I'll use my own example, I purchased a month of a VPN service using BTC when it was ~11k, it's about $5 in fiat per month.
If you believe BTC will only go up, I don't see why you would want to spend it if your money will be worth more if you wait.
Regarding Volatility, yes it leads to a lot of trading, I mean means of exchange as purchasing everyday goods. The transaction history of BTC also adds regulatory hurdles.
>So if every grocery was to be priced in BTC, you wouldn't eat? :)
Yes, people didn't eat much during the great depression, they had no money to buy more food even though there was enough to eat for everyone. How hard is it to comprehend that if you are unemployed you can't afford food?
If BTC results in unemployment then a lot of people are going to end up hungry.
>Remember that the US was on the gold standard with a similar inflation profile to Bitcoin and consumers were consuming.
We also had two economic depressions that lead to two world wars.
During the good times, you are correct that few people hoarded money in the hopes of deflation. During bad times, people actually do make this calculation (and so might be hamburger instead of steak). Deflation is believed to have significantly prolonged and worsened the Great Depression, and that experience was one of the motivating factors behind the global abandonment of the gold standard.
>Is that because it's has 'Scarcity'? People will pay more for it in the future?
What did they do to deserve that? Watch everyone else create the wealth they take for granted?
>If that case is so soundly put why would you not buy as much btc as possible?
Because most people barely have enough money for their basic needs as they have to pay interest to financial capitalists and ground rent to land owners. They have no surplus to speak of that they could possibly spend on a deflationary currency. They are the losers of this system even though they are the ones who are doing the work.
Bitcoin won’t save you if the attacking nation state (say, China) can simultaneously nationalize and take over a majority of miners. Power is power no matter how many hoops it needs to jump through.
Here you go. This chart breaks down the differences between Pyramid schemes, Ponzi schemes, and open public cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. By "open public" I mean that there is no central authority or organization. Bitcoin is a decentralized open source project run by community participation (anyone can run a node or miner, and millions of people do).
The second half is important too: that the expected profits are from the efforts of the promoter. In other words if a company is doing work of some kind, and they are selling a token on the basis that it will go up in value due to the work that they are doing, then it is a security.
Except it doesn't depend on any particular means of communication. You can print out Bitcoin on paper and physically trade it. You can embed it in an image and trade that. You can physically scan QR codes on each others phones to transmit it. Bitcoin and other cryptos can be transferred via sat phone. The Internet and exchanges are just conveniences.
There are also numerous projects to work around Internet censorship in the crypto space. Such as the Substratum Network (https://substratum.net) and Mysterium Network (https://mysterium.network).
A lot of people on this thread are conflating Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for what the SEC is talking about in this statement: tokens that are acting as securities. They do not mean Bitcoin and similar tokens (ETH, LTC, ADA, NEO, etc). If you've been following the SEC's other statements, testimonies, and senate committee hearings, you would know that they do not have a problem with digital currencies per se. That is outside of their mandate (those fall under the CFTC's purview). What the SEC is concerned with is companies that issue digital tokens which act as securities. That is to say, the reason people buy the tokens is the expectation that the work of the company that issued the tokens will cause the value of the tokens to increase, and that is the motivation for people to buy them.
This differs from Bitcoin, which is not issued by any company and has no central organization that does any work or promotion of the token.
The response from American cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex expresses the distinction between securities and other types of tokens:
“As a U.S.-based digital currency exchange, Bittrex is committed to incubating new blockchain technology projects and offering innovative, compliant digital tokens to our customers. Bittrex uses a robust digital token review process to ensure the tokens listed on the exchange are compliant with U.S. law and are not considered securities. Bittrex is committed to helping advance the United States’ global leadership in this emerging industry, and we look forward to continuing our proactive dialogue with the SEC and other regulators on how to build a secure, fully-regulated environment for blockchain that encourages innovation and economic growth.”
