Cryptocurrency Does Not Need To Be Money To Be Successful
Hey people of steem,
So I am sure you have read at least one article or heard an argument from someone that bitcoin or cryptocurrency is not valid because they cannot spend it anywhere. I can't buy a coffee with it argument. But that is an old conversation that is missing the point of current and future cryptocurrencies. And even in itself it is a fallacy as there are a lot of things you cannot spend that are still valuable. You cannot take a bar of gold to Starbucks.
Let's start with the value. Think of all the things you cannot spend readily that are worth money. Gold, stocks, your house. These are things that you cannot bring to a store and spend easily. They are assets of value and, like bitcoin and other coins, they can be worth a lot of money. All you need is a way to exchange them and they are valuable. And bitcoin can be easily sold for fiat. There is also advantages bitcoin has over items like gold as it can be sent globally for pennies anywhere in the world.
But lets go beyond that to other coins. When paired with smart contracts you can do pretty incredible things. You can use them to reward gamers or as an in-game currency (and games like WOW already proved these economies are worth money). You can reward content like steemit does. You can have a ride sharing service that does not need a middle man. Or other services as well. You can use them to reward members and give people perks based on the number they hold. There are a lot of uses for a coin as a long as you can trade them for fiat in the end of the day, and since you can, there is no need to be able to buy coffee with it.
Agree! The fact is that the technology behind the cryptocurrencies, blockchain, will lead to great efficiencies in many processes. Cryptos will just be the facilitator in order to incentivize the adoption from traditional processes. Utility and Security Tokens based on blockchains are further examples of why the asset class is no only made up of currencies.
I hope for the future we can buy coffee with SBD or STEEM. hehehehe
True. Anything rare and desirable (supply and demand) can have value, and that value can steadily increase, even though you'll need a specialty market to trade it or sell it.
eBay has really had a great impact on this. I collect vintage Star Wars figures. Before eBay, I would have to buy specialty books and magazines to determine their worth, then find a specialty store to sell them to. With eBay, you can buy and sell pretty much anything immediately. Even gold. Even bitcoin.
Yes your are right. But in some places you can buy coffee with crypto. For example, many store in Japan accepting crypto. So it is a matter of time, when we can easily use our cryptocurrency.
Thanks
Great argument, have to agree with you. I think crypto becoming a currency is unlikely and very far off in the future. Crypto becoming an asset, we've already succeed in doing that. Great post, thanks for sharing!
I think the question of adoption can be answered form many different perspectives. We might not see crypto become legal tender for real adoption. The real world use can simply arise from use of tokens within the platform or even cross platform. This use can be payment, rewards, stake, etc.
I think we are at more than one level using crypto as medium of exchange even now and as time passes buy we probably will see a rise in this use. We can also see more use case scenarios emerge with time as well
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https://steemit.com/steemit/@redhearted/why-don-t-the-whales-support-the-minnow
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I'm more excited about the possibilities of the non-currency aspects of cryptocurrency than anything else. I do see a future where crypto will be widely accepted as a payment option across the world, but I see other projects in this space having just as large if not larger impacts on society.