Quote from: Shiroslullaby on August 31, 2016, 12:09:40 PM

Quote from: deisik on August 31, 2016, 08:49:22 AM

Money is what money does. To be a currency Bitcoin must widely be used as a means of payment (just like the US dollar), that is, for buying and selling real goods. Right now, it is mostly used as a vehicle for speculation ("buy low sell high")...

In this way, it is no more than a speculative financial asset, but not a currency, by any means

There are some major retailers that accept Bitcoin- Steam (games),Newegg.com (computer parts), Overstock.com.
And with companies like Coinbase working with retailers to help them accept payments that you fund in BTC, you can actually buy a decent amount of things.

But I agree. It's still mainly an asset for speculation. That's why the price isn't moving much right now IMO.
We need more retailers, or another online service like iTunes etc to start accepting Bitcoin if we want to see growth continue and the value rise

I've heard about Steam finally having made up their mind about accepting Bitcoin (after so many years of asking, begging, and praying), but these are still rare and far in between examples (or exceptions). Moreover, the retailers like Dell or Newegg may still not accept bitcoins directly but rather use payment processors like BitPay and keep selling their merchandise for fiat as before. Once there was much ado about some company allegedly accepting bitcoins as payment for Tesla cars...

While in fact it was no more than a marketing device to attract new buyers