Post
Topic
Board Economics
Re: Bitcoin regaining dominance.
by
deisik
on 30/10/2017, 13:07:30 UTC
I don't think you can say that

I mean this is not "real life commerce" by any metric, though it may certainly make you think so since it looks like you really paid with bitcoins for the goods you bought. If anything, it is just a hidden form of speculation. And yes, it does add more fuel to speculation and demand simply because it is speculation in its own right. Further, while I could somewhat agree to your claim that vendors using or not using BitPay as a middleman might not affect prices (though this is debatable but I won't digress), this doesn't add to real adoption anything if that was your point
I should've worded it a bit differently, as directly accepting Bitcoin would surely accelerate adoption. But just being able to quickly liquidate your assets by "directly" being able to purchase real goods with your assets (even through a middleman) is something that was and is not possible with traditional assets.
Thus a wide spread acceptance of cryptos (even through a middleman) would offer a completely new merit to cryptos as a form of asset that stocks, ETFs, bonds, etc. do not have, since you first have to sell them to be able to use the money for anything. And that can take several days to weeks in some cases.

I don't quite get your point

Indeed, you can't buy goods "directly" with stocks, ETFs, bonds, whatever, but what does it change? If we are not talking about some trash or toxic assets here (think of shitcoins as a sort of cryptoanalogy here), you can liquidate your assets pretty close to instant. It is surely not like it would take "several days to weeks in some cases" if we talk about, for example, major stocks or US Treasuries. I agree that there's something new in this "direct liquidation" (if I can call it so), but honestly, I don't see how it would contribute to Bitcoin popularity, acceptance and adoption in any noticeable degree (if that is your point)