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Comment by 5350-uiop-1130 | Hacker News Reader

> cash out

you're not supposed to do that!

Don't kid yourself. Bitcoin does not have any place as a real currency (at least for legal purchases) - it is solely a speculative asset. People buy cryptocurrencies in hopes it will become worth more USD, or to buy drugs.

So it has a proven use case, that will never go away: illegal purchases.

It has a proven use case as a result of what?

What's the size of that market, and what portion of participants bother to try covering up their transactions on the blockchain between exchanging with a real currency and buying/selling the drugs (or nuclear weapons, or hitman contracts, etc.)?

I don't know! I'm not a huge crypto fan at all, but say 5 years ago there was this belief among crypto bears that it would be a forgotten memory in 50 years, I just don't see that happening. Illegal monetary transactions are a huge use case for Crypto, and i'm not naive enough to think crime will be a distant memory in 50 years.

Now does that mean you should buy bitcoin cause your savings will 10, 100, 1000x? Not necessarily, it could be replaced, and also go sideways or down but I'd be surprised at this point if there's no crypto-economy in 50 years.

You can pretty much live off of bitcoin tbh. Or at least you can spend it in a lot of places.

- https://www.bitrefill.com/

- https://foldapp.com/

- https://crypto.com/cards

> You can pretty much live off of bitcoin tbh. Or at least you can spend it in a lot of places.

> - https://www.bitrefill.com/

Buying gift cards is the same as cashing out but worse in every way. Pre-converting to a limited-use intermediate currency and then spending that intermediate currency isn't the same as spending bitcoin.

> - https://crypto.com/cards

I notice that their "stake" requirements are listed in USD, not CRO, and that this runs through both Visa and Metropolitan Commercial Bank to do centralized back-end conversions into and out of their bespoke coin. It sounds a lot like the blockchain aspect adds literally nothing to the equation and is just there to ride the buzzword FOMO zeitgeist.

> - https://foldapp.com/

Same as ^ but with a different centralized backend bank and a different bespoke coin that adds literally nothing to the equation.

Only within certain extremely constrained limitations, but it’s an insignificant use of the system overall.

I've paid with Bitcoin for many legal tangible things that I would have otherwise paid for with a credit card if the Bitcoin option wasn't so much cheaper (10-15% discounts usually).

Within the last year? Directly with Bitcoin or with a L2 network?

What do you think currency is? Of course it's a currency. If people have the misguided view that Bitcoin is a bank or that they should earn a profit by trading it, that's on them. USD isn't much different other than that it's backed by military and economic might; at the end of the day it's numbers, like Bitcoin, without a decentralized blockchain.

The quality of being exchangeable for goods doesn't make it a currency. Even if it were a currency, it would be a very bad one without many of the properties required for sound monetary policy.

You can use it as an everyday currency in El Salvador. Here's an example from three months ago: https://youtu.be/6IAc1G8xaDs?t=62

There are major issues with this implementation:

- goes down with AWS

- uses mongodb

- money disappeared

- people don't understand it and don't use it

- fees are subsidized

- ...

It's ultimately only used for 5 % of the international transfers AND more expensive currency to currency wise.

( I have a more complete write-up with links somewhere in my comments, if you want them)

Edit: here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30091410

How does this refute the argument that you can use it, for legal purchases, in El Salvador?

Also this doesn’t really apply unless you use the custodial wallet. McDonalds isn’t, and you don’t have to either. If you self custody you’ll be fine.

> How does this refute the argument that you can use it, for legal purchases, in El Salvador?

That i wouldn't want to use it if i lived there. It has no benefits, only disadvantages.

The comment you're answering to is pointing out that this is unsustainable in its current implementation in El Salvador (and implicitly unlikely to last), meaning that this example does not refute that

> Bitcoin does not have any place as a real currency

Bitcoin's blockchain is not scalable, but there is Lightning, which can give Bitcoin more "currency" traits.

That has literally nothing to do with what I'm saying. Nobody except for weird techno-idealists actually value crypto in any terms other than it's equivalency to actual money.

The cat is out of the bag, pandora's box is open, thank God with a capital G Bitcoin us unbannable.

The separation of money and state will bring us better stability, less war, eliminate people like Chavez and Putin from the world, etc etc etc.

How will separation of money and state eliminate people like Putin?

Maybe not eliminate them, but they won’t be able to use the money printer as they please, effectively funding things like forever wars.

...do you understand how money works, you can't just "use the money printer" to fund wars what are you talking about

Sorry, are you asserting that there's one correct theory for "how money works" ?

Where does money come from according to you?

How does a country fund wars?

Through issuing bonds, and then inflating the money supply so as to dilute the amount to pay back.

Given its higher and higher long-term prices, it seems more and more people value it.

What are you saying? It is not widely used enough for day-to-day transactions?

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