With built in and inevitable deflation. Bitcoin could never replace a national currency.
With transaction times in the tens of minutes and with a maximal global transaction rate of 5-10 per second. The Blockchain couldn't replace the banking system of single mid-sized town.
It's not money. It's at best "digital gold", but more realistically it's just a ponzi scheme.
That is the most grandiose goal a new monetary technology could possibly have. It doesn't need to replace a national currency to be useful/valuable to users.
FYI, Buddhist extremism has resulted in two (ongoing) genocides.
The fixed emission schedule of BTC means that there is no issuer that can capture increased demand in the good, but the holders of BTC get that benefit. So the only thing you need to bet on is if there will be more aggregate demand for the 21 million btc in the future than there is today.
With fiat currencies, when there is a crisis like COVID and the demand for money skyrockets, the fiat issuer can print out the money and do whatever it wants with that surplus demand.
If BTC makes it so the aggregate demand in currencies is split partially from fiat into BTC itself, then it will be a great transfer of wealth from governments into BTC owners.
There's your value.
And will quickly be banned by said country.
I also doubt on the feasibility of a global crackdown on miners in the entire world.
There are plenty of scenarios for Bitcoin to succeed and be useful without necessarily replacing national currencies.
«transaction times in the tens of minutes»
Wires take hours/days. Credit card transactions take 1-2 days before the seller's bank account is actually credited. Obviously speed isn't an issue for adoption given that people tolerate systems much slower than Bitcoin.
«maximal global transaction rate of 5-10 per second»
Bitcoin Lightning Network supports thousands/millions of transactions per seconds.
«Blockchain couldn't replace»
IMHO it shouldn't replace, but complement.
Wires take hours, rarely, if ever days, and in my experience the money is in the receiving account before I hang up from sending it.
Also people tolerate this system because there is nothing else available, and much of it is not a result of lack of desire but anti money laundering. Countries are already moving to digital currency tokens.
> Bitcoin could never replace a national currency.
You can't predict the future.
> With transaction times in the tens of minutes and with a maximal global transaction rate of 5-10 per second. The Blockchain couldn't replace the banking system of single mid-sized town.
With millions of transactions per second, the Lightning network could.
> It's not money.
It's money. Here's an explanation of money https://powreach.com/crypto
To HN moderators: make it possible to understand why someone downvoted. This is an example of what makes HN off-putting.
[0] https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/why-is-deflatio...
No one's taking out a bitcoin mortgage to buy their house with.