undefined | Better HN

0 pointsnpoc2y ago0 comments

Not really - it's simply that a lot of people are safer trusting a custodian to hold their bitcoin for them (e.g. an ETF)

0 comments

FabHK2y ago

Poor Satoshi. Vision:

> purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution. Digital signatures provide part of the solution, but the main benefits are lost if a trusted third party is still required [...]

Reality: The world's biggest financial institutions hold BTC as an intermediary for clients through trusted third party custodians for speculative purposes (rarely payments).

npocOP2y ago

I'm sure he'd recognise that most of the population was not going to using bitcoin directly - what he has provided is a way for a population to a) digitally pay peer to peer if they so choose b) escape the enslavement caused by central banks' unlimited money printing if they so choose, hence the message in the genesis block

Of course bitcoin is rarely used for payments yet. Why would you sell the hardest money in existence, when you can sell junk dollars instead. And why would you price goods in something that's growing so quickly that its price changes dramatically month to month? It makes no sense.

Stage 1: prove ability to store value

once the value has grown to the point that it's stabilised enough to be a unit of account we will naturally move to

Stage 2: medium of exchange

The fact is we never even have to move to stage 2 for bitcoin to still be worth millions of dollars per bitcoin. Even if bitcoin only matches the market cap of gold, it will be worth ~$600,000/BTC and bitcoin has way better store-of-value fundamentals than gold.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse