[Poll] bitcoin: currency of the future?

[marten.aap2.0]

I'm doing a project for school about Bitcoin: Is it the currency of the future?

I decided to make a poll here, to see what the tech community thinks about it.

Feel free to leave more of your thoughts in a reply.

[APasz]

It's practically impossible for it to replace fiat currency. Simply due to the lack of scalability.

[EPPHO]

3 minutes ago, marten.aap2.0 said:

I'm doing a project for school about Bitcoin: Is it the currency of the future?

I decided to make a poll here, to see what the tech community thinks about it.

Feel free to leave more of your thoughts in a reply.

Near future or distant future?

[marten.aap2.0]

1 minute ago, frozeNNN said:

Near future or distant future?

depends on what you call near future, I'm not looking at next year or something, more like in the next 10 to 20 years.

[EPPHO]

2 minutes ago, marten.aap2.0 said:

depends on what you call near future, I'm not looking at next year or something, more like in the next 10 to 20 years.

Well same applies to your statement "future" (depends what you call future).

[porina]

I think bitcoin is good as a proof of concept, and a learning experience for all involved to see what is good and bad about it. Due to baked in limitations, I don't think it'll be sustainable in the very long term for anything other than a niche. I'm not even convinced that a hard fork of it to make some changes would be enough to rescue it from that. 

[kelvinhall05]

Digital currency is, but Bitcoin isn't. I think that most, if not all cash and change will be replaced with digital currency, but you can't mine it. You still have to go to work or whatever and earn money.

 

EDIT: I also think that it would be a bad idea because not only is Bitcoin pretty unstable (it rises and falls at the drop of a hat), but it also can be mined super easily, meaning you could literally earn a couple thousand dollars, and not go to work for, like, the rest of your life.

[Bananasplit_00]

Bitcoin moves way too much, at least right now, and thats why i dont think its replaceing anything. 

[APasz]

Off the top of my head, basically a new digital currency system must have these components/abilities.

1, Be able to deal with millions if not billions of transactions every day.

2, Each transaction must (at least have the possibility of) be completed within 30 seconds and verification of transaction within 72 hours.

3, Must be stable. ie: somehow make it almost impossible to flood the market with new monies.

4, Exceedingly difficult to imitate.

5, Able to work offline for at least 32-96 hours.

6, Not require several hundreds Gb of disk space like the current block chain for BC does. So have the best of both the ad-hoc and centralised network worlds.

7, Have privacy features built in. Think of how you can use cash.

8, Must be accessible to EVERYONE, not just those who can read or have a computer/phone.

9, Above all else, it must be accepted by the vast majority that it has a value.

[AresKrieger]

Currency needs to be stable, easy to transfer, universally recognized, and difficult to procure or reproduce Bitcoin only satisfies the latter and will at best only satisfy two of these tenants so it can never truly be a currency

[Mooshi]

You're asking if a currency more unstable than an ex that was created by an anon with zero backing and harmful to the environment is the future.

 

I can see *a* digital currency in the future, but not Bitcoin or any of the literal thousands of copycats. You need government involvement if you want a digital future. Currently, I view Bitcoin as illegal drug/pedophile trafficking money.

 

[Mihle]

No way.
I think crypto itself will never be the main currency, and ESPECIALLY not bitcoin. Bitcoin itself is so broken and other cryptos does so much better job.

[reidoboss]

Before I start, let me tell you that I am a big enthusiast of crypto. I love reading stuff about it and to learn more and more. I see many use cases for crypto. Also, this is my personal opinion so take it with a grain of salt.

So, in my opinion FIAT currency will be around for a long time. Why?

Even tough I think that the current system is eating many people alive and banks and corporates are becoming bigger and bigger, in order for this to change it would need a HUGE change of mentality from the masses. And when we talk about changing mentalities at this level, we also talk about education. Crypto is more commonly refferenced in younger populations. That's because we have access to information through Internet and the educational system which many years ago i) didn't exist or ii) wasn't accessible to everyone. Let's say that people under 40 or 45 nowadays can handle this type of change. There are millions of people over that age that  simply don't. And even some young people don't like the idea for different reasons. People are educated for decades/centuries that a currency is handled by an entity (bank) which you can rely and they take care of your money (lol).

So, one of my main arguments is : it will need to pass a couple of years until the majority of society accept that our system must be changed. EDUCATION is the keyword here.

My next argument is : even if it happened earlier, banks have been REALLY REALLY strong for centuries. They won't accept being cut out. They will be part of our system for many years to come. And by not accepting to be cut out it I'm talking about lobbying, media control, fear over the masses etc. I can see them being part of crypto tho or at least trying to be and I'm not sure how that could be against crypto's basic philosophies.

And my last argument, at this moment bitcoin doesn't seem to be a great crypto for asset transactions. It has some issues like scalability, miners sort of centralizing the network which many people dislike nowadays, charging fees and taking some time to verify transactions. They are working on it and I'm also really curious about it. There are and there will be other crypto currencies with alternative approaches so we don't even know if Bitcoin will even be the mainstream for assets. Perhaps your question would be better if it was : Can a crypto currency become the main currency? Jut a suggestion th

And by the way we don't know what will happen when Quantum comes in play. Security will be an issue everywhere so, who knows what the future holds for crypto  

Good lock on your project!

 

 

[Pixel5]

absolutely impossible for cryptos to gain any traction in the real world.

 

one might be able to become some intermediate layer as a payment platform for certain applications but the real world has zero reasons to adopt cryptos for daily use.

[Unimportant]

16 hours ago, reidoboss said:

So, in my opinion FIAT currency will be around for a long time.

I don't know. The global fiat system the last 47 years is the exception, not the norm. For most of history currency always was, or was backed by, some real tangible asset. Sure, there have been periods of fiat money here and there throughout history (which all failed), but never on a global scale.

 

So, in a much broader view (time wise), our current system is just a little experiment, a blip in time, and any normalization back to the historical norm would spell the end of fiat currency. Seeing how broken the current system is (*), and how horrible it's eventual failure will be (possible global hyperinflation, for example), it's hard to see how the population will accept fiat currency again after the collapse.

 

 

(*): It is clear for anyone with eyes to see and the will to see it that the current system is on it's last leg, stuck between hyperinflation or plain bankruptcy. (which are actually the same thing in a different form: not getting your money back as a creditor or getting worthless money back is the same, it's merely a policy choice). If central banks hold interest rates down forever, eventually the currency will collapse. If they let rates rise there will be massive bankruptcies, because the debts have grown so large most sovereigns can no longer afford to pay any decent rate of interest on their debts.

[minervx]

Bitcoin is slow, has too many fees and no real software/tech/innovation.

 

Ethereum will replace it.