how much counterparty risk does the rapid price fluctuation result in? Can't imagine pricing a contract in bitcoin, as someone's getting screwed at payment if the BTC/fiat rate has changed during the lifetime of the contract
It's a safe bet that it'll continue the trend (with some occasional and not too long lapses of stae slowish decline), and actually bitcoin is a rather safe bet against rouble. After all, it's not backed by Putin's government!
Btw, 'a trillion times' is an understatement. Exact figure in 2014 was... 57 460 000 000 000 000 (fifty seven quadrillion four hundred and sixty trillion) times [1], and just add some more since that time. Still thinking that bitcoin is a risky currency, huh?
Currency isn't an investment. Currency has never been an investment. You're not supposed to hold currency. You're supposed to use currency to buy assets. A spot exchange rate means absolutely nothing. This is ECON-101.
Bitcoin is not a USD replacement. It's more of a gold replacement: finite supply, great malleability, but with modern benefits regarding storage and transfer.
This is an opinion that Bitcoin advocates throw out every time someone criticizes Bitcoin's ability to be a currency. As soon as someone criticizes its ability to be an asset, someone trots out that its actually been a currency this whole time. It's bad at both.
It's bad at both in no small part because it tries to bring back the asset-backed currency approach, which was dreadful last time around, and that's why it was ended.
This 'opinion' comparing Bitcoin properties to Gold appeared before Bitcoin antagonists appeared. It is part of a design.
For this purpose it is abjectly poorly suited.
Neither the word “gold” nor “store of value” nor anything else of the sort appear in the abstract.
I have also read an extremely early mailing lists that appeared long before bitcoin started to get derided by critics like you, and guess what, it was those comparisson I'm referring to. And since you started reciting old texts, i'll go for it too.
Gold and Bitcoin are very similar in all their properties regarding use it as a wealth storage and transfer, with two stark differences: unlike Bitcoin, gold can be used to create physical objects. Like, a ring. Unlike gold, Bitcoin can be near-instantly transferred to another person. Everything else is irrelevant. Gold is valued not because it has some inherent value in it, the price depends only on belief that it has value. Same with bitcoin.
Oh and Bitcoin wastes as much power as the entire country of Chile just sitting there existing and being speculated on at a rate of 7tx/sec, and not solving any real problems. I’d say that’s the only thing that matters.
I suppose time will tell.
This is a disingenuous straw man and a desperate attempt to brush away Bitcoin's failure as currency. The OP explicitly referred to cryptocurrencies' inherent high volatility, and volatility is not a mere transaction risk. Seeing your debt explode, because you either borrowed or deferred payments, due to cryotocurrency volatility is not a transaction risk. It's simply the fact that cryptocurrency fails as being money.