That’s the issue, even Bitcoin can’t really be used as currency anymore. I used bitcoin when it was still new. In our friend circle, we paid each other with thousands of bitcoins for a single pizza back then. And yet it was still more usable as currency back then than it is nowadays.
Lightning is not Bitcoin. The implemented design of Lightning is a highly centralised off-chain layer 2 [0] which is a direct contradiction and defeats the whole purpose of what Bitcoin was designed and built for: ' a peer-to-peer electronic cash system'
Bitcoin has failed in being an efficient on-chain payments system and is somehow now an investment asset since that is its new narrative which is also a 'store of value' or 'digital gold'.
It seems that many supporters have admitted that it is not useful for its original purpose and that it is not instant, significantly slower than VISA and a extremely volatile to use as a currency.
True, if I keep my assets in EUR and only convert them to BTC as needed. I can’t really use BTC to store money, as it fluctuates too much.
The old use case of “keep money in your BTC wallet on your own PC, send it as needed” doesn’t really work anymore (not even counting the issue of being unable to run a full node anymore)
> True, if I keep my assets in EUR and only convert them to BTC as needed.
What?? The parent was talking about the lightning network... which is built on top of the bitcoin node network.
> being unable to run a full node anymore
Full node syncs & runs fine even on a raspi 3... it's slow... and you're not participating in mining... but it's running, and does what you would expect a node to do (validate, receive & broadcast transactions).
> What?? The parent was talking about the lightning network... which is built on top of the bitcoin node network.
Yes, but bitcoin is so volatile that you can’t keep money for daily usage in it. You can only use it as long-term investment or ultra-short-term wallet.
The regular usage – storing money for somewhere between one and 30 days – is really painful with bitcoin.
> Or are you saying that holding bitcoin for 1-30 days is "regular usage" ?
Holding money for 1-30 days is regular usage. You get paid, you spend it over a month on wages and expenses.
Bitcoin originally promised to be usable for that. Some companies actually paid you in BTC, some stores actually allowed you to pay with BTC. The original goal was to use BTC like a checking account.
Lightning is great at replacing the BTC network itself for transactions, but it doesn’t help much at allowing BTC to accomplish this original task of matching or exceeding fiat money in actual day to day usability.
This is (roughly speaking) the description of a currency, isn't it? I would point out that as a store of value, bitcoin's up
> [BTC's] original task of matching or exceeding fiat money in actual day to day usability.
I don't think BTC was intended to serve in the way you're describing. I believe it was designed to neuter/obviate at-large Central Banks (e.g. money printers, debasers of currency, economic overlords). In this way, it's gone a long way towards the intended purpose. Furthermore, as a base-layer, it's been extended considerably to support day-to-day usability. Further, as a Store of Value, it's done a lot better than USD in almost every time-scale you can compare, and all the ones that matter.
>>>
The main properties:
Double-spending is prevented with a peer-to-peer network.
No mint or other trusted parties.
Participants can be anonymous.
New coins are made from Hashcash style proof-of-work.
The proof-of-work for new coin generation also powers the
network to prevent double-spending.
>>>
I would also like to add that the original point of money is not to support a month's worth of planning... the point of money is to support planning across planting seasons and lifetimes. Wages and wage-work came along long after money was invented.
Don't quote the old magic to me, I was there when it was written.
And Bitcoin was treated and hyped as a true replacement for Euro or US Dollar. And we hyped it as well. Online stores started accepting BTC, some companies started paying wages in BTC, the first BTC ATMs showed up.
Dogecoin started their tip bot with a tipping culture.
Neither Doge nor BTC absolutely were seen as investment vehicle or store of value, but instead as payment system and true currency.
I remember discussion about the volatility, and claims that with more and more people using it, its value would change less and less and it'd stabilize at about a BTC per Euro cent.
Even if you set aside the transaction costs and the staggering environmental toll of Bitcoin, it just doesn't function well as a currency because it has been used, and is being used, as a speculative investment vehicle by so many.
You absolutely do not want your currency to be rising and falling by double-digit percentages in value even over the course of a few years, let alone a few days the way Bitcoin frequently does. Furthermore, people accepting currency don't want that. This is one of the major reasons so few people do, in fact, accept Bitcoin as a means of payment. (Yes, I know some do. It's still very few, and always will be.)
I would argue that Bitcoin is already outdated tech so has the only benefit to be the first one. Now you have crypto doing what Bitcoin does, but with instant transactions, feeless, while barely using any energy (think a wind turbine would suffice to maintain the complete network)
