In places with bad inflation or strict banking controls like parts of South America, people use Bitcoin to protect their money or to move it around when banks won’t let them. That’s not speculating — that’s surviving. That’s utility not speculation. Argentina and Venezuela that have hyper inflation is an example of this happening now because it protects their purchasing power. Why don’t think it’s gone up to record levels? Because printing more money is not the solution.
This is really no more than currency trading, maybe in some places it's more accessible, I don't know. Still the problem in that case would be regulatory, I guess regulatory issues and hyper-inflation would kind of go hand in hand. Still, that doesn't explain it's adoption in first world countries where these kinds of issues are not present.
Again I ain't claiming Bitcoin is useless, what I'm saying is it doesn't fill a need that can't be filled better or more efficiently by pre-existing means, which leaves it's success down to speculation driving it's increase in value.
Not really. Bitcoin isn’t just about speculation. Yeah, some people try to flip it for a quick profit, but that’s not the full picture.
Many people buy Bitcoin to hold long-term — kind of like digital gold. They’re not betting it’ll go up tomorrow; they just want to store value somewhere that governments can’t mess with. Thats the crux of crypto
That's still speculation that it will increase in value. The time frame on any investment in an non productive asset is immaterial to whether or not the holder is speculating a rise in value. Regardless of the time frame the only thing that will happen with Bitcoin is the price will change, shit will change around it that might influence the price, but Bitcoin itself does nothing, it just is.
Also, some make profit just by holding it for years, believing it’s the future of money. That’s more like investing in a big idea not just guessing prices.
In the beginning perhaps, I think back then the kind of folk using Bitcoin in any way were very very different from the folk that are buying it today.
