Quote from: gentlemand on January 17, 2020, 10:58:48 AM

Quote from: alyssa85 on January 17, 2020, 10:50:24 AM

But unfortunately, people were given the option, decided they didn't want to bother using it. The Ohio people decided it was too expensive to maintain a system that no-one is using. And New Hampshire looked at their experience and decided not to bother either.

You see a similar story with ecommerce. A business enables bitcoin. No-one uses it, but it's a hassle to maintain the wallets or maintain the upgrades demanded by the payment processors. And when the costs exceed the benefits, it gets removed.

The biggest problem with bitcoin is the community. People talk about how lovely it would be to have this that and the other, but never actually support anything with use.

I get where they're coming from. It's stupid to keep a portal open that is totally ignored. But there is an element of if you build it, they will come.

However it's a bit like merchant adoption or its use as a currency, people got it the wrong way around. Those'll be the last elements to arrive, not the first. Merchant adoption probably peaked in 2014 and has been going gradually downhill ever since.

Before earning and spending becomes commonplace it needs to settle in the store of value phase. Right now it's still pure betting and it's understandable why people don't want to give up their bet for bread and butter stuff.

The tricky part is the actual demand may arrive someday with nothing in place to serve it as all of it was abandoned years ago

While it does make sense in our mind to spend some resources on it. I still don't understand this from a government point of view. What do they gain from it? People are going to be paying their taxes either way, they don't have a choice, it's not like they're opening a new market or gaining new consumers of a product -- they tax people regardless of if they use bitcoin or not.

It sounds great in principle to all of this, but it's really a good deal of wasting resources and stuff when it comes down to the fact that people are going to be paying either way and have the ability to pay from a bank account / debit card / credit card (maybe in some areas)