platform such as Babylon, so it's not even worth to consider, unless you own tons of Bitcoin.

Even with a reward of less than 1%, people have locked around 40508.09 BTC ($3.42B). It is not for any retail investors. It must be for whales, staking 10 to 100 btc can earn around $4k to $40k per year, so that's a huge amount for whales.

Locking it for a certain duration helps them keep their coins secure for 15 months, and they can stake it again. I am not sure if this is a genuine dashboard.

https://staking.babylonlabs.io/btc

[mirakal]

To be honest, Bitcoin is more considered an investment asset. Really, we don’t need any hype about Bitcoin; it’s not shitcoin, no need for hype. If you want to talk about real use cases, then still it’s been happening. We could make payments through Bitcoin where acceptable. Adaptation doesn’t mean just making payments; adaptation should happen worldwide.

Countries considering Bitcoin as a reserve asset are also the biggest adopters. Institutions seem more interested in Bitcoin investment. However, adaptation won’t happen overnight; it takes time. Countries have to realise the value of Bitcoin despite the Bitcoin price.

You make a good point there. The real bitcoin adoption happens only when everyone who makes use of bitcoin realize its value more than its price. Although we can admit that bitcoin adoption has already started, but even the big companies and institutions that we expect to maximize bitcoin adoption do not promote bitcoin as a currency but they are there to invest and make bitcoin as their biggest reserve asset.

Bitcoin as a currency is only Satoshi's original goal, but the majority still see it as a profitable tool for investment.

[MarryWithBTC]

The interesting part is watching Bitcoin move from digital gold to infrastructure people can actually build on.

Native BTC lending, staking, payments, DeFi the next phase is about putting the Bitcoin people already hold to work without giving up custody.

What do you think will be the biggest use case for BTC beyond simply holding it?

Bitcoin doesn't need more hype,

Bitcoin adoption is pretty cool, what bitcoin want from us is to believe...

Yes, you can decided to use bitcoin as a payment means for day to day activities, that is fine. Another might decide to use it as an investment asset, that is also beautiful. Bitcoin is large enough to accommodate us in whatever ways we want to use it.

We cannot be preaching utility to institutions which hold only to make profits and they hold in millions.

The most important thing is to own a bitcoin and trust it for good.