Five days ago, a friend of mine studying Economics at High School had a discussion with its teacher, regarding Bitcoin, since I told her about that. Here's what the teacher said :
1. That's illegal : He did not bring many proves here, just saying that since it has not been regulated as a currency, we were in a grey area, and something in a grey area is rarely something that will become totally white from one day to another. He added that the sole purpose of that was to buy all kind of drugs over the Internet.
2. It will crash : He said that he had studied Bitcoin's price evolution throught the time (what I doubt) and said her that being so constantly rising was a sign that it was not a viable project. Its proof : manipulated prices of things like silver or wheat are very stable !
3. Anyone clear in its head wouldn't use it : First, he doesn't recognise any kind of manipulation of the money and the danger that there is for people keeping all their savings in fiat. I know that because I had him as a teacher too some times ago. So trying to explaining him about the fact that there is a clear war against cash and evident facts, like that that shows our money need to be converted into something viable to be protected from massive surveillance, is useless. Him not understanding that, since its the best argument I have, I couldn't have replied. When she told him about the speed of transactions, he replied "we have PayPal", so I said me that it wasn't worth to ever try explaining anything. As a final point, he said again that the sole real use that is making standing apart is that you can buy drugs on the Internet...
4. Bitcoin at a bigger scale would fail : I couldn't explain you much what he said because what she told me wasn't very clear so I personnally did not understood, as her I presume how confuse her explaination was. To summarize, he said that it's still a little market and that it will fail to scale and will go back to close to nothing in value.
I'd like to get your feelings on that. Just call the arguments 1, 2, 3 and 4 and tell me what you would have replied back and what it does inspire you !
Yes your teacher is right. Using bitcoins in some countries are illegal. But many countries havent regulated bitcoins. Possibilities are there that bitcoins price can drop or crash easily within a day. If any government bans the usage of bitcoins its price will crash or drop or if any
hacking or illegal things happen then also bicoin's price can drop. But bitcoin has got so many advantages that make people use bitcoin .The main thing is transactions made through bitcoins are anonymous. Thats the main reason why people prefer bitcoins even if they know all these drawbacks about bitcoin.
Why, then, all governments not to do the same or to negotiate. Why one can easily recognize bitcoin as a currency, while others deny it and may even prescribe penalties for transactions with bitcoin.