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Comment by jozzas | Hacker News Reader

Bitcoin is becoming a value store. With slow transaction confirmation and high fees, what are the real-world applications for Bitcoin supposed to be now? And for those applications, are there not other cryptocurrencies more specifically targeted at being better at that application?

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Nobody keeps bitcoin to store value. They keep it because they think it will appreciate in value. Why? Because of has went up in the past.

If people lose faith that it will keep going up, then it stops holding value.

It’s pure speculation based on the greater fool theory.

A lot of people do use it to store value, its deflatory nature makes it ideal for that.

Price is based on supply and demand. It's only deflationary if demand stays the same. But if people stop believing bitcoin is going to MOON, then demand can/will fall.

There are a limited number of beanie babies too.

> With slow transaction confirmation and high fees

This is being solved, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Network

Sigh, not this again. I have yet to see a working example of "off the chain" processing that is not plagued by all of the ills that bitcoin solves.

And what makes it a good value store, with all of it volatility?

nothing at the moment, it's being used as a speculative investment. I imagine in time the volatility will reduce as other cryptocurrencies become more mainstream and actually used for real-world purposes.

Reduce volatility by having its price approach zero? What use is Bitcoin if another cryptocurrency wins? Where can you find the greater fool to sell your Bitcoins to if it has no practical purpose and has been superceded by other currencies.

Bitcoin is a competitor to wire transfers/ACH.

The increased price makes the system more valuable because it increases the amount of funds that can be transferred through and decreases the cost of that transfer (more order depth for getting into and out of bitcoin).

Today, it's feasible to send $1M with Bitcoin. A few years ago, there wasn't enough market depth to do that very efficiently.

The other 'killer app' is companies/organizations holding all of their funds in a transparent, public way by making their addresses known. I think there will be a lot of value in this, but we're probably a decade away from the space maturing.

Bitcoin has the best security model. In 10 years does a single massive ledger make more sense than transactions at the edges? The value proposition of Bitcoin has always been transaction scalability by elimination of charge backs. With a fundamentally irreversible ledger as a base layer, networks and services will develop around it that provide whatever combination of speed, fees, and liquidity you're looking for.

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