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Comment by fidelramos | Hacker News Reader

> Wealth can't really use to purchase anything with is not real wealth. If you can't convert bitcoin to $/€ it becomes effectively worthless

I agree, that is why Bitcoin was supposed to be electronic cash, you were supposed to be able to pay for everything with it.

Bitcoin (BTC) doesn't scale today to this purpose, but you can still use it to pay directly for some products and services as long as the other party will accept it. For those wanting Fiat money you could exchange BTC to stablecoins, even in a decentralized way like with ThorChain [0].

What's missing is some seamless bridge between stablecoins and Fiat payment methods and bank accounts. Then you could pay for anything. However I would argue that Bitcoin was meant to become the payment method, as Satoshi Nakamoto described in the whitepaper [1].

[0] https://thorchain.com/

[1] https://www.bitcoin.com/satoshi-archive/whitepaper/

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> pay directly for some products and services as long as the other party will accept it.

You can but generally you don't want to. Besides the technical issues it's a very volatile asset which means that you don't want to hold it for any extended period of time (IF you're only using it to pay for stuff).

To the contrary, as long as you can hold through the volatility window of about 4 years, you are better off holding Bitcoin.

The price of a house used to be 100 bitcoin, then 10, now it's 5. Wait 10 years and it'll be 0.5. Meanwhile, hold dollars and the price keeps going up. You are defacto forced to put your saving in an investment vehicle to keep up with inflation, taking on risk.

> You are defacto forced to put your saving in an investment vehicle to keep up with inflation, taking on risk.

Yes. You got it. That's how you get economic growth. Instead of stagnation and deflation when you hoard gold or bitcoin. It's not exactly fair from the individual people perspective but for the society as whole it's objective the superior option.

> To the contrary

I know that reading comprehension is hard (even if the "IF" was in very big letters..). If your income is in $ and you buy stuff priced in $ AND you don't want to use crypto as an investment instrument but only for buying/selling good holding it for extended periods of time is not smart (same applies to foreign currencies in general they are just not as volatile).

I pay for things with dollars. I keep some cash available at all times. I had to buy a car last year, so I sold some Bitcoin, paid tax on its capital gain, and so I effectively paid less for it, as I held Bitcoin from roughly 20k to 30k. There will always be more volatility to the upside

Which is great from an individual perspective not so much for the economy and the society as a whole.

> There will always be more volatility to the upside

That's a very strong statement.

And how would seller pay taxes? They didnt get any fiat, they can't off-ramp it presumably(otherwise buyer would have done it), and now guy with a gun comes and demands his share, what happens?

That is why Bitcoin was first announced in a cypherpunk mailing list [0].

[0] https://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg09...

Why pay taxes when your don't have to?

Lightning and in the future, lightning stablecoins.

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