pull down to refresh
I can see that being the case globally, but we're already on a dollar standard so our alternative isn't stablecoins.
Americans looking for a better money will switch to bitcoin directly.
To me the solution will come in the form of an in-between. Something like the so-called "flatcoins". The adoption of bitcoin directly to me is a mathematical impossibility, because of The Paradox of Bitcoin Adoption.
I still don't see that as an insurmountable problem. Other currency transitions have been rocky for people but that didn't stop them from happening.
We already have some people taking salaries and paying for goods with bitcoin. There's no particular reason that group can't grow. In fact, given one group of people who are only willing to use bitcoin and another who have no ideological attachment to any particular currency, the trend will be more people using bitcoin.
That's the thing, it's not a matter of will. Advantageous transitions to other currencies have always been done to more stable currencies, not less. It's not the case with bitcoin. The reason such groups you mention can not scale is what's described in the paradox. The problem occurs precisely in the scaling phase. And it is insurmountable in that math can not be avoided. That's why the solution to the paradox of adoption will come in a form that's not bitcoin itself, but something that will be built upon it.
It seems like you're ignoring the possibility that the dollar becomes the more volatile currency once we get near mass adoption.
But that's what's described in the paradox: for that to happen, we have to get near mass adoption. And near mass adoption will happen when the dollar becomes the more volatile currency, which will happen once we get near mass adoption. You can't escape that chicken-before-the-egg paradox.
I just don't find anything compelling about this "paradox". Many major currencies have become volatile throughout history, without bitcoin existing. So, Bitcoin does not have to even be related to the volatility. It could simply be there, being less volatile than the failing currency.
The dollar has plenty of structural problems of its own for people to eventually lose trust in it. The outside option of bitcoin is just another straw on the camel's back.
Bitcoin's volatility comes down as more people use it for daily exchange, which is happening. The dollar's volatility goes up as it becomes increasingly clear to people that debt servicing is untenable. At some point, those two trendlines cross each other.
Many major currencies have become volatile throughout history, without bitcoin existing.
Exactly, that's why only transitions to more stable currencies are advantageous, not the other way around.
The dollar has plenty of structural problems of its own for people to eventually lose trust in it.
Structural problems mean nothing to the mass of people, only value-storing power, for which the dollar offers more stability than bitcoin, specially when coupled with other financial tools like interest rates, which also have the plus of being relatively constant.
Bitcoin's volatility comes down as more people use it for daily exchange, which is happening.
The scale at which bitcoin is used for daily exchange is non-existent in comparison to stablecoins, regarding not amounts exchanged but the user base.
The dollar's volatility goes up as it becomes increasingly clear to people that debt servicing is untenable.
Nowhere close to bitcoin's volatility.
At some point, those two trendlines cross each other.
The current trend is for stablecoin adoption, which has effectively happened and is growing orders of magnitude faster than bitcoin. That's the trend you should be looking at. That's the trendline that wins. Bitcoin will become the basis of that by offering a much better product, a better stablecoin, but it will not be the currency in itself.
Bitcoin's volatility comes down as more people use it for daily exchange
This is the phrase where the paradox hides, the quid of the matter. You can not make that argument without assuming that adoption has started because volatility has started to come down. But your argument is that that happens because adoption is growing. You can not escape that chicken-before-the-egg paradox, and that's what's compelling about it.
Bitcoin is not a product, it's a technology. Products built upon bitcoin will be adopted, not bitcoin in itself (not directly by the masses). When stablecoins get built reliably upon bitcoin, it will be adopted by the public as any other product: out of convenience. The focus on bitcoin adoption out of evangelization is flawed. Evangelization serves a very specific purpose, which is to build the community, but that's it.