WTF? Let me put it more simply. What would you rather trade for coffee, tea and biscuits? Gold, silver, BTC or fiat?
I love silver tulips when they pop up. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lLUWXXJXhY[/youtube] I can buy a coffee with my Bitcoins at Waves Cafe. Yup, I'd use BTC.
Thanks LOB for the last image. Makes my point succinctly. Stupid cunt bought a coffee with his BTC on October 30, when they were worth what? $200 US. Should have used fiat.
FACT: He used Bitcoin as his currency in exchange for a coffee. He wanted a coffee and got it. Whether he is interested in speculating in Bitcoin as a potential investment or not is another matter altogether.
In your opinion....but he wanted a coffee and got it (that is a win). Bitcoin is a very young currency and fluctuates. I'm sure he did not know how much Bitcoin he could trade as currency for his coffee in the months to come. "Hindsight is always twenty-twenty." "The historian is a prophet facing backwards." Friedrich von Schlegel
^ or they are just attracted by the novelty of being able to use BTC to purchase something that could easily, and which would make much better economic sense - and I'm referring to marginal utility here - could have been purchased with stinking fiat.
shiney.....why support the banking system by using their stinking fiat dollars or digital currency?. Some people don't want to support the bankers with their beloved stinking fiat. Now they have an option in the real world.
Marginal utility LOB. I'd rather trade something of lesser value for a product than something of greater value eg I wouldn't trade gold for beer or coffee.
Gold (& Bitcoins) convert to bank issued fiat. Relax...it's not too early for a beer, Lol. A coffee might have been (bank fiat) $4.00 12 months ago. Now it is $4.20.
maybe he should hold off from ever using it, so when he dies he can bring his BTC to heaven and spend it there?
In the earliest days of Bitcoin, some people would have mined Bitcoins as a mere technical curiosity rather than foreseeing historical gigantic prices rises against bank fiat, I would imagine. But hey, I'm no mind reader. Whatever....Bitcoin does not care. It does not have a brain to think, or a voice to make claims about itself.
"Scary" - Nope, we are not flirting with $1000USD/BTC yet. Let me know when you get a Bitcoin address shiney...I'll send you an airly Christmas present.
I was thinking about this the other day. Say you have 2 bitcoin users - 1. ME (the coffee shop owner) 2. willrocks (a customer). He comes in my shop and sees the sign "we accept bitcoins" and we get talking. He wants his coffee and has to pay, but in a Greshams law kind of situation which mmmm shiney pointed out, he would rather pay with fiat than BTC (Greshams law basically says - people when given the choice will pay with the currency they value less. Even my 3 year old neice when buying lollies will pay with the dirty coins and keep the shiney ones for herself.) This leaves us with a few options 1. Lower the price for BTC users (if I really value BTC highly) 2. Encourage him to change fiat into BTC and pay me like that 3. Take his fiat and change that to BTC later 4. Accept dirty fiat The point I'm trying to make is, as long as we do any option (except 4). Bitcoin in general will benefit because surely the more transsactions in BTC and the more users the higher the value would go. Any problems with this logic?