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comment by user-inactivated
user-inactivated  ·  3207 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Is Bitcoin Dead?

Bitcoin is not dying, or dead, but meandering in a market trying to find its place. It's a floating currency whose users define its value, so in a way it's less stable than cash though it has a defined growth rate. It doesn't have a central bank to regulate its inflation like other forms of cash do, so its mostly going to depend on supply and demand more so than normal cash values.

It has some unique features that allow it to be useful for transactions, but many of those features are approximated by cash used through 3rd party apps like Venmo and Google Wallet. What Bitcoin needs is not to compete against cash where it is less trusted because its not backed by a government, or cards where it offers less protection for chargebacks and fraud protection. It needs to compete on its independence and usefulness to the common user. How great would it be to travel overseas and not lose your shirt to currency transactions? Businesses the world over would love to have all of their profits back and not have to lose to a strong Dollar/Euro.

That's not going to happen without some major strategic changes first. #1 is that the Bitcoin banking institutions need to get major payroll companies to offer a Bitcoin direct deposit to their payees. You can't save money on not translating currency if you sell in Bitcoin only to pay in Euro. #2 is making Bitcoin as easy to use as cash through a debit account. It really shouldn't matter what currency your debit card is attached to, but if you suffer transaction fees everything you use a foreign currency, including Bitcoin, you're going to lose money and customers.

If you can do those two things, and it's going to have to be done by someone with a vested interest like the banks themselves, then you are going to drastically increase the user base. That increases the trust in the currency, and its exposure to more and more users.

Bitcoin isn't dead, but it's not being strategically managed by anyone. In a world with competing options which have a lot to offer, Bitcoin is not differentiating itself amongst the competition. Bitcoin needs a management team.