If bitcoin were as useful as pundits suggested, we'd be using it by now. 12 years is a long time to validate an idea. The mobile phone was adopted by pretty much the entire world in under 7 years.
Mobile phones didn't gain popularity until the mid 90s, twenty years after the prototype and about 50 (!) years after the first rough tests. Mobile phones didn't gain widespread use until the 2000s even.
To say they only took 7 years to be adopted is ridiculous and ignores a ton of work that went it to developing them and making them useful.
It is also being used by all sorts of international freelancers being paid in Bitcoin, although, most of them convert into fiat swiftly to pay bills. So they are not contributing to holding. But Bitcoin is useful for them, as it's a much cheaper and safer way to pay and get paid internationally.
Everyone else is a speculator, sitting on their stash, waiting for price to climb up. That's pure speculators/investors, who use Bitcoin to diversify their porfolio of whatever else they got. And as such, Bitcoin is highly useful, as it provides virtually unlimited upside with limited downside.
Personally, I don't think most people care about Bitcoin as a currency. There is some sizable percentage of people who bought in the run up to $20k who are just waiting to make their money back.
Imagine standing in the queue at your supermarket waiting for a bitcoin transaction approval.
Before you complain that "this is too slow," consider what the equivalent is in the banking world. Imagine you walk into a shop which only takes cards, and you have no bank account.
You must go to a bank, talk to a rep, fill out a bunch of paper work, wait for some background checks to be done, then have a card issued to you via snail mail. Now you can go to the shop (days later).
Your initial, flawed assumption is that people have already done this and already have a card to pay with. Most people in the developed world have this access now, but it didn't come instantly - it has progressed over about 3 decades. Back in the 90s, if you weren't paying with cash, you would be writing out a cheque in the store and holding up the queue.
So when you unravel your assumption, it's actually much faster to acquire some bitcoin and load some payment channels. Just few people have done it yet, and the software for doing it is under heavy development.
Give it a decade or so, like we have allowed for payment cards to proliferate, and the assumption will be that people already have some loaded payment channels which are ready to make instant payments. There will be no standing in queues waiting to pay.
It seems like every bitcoin thread on hacker news endlessly generates nothing but 2013/14 era FUD. I don't see people installing lightning wallets and playing around.
What I am looking for is a mechanism to protect againt (imho highly probably future) US Dollar devaluation and potential SHTF political/societal conditions here. The historically time-tested approach (but not practical in USA) was to convert to physical gold that both retained value, was generally accepted by all, and could be easily transported across borders. BTC has the border/security angle covered but the value retention aspect is not clear.
Let's say you bought an ounce of gold today for $1,955 and then the US economy craters and the USD is worthless. What are you going to do with that ounce of gold? Do you really think you'll be able to barter with that gold to get the rough equivalent of $2,000 in 2020 purchasing power?
Or in a true SHTF situation will there even be networks available for you to trade Bitcoin? Or servers to continue to mine and process transactions? I doubt it.
I don't understand your money math there, btw. If 1 oz. of Gold will buy you a say tailored suit before SHTF, historically it will still buy you that suit after SHTF. That's one of the reasons there are Gold bugs (not I) out there. Conversely, your $2000.00 will buy you that suit today, but may only be enough to buy a carton of milk after SHTF.
This has never really been tested, especially not after we left the gold standard. The utility value of gold has never been lower. I believe that in a situation where USD is worthless, the real world value of gold would plummet.
Let us say shit has truly hit the fan. USD is completely worthless. You have a year of dehydrated food that you bought for $2,000. Would you swap that food for an ounce of gold? Me personally, no fucking way.
I think gold is comically overvalued and completely detached from the reality of its worth as a shiny metal. People buy it because you can invest in gold contracts and watch your net worth tick up like it's a video game.
I'd argue they're contributing more by transacting in it, helping the overall network ecosystem in general. This provides better utility too.
What's Bitcoin missing in technological or infrastructure terms that's holding it back? I'd wager nothing.
For the vast majority of people, Bitcoin doesn't solve anything - in fact, 'is slightly incomprehensible and weird' and so is actvely disuassive of its use.
The technological solution to the slight incomprehensibility is a huge part of what holds back adoption.
Also, regulatory issues are considerable for a certain class of user that would probably like to take advantage of e.g. 1000x gainz.
Yet...?
It's a solution wherein principally the currently-invested are the only stakeholders hungry for a problem to solve.
A cross between ease-of-use and simple knowledge that it exists.
As one example, I know of digital artists who sell their work over the internet, but have trouble receiving payments because paypal doesn't like their platform being used for porn. Bitcoin (& etc) would be the perfect solution, but it doesn't ever seem to even cross their minds as a possibility.
Sounds like using to me.
>earn wealth if society is tricked
You might want to read the reasons PTJ and MicroStrategy are holding it.