Why does it matter how many dollars the beer is worth? It is worth the same number of bitcoins yesterday, today, and tomorrow. That's the only stability that is relevant.
Because you can buy beer for dollars, so if your local beer costs 50$ in BTC it makes sense to sell BTC for USD and order beer. And if your beer suddenly costs 0.001$ in BTC it makes sense to sell it off to someone in USD and refuse selling in BTC.
> It is worth the same number of bitcoins yesterday, today, and tomorrow. That's the only stability that is relevant.
This is the most idiotic argument ever, if this was true it would be irrelevant if a currency depreciates/appreciates.
So then why feel bad about trading some BTC for it? The regret would be for not buying back.
It also requires the goods and services you buy to be traded in dollars. If stores buy food, gas, etc. wholesale in dollars, for example, and sells it to you for bitcoin, there's going to be a problem.
Making it a legal currency won't even force anyone to accept it. As far as I understand, it will simply mean that the government will accept payments in BTC.
The telling thing would be what the gov't pays in (e.g., for tax returns). Do they pay you back in BTC? or fiat?
Given the massive volatility of BTC it presents a massive opportunity for arbitrage that mostly has downsides for consumers who want stable supplies of goods.
That would be nice but it goes against the "number go up" theory of "bitcoin investing".