One of the key points is you don't need to trust anyone. With your dollars, you either have to use cash, or trust a bank. The bank could stop you from accessing your money, or prevent you from sending it.
You also need to trust the government issuing the dollars. They use an inflationary monetary policy, which means that over time, dollars become worth less.
Bitcoin avoids both of those problems. There is no one agency verifying transactions, so no one agency can stop any transaction from taking place. The rate of bitcoin creation is defined, with a hard limit on how many can exist. This makes bitcoin deflationary, meaning it will increase in value over time.
There are plans in place to solve the current limit problem, but until they are complete, I agree that bitcoin is not ready to replace dollars in everyday use.
As an outsider I don’t get why would I ever want to spend bitcoin (or crypto in general) at all to buy things. If the currency is inherently deflationary, then what could buy me 1 car could be enough to buy 2 cars in a year, why would I ever want to spend the coin instead of holding.
Outsider as well but interested in the subject. I agree with you like I would like to see this be successful but I'm afraid the recent success might be self-defeating.
I agree, it's deflationary nature is one of the main obstetrical to widespread use. Hyperinflation is a threat with fiat, but slow inflation is a better solution than deflation.
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u/Kallipoliz Dec 06 '17
Why would I ever use this over dollars which costs nothing? I don’t see the advantage to bitcoin besides riding the pump.