Quote from: jansma43 on November 10, 2017, 12:04:04 AM

Is bitcoin virtual gold or virtual cash? At this moment I consider bitcoin more as virtual gold. Currently banks offer savings accounts and payment accounts. I consider my bitcoin wallet as a savings account. At this moment my bitcoin wallets are not suitable as a payment account. That is not a problem because I dont want to pay with bitcoin. I regret all my past bitcoin payments (I do have a bitcoin debit card). I should have made those past payments with fiat currency and I should have saved my bitcoins because the value of those bitcoins has gone up considerably. If you pay your coffee with bitcoin today you may remember it in the future as the most expensive coffee ever, much like the guy who paid 10.000 bitcoin for two pizzas back in 2010.

Apart from the fact that I dont want to pay with bitcoin, bitcoin is also not suitable for most payments. There is not enough transaction processing capacity, the fees are too high, the confirmation times are too long and bitcoin is not yet generally accepted. A cryptocurrency payment account requires different or additional technology. This could be the bitcoin lightning network or another cryptocurrency that has a much bigger transaction capacity like for example IOTA (IOTA uses a two dimensional tangle instead of the one dimensional blockchain). Several altcoins also consider themselves as a useful cryptocurrency for payments. Altcoins like Bitcoin Cash, Monero, DigitalCash and Zcash could develop into useful currencies for payments but currently their acceptance is very limited. For now I will keep paying my bills with old fashioned fiat currency but that could change in the near future.

My conclusion is that for the time being bitcoin is more like virtual gold. It is however in a savings account and can be transferred much easier than the real gold. In the future the lightning network and/or altcoins will probably also provide virtual cash in suitable payment accounts.

That is basically all right indeed, bitcoin as of the moment served as a gold online like asset that serve as a investment vehicle of people as of the moment. We indeed know that the payment system of bitcoin is not that yet fast and charge is at all time highs, this set up might not be ideal to payment system for it will further burden users than help them, satoshi will definitely like this.