I hope this post gets shot down and I am 'proved' wrong. I have been a supporter of Bitcoin for a few years but....
It is becoming apparent that Bitcoin will only ever fulfill the role as gold 2.0, and that is... a Currency of Last Resort.
For me, Bitcoin is still not a currency, only a commodity, because of
its need to be stable over time to be considered as currency.
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It is a currency of last resort because it is so inefficient. I rack my brain daily to 'conjure up' a use case (that I can test) that relied on Bitcoin and has a preferable outcome when compared to regular fiat and 3rd party services.
The ways in which Bitcoin is similar to gold - expensive to purchase with your wages (ie. spreads, exchange fees, bank transfer fees etc.), very limited on who will accept as payment (most vendors unwilling to accept due to the same reasons/ ie. expensive when changing back to fiat) and slow to transfer (debatable one).
Bitcoin is not expensive to purchase, as compare to gold. You can buy
it in any exchanges. If vendors are unwilling to accept, you can have
a lot of options i.e. paypal. So again, bitcoin can co-exist with fiat
and other modes of payment in an online transaction.
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I don't even think drug dealers are using Bitcoin that much. When the EU calculated the UKs GDP to figure how much the UK should pay into the EU, they took into account how the illegal drugs trade is worth to the UK (I kid you not! Story http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/10861170/Drugs-and-prostitution-add-10bn-a-year-to-UK-economy.html). They calculated it to be worth £4.4 Billion. The UK is only a small country so I'm sure that if you add Europe and the US we're talking tens of Billions. How much of that is going through the Bitcoin network I guess we'll never know - I would like to see the stats if they are available as to how much of the Bitcoin network transactions are the exchanges and how meuch is individuals or smaller firms.
I don't know if we have stats like this. But I'm also interested to one.
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So what is Bit[Suspicious link removed]d for? It's inaccessible, expensive to acquire and has limited appeal. It has been an excellent investment over the past few years (like gold 
) but I can't help but think that when our banks administer their own blockchain currencies that offer efficiency and with that efficiency comes additional use-cases that really work.
) but I can't help but think that when our banks administer their own blockchain currencies that offer efficiency and with that efficiency comes additional use-cases that really work.We'll have to see this. Again bitcoin is not accessible, and not expensive and has limited appeal.
Yes, its an excellent investment for long term but the risk are high.