[2014-07-25] Why Merchant Adoption Doesn’t Matter for Bitcoin

[aliceHortrex]

http://cointelegraph.com/news/112144/why-merchant-adoption-doesnt-matter-for-bitcoin

One of the biggest questions surrounding Bitcoin is why it is worth anything at all. A popular candidate for answering this question is the influence of merchant adoption. Unfortunately for proponents of this theory, things haven’t been making sense lately.

[Yeezus]

I disagree with this. True, the price staying pretty stationary and actually dropping a little is weird giving all the merchant adoption recntly it still matters regardless. Merchants are what we need to push bitcoin along as a genuine and useable currency.

[MegaHustlr]

The reality is that Bitcoin’s market cap has nothing to do with businesses accepting the currency. It has to do with people buying into the idea that a decentralized form of money with no central backing can work. The more people that believe in this possibility, the larger the network grows, the more valuable it becomes. Only after this realization happens do businesses make their move.

Yea but those two things come hand in hand. More people get on board when they see it as a legit currency and being accepted by big companies. More companies = more people interested  = more demand = higher price. Give it time and the price will climb again.

[aliceHortrex]

I disagree with this. True, the price staying pretty stationary and actually dropping a little is weird giving all the merchant adoption recntly it still matters regardless. Merchants are what we need to push bitcoin along as a genuine and useable currency.

That is one possible point of view, opposite to the one presented in the article. It is true that mass adoption is impossible without convenient ways for a user to spend their bitcoins on things they need.
But it is equally important to make the very idea of Bitcoin widely known and accepted: if there are no people who are aware of Bitcoin's existence and want to use it, the abundance of merchants won't help a bit. This is what in large part drives merchant adoption.
I guess the truth, as it often happens, lies somewhere in between: advances in both merchant adoption and public awareness sum up to provide a synergetic effect and move the Bitcoin ecosystem forward as a whole.

[jjc326]

As they say in the stock market I think it's a case of buy the rumor, sell the news.  In other words, there was all this talk that merchant' might be accepting bitcoin.  As that happened the price was going up.  Then as it started happening the price came down or stayed the same.  I think it's already factored into the price.  That's what I was saying in another thread, it's hard for me to see what could drive another huge upward spike in price because the price is already pretty high.  It would need some sort of mania or excitement to drive the price up, not necessarily "real world" news type things.

[JJB]

Merchant adoption does matter. We need it if we want to actually spend our coins which  I do.