Hacker News Reader

Comment by sneak | Hacker News Reader

> Virtually nobody is using it for transactions (except for illegal products), for banking, or as an inflation hedge.

This is false for almost everyone I know, when speaking specifically about Bitcoin (which you are).

The current limits of Bitcoin *enforce* that "Virtually nobody" uses it — like, uses it at all. It can't scale up to even just the monthly rent and bill payments in just the city limits of Berlin, let alone e.g. people in this city just buying lunch and nothing else anywhere else in the world.

The talk about e.g. it being layer-0 and day-to-day stuff being level-1 or whatever, that immediately deletes all the supposed benefits that bitcoin advocates for as it becomes "here is a bank that is backed with BTC just like normal modern ones are backed with fiat and old ones with gold".

Then the people you know are unusual holders of Bitcoin.

So are they using it for transactions? Paying for products and services?

Yes, many people I know use it to settle transactions between private parties. I’m not talking about buying drugs on the dark web, either.

Its true for everyone I know.

I used it only to buy drugs.

Friends hold it as a gambling invest.

I used to send money to relatives. I'm sorry you bought supposedly addictive drugs, and I hope you won't do it again. But "I know one guy, and myself" is a very poor argument when you are generalizing.

Both of them used the same argument, though. I think that bitcoin has powerful uses (e.g., yours), but the majority of people are not using it for transactions. I'm not saying that it's a bad thing, per se.

about 400,000 people use bitcoin daily.

0.005% of earth population.

but yeah, it’s about the size of a single medium-sized accelerationist Thiel colony participating with each other.

like if Cincinnati was raising bonds to convert to a seastead.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com