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votes
Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin cannot replace money, says Bank for International Settlements
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- Title
- Cryptocurrencies can't replace money without 'bringing the internet to a halt'
- Published
- Jun 18 2018
- Word count
- 1080 words
On the one hand, computers cannot replace people, and e-stores cannot replace Sears.
On the other hand, you absolutely do not want a currency which is also an investment item.
I suspect one day a cryptocurrency could replace fiat. I am nearly 100% certain that cryptocurrency will not be bitcoin.
Bitcoin might continue doing what it is doing right now but nobody wants to invest or save something which could be worth half of what it originally was within the span of days. Not unless the goal is to convert it back into real money down the line.
Personal computers are huge, but no one is doing work on an Apple II today.
Bitcoin is the Apple II of crypto; it's slow, bulky, and volitile. That doesn't mean there won't be a crypto in the future that is used as an everyday currency.
But yes I agree, Bitcoin will probably continue doing what it's doing for a long time and hopefuls will continue to make and lose hundred of dollars on the daily.
I'm not sure the comparison is completely apt because PCs are a very different kind of technology made for a very different purpose.
It's just an analogy, all I'm saying is: The usefulness of an early iteration of a technology doesn't really mean anything to the usefulness of the technology itself.
Isn't the slow part the real problem?
I remember when Ether had a major application launch on their blockchain that increased the quantity of transactions by several orders of magnitude the entire thing became basically unusable. I can't imagine a global-scale amount of transactions can function on any existing coin.
Yeah, I don't like the idea of the money I have being worth significantly less at any given point. The only reason I ever used Bitcoin was on the occasion I would bet on a baseball game. I would get so irritated when I would win a good amount and then go to cash out and I would always get less money because I had to pay the fees to move it, and the Bitcoin wasn't worth as much because it always took them a couple days to process the withdrawal. You could of course sit on the btc for a couple of days hoping it would go back up but that was annoying because you could only move the money into your bank account on a business day. You could sell the btc, but you would have to wait until next Tues or Wed to get your money.
Plus a lot of systems won't use it. Can't use money that came from btc for down payments on a house. The irs doesn't like it either so the systems discourage it.