RE: Bitcoin: State of Affairs in India Nearing 2018!
There was this price rally a year ago, fuelled partially by the news of the rapid demonetising of the INR 1000 and INR 500 notes in India, and Bitcoin found as a solution to unreliable fiat. There was similar news from Venezuela, and even in Australia there were news of Bitcoin becoming more dominant due to government, banks and others pushing for abandoning paper money.
What struck me then was that Bitcoin, with it's current capacity ceiling, never can make any significant advancements as a payment medium even in Venezuela - and absolutely not in India. If a significant part of the Venezuelian population (29M, according to Wikipedia) was to start using Bitcoin on a daily basis ... no, it just can't work out with the current 1MB block size limit. If a significant part of the Indian population (1200M according to Wikipedia) would start using Bitcoin on a daily basis ... the transaction fees would quickly rise to a point where only the richest of the richest would be able to use Bitcoin. Hence I believed we were at the top of a bubble set to burst - obviously I'm not very good at predictions, the Bitcoin market price has appreciated with ~15X since then. And Bitcoin transaction fees have grown dramatically, too.
Now 2000 INR is a perfectly normal fee for a "native" Bitcoin transaction, how many Indians can really afford to actually use bitcoins? Then again, if people are satisfied with being indirect owners of both Bitcoin and Gold (I understand that's how it works, both with Vaultoro.com and Unicorn) ... yes, for sure it can work out.
At the other hand, if you want to fuel a cryptocurrency revolution, it's not enough that people are merely investing in Bitcoin as a "speculative asset" and having some Bitcoin balance on some exchange ... no, I believe the true revolution will only come when ordinary people actually use crypto currency, hold it in their own wallets, and use it for daily purchases. Obviously, this won't work out for Bitcoin with it's current 1 MB limit. Could it work out with Bitcoin Cash? Could it work out with other crypto currencies?