I think you hit the nail on the head. No one promotes the US dollar, gold, or any other medium of exchange. The use of any currency needs to grow organically over time or be used as a national currency. The fact that bitcoin has to be promoted to be used speaks too its impending failure. As a get rich quick scheme bitcoin has worked for many, as a currency its worked for a few.
I cannot identify, QA, whether you turned too much into a bitcoin naysayer, but get real, bitcoin is in early stages, so you cannot expect it to be serving all purposes (especially the currency) ones while it is still in such early stages.
And, your assertion of bitcoin's supposed "impending failure" comes off as quite gloomy. Do you think that there is some other coin that is more equipped than bitcoin to accomplish the job of sound money? Do you think sound money is valuable? Who gives a ratt's ass about whether bitcoin has enough promotion, publicity and advertisement? The reason so many shit coins engage in high level of advertisement is because they are actual shit (at least compared to the sound money aspects of bitcoin), and just trying to get folks to buy into their inferiority and to suggest that they are either superior to bitcoin or that bitcoin has some kinds of defects that those other bullshit advertised coins are overcoming.
So, in fact, whether bitcoin has advertising or not, the sound money aspect of bitcoin (as long as sound money remains much stronger in bitcoin than any other coin or project) is going to continue to attract folks to buying and accumulating bitcoin. Spending may or may not follow in the short term, but I doubt that it matters so much as long as their are other shittier currencies to spend (likely into the foreseeable future) under gresham law dynamics.
Actually 50 or 100 years down the road, when many of us are going to be dead, there might be some different dynamics if bitcoin does become the only one currency, and then you will have to spend it, but that situation is so damned far into the future that it would be quite problematic to be theorizing BTC's present use case(s) as if such situation already existed (and like I mention we are way the hell off from being even close to such a bitcoin is the only currency scenario with far less than 1% of any kind of meaningful currency and asset (commodity) market share).
For bitcoin to succeed people need to stop thinking about it every day and simply use it when they need to. I dont think about how much money I have in the bank until I need to make a purchase. Everyone needs to do that with bitcoin. Bitcoin is doomed as a currency because no one sees it as anything but an investment.
BTC is Doomed? You see some better candidates? how about accounting for my assertions above, do those assertions affect your thinking at least in terms of comparing present situation to future situation, and realizing that this whole currency/asset question is not exactly a settled matter based on equally "mature" markets, right?
Jay, people need to start using bitcoin as a currency and not just an investment.
Your thinking about this seems to differ from mine quite a bit, and maybe it is just your way of framing the issue.
I think that people do not need to do anything, because bitcoin is voluntary, and incentives align in such a way that the forest of bitcoiners are going to expand. We do not need to go out an plant the whole forest, because little bit little, with the passage of time, more and more use cases are going to expand and the consumption aspect is going to fall into place - especially once bitcoin does another 1000x price appreciation and it becomes one of the only currency games in town. In the mean time, there is no need to spend your bitcoins, you can spend your dollars and your credit cards and your whatever less valuable money and save your bitcoins because they are going to appreciate way more than the vast majority of the less sound monies and payment systems.
Of course, you can already use bitcoin to make payments, if you want, but it might be prudent to replace whatever bitcoins you do spend because bitcoin remains in such early stages of adoption and exponential price growth seems highly probably in the short to medium term and at unexpected times and while other BIGGER players are trying to shake peeps from their bitcoins.
Bitcoin is a failure if all its ever going to be is an etf or a penny stock.
Makes no sense.
sounds as if you are not keeping up with bitcoin lately and all of the ongoing developments, including segwit.. remember segwit was adopted in August 2017? Remember there are various second layer systems being built on top of bitcoin including lightning network and liquid and surely there are others, but those second layer systems are far from user friendly and take a long time to build out and to increase user-friendliness. In the mean time, ever since the spam attacks stopped in January 2018 (recall about a two month period of intense BTC blockchain spam attacks?) if you want, you can transact on bitcoin directly for nearly free with fast transaction times. You can transport money anywhere around the world without any middle man, and all you really need is to know that you have that power because almost anyone can do it with very little training. maybe 1 or 2 hours of orientation, and someone can show them how to specifically transport several million dollars from one part of the world to another with only pennies of transaction fees - yet of course, you could pay a bit more in the transaction fees just to be ensured of a fast transaction.
Accordingly, I am mentioning only one simple use case that involves personalized and secure transmitting of value, and you don't believe that there is some meaningful value to that? besides suggesting that you need to be able to use bitcoin to buy coffee, which you can do, but currently seems to be a lot less practical than some other form of payment.. that might currently be superior to bitcoin in terms of payment but less superior to bitcoin in terms of either sound money or a really meaningful ability to personally control your value (which can take some decent responsibility, too, in order to make sure that you do not lose your private keys or compromise them in some unnecessary way).
There are no better candidates. I see all of the altcoins as nothing more than a get rich quick scheme for their creators.
Exactly, you know that bitcoin remains the best of the systems, yet you seem to harbor and ongoingly communicate some kind of speculative fear that some other project is going to eat its lunch.. which is nearly bullshit thinking. Bitcoin might not be perfect, but you likely understand that it already has a variety of current use cases, you likely would concede that it is under constant development, so what's the rush? You think that there is some kind of rush to compete with inferior products, such as credit card systems or other payment systems. In the longer run (yes, it might take 5 years, or 10 years or 20 years to play out), value is going to continue to migrate into bitcoin because of its underlying more sound money aspect and its highly likely improvements on payment systems - which currently there seems to be little need to attempt to take on payment systems to the extent that they are working for people and likely going to continue to gravitate towards bitcoin rather than bitcoin having to gravitate towards them.
By the way, I think that you and I largely agree that altcoins tend to be money printing machines for creators and perhaps certain insiders, that are trying to act like they have something more to offer. Surely, those coins can be experimental systems, and perhaps provide some information for bitcoin to possibly absorb into its protocol or even second or third layer. They also tend to be diversions for dumber money to get into the space, and even seem to provide excuses for dumber money to learn more and more about bitcoin, after they figure out the largely dumbness of the vast majority of those snake oil bitcoin imitation schemes. The whole process takes a long time, and even if satoshi did not predict details of various alt coins, he did anticipate a lot of bitcoin imitators and a lot of attackers on bitcoin... It just could take a decently long time to play out.. and surely many of us might not live long enough to really see how long it takes and some of the dramatic details that are going to continue, perhaps even in the next 50 years or more there will be battles and drama.. and the foundations of bitcoin currently seem strongly enough prepared for such battles, but no one knows for sure how matters are going to play out with any meaningfully accurate specificity.