Why use bitcoin instead of cash?

Tristan Johns

Bitcoin Researcher and Hoarder

59w ago

At this point in time there aren’t many reasons to convince someone to use bitcoin instead of cash. Cash is accepted by virtually everyone, it can be transported short distances physically with almost no hassle, and it’s an easily graspable concept.

Now I said there aren’t many reasons, but there are a few big reasons. The first is that bitcoin is decentralized.

It’s now a month later. The United States (or your residing country) has been swiftly conquered by an up-and-rising dictator. He sends out an order to all federal banks and the national reserve that the USD (or residing cash) is no longer valuable. The only money that is accepted is now the dictator’s money, with his face on it.

What can you do about it? Squat. Zilch. Nada. There is no inherent value to the cash in your wallet. It’s paper. It requires relatively no effort to create, it can be mass produced in short time, and it has no special use cases. The only reason it is valuable is because you and the residing government say so. And your opinion of its value would be swayed quickly if you could no longer use it to shop at Walmart.

This is where bitcoin has the upper hand. There is no centralized ruling figure that decides when to print more bitcoin. It cannot be created out of thin air like paper money. It requires processing power to create more, and it gradually gets harder and harder to create. This means there is a cap on the amount of potential bitcoin.

Most of us are familiar with inflation. When there is a consistent creation of a certain item, that item becomes less valuable. This occurs in economics and fiat quite often.

While sovereign entities have the ability to print more and more fiat money at ease, the ability to create bitcoin slowly decreases. This eliminates inflation.

But let’s say that you are confident in your government. You believe they are headed in the right track, and that your nation will be ever-prosperous. Then there is no reason to use bitcoin over cash. Bitcoin isn’t ready to be used as cash at this point. There is an on-chain transaction limit that turns some people off. There are small transaction fees for each transaction, which turns people off. 

Whether or not bitcoin evolves to replace cash is up to the community. These downsides outweigh the benefits of bitcoin for a lot of people.

So there aren’t many reasons to use bitcoin over cash, but there are still reasons to incorporate bitcoin into your life. Both examples I gave earlier, of decentralization and the slowly decreasing inflation rate, are reasons to use bitcoin as a commodity. Some people like to call bitcoin a digital gold, because it’s just that. A way to store value, but not a logical way to make everyday transactions.

Then what is the ultimate reason to use bitcoin over cash? You believe in the core concept and philosophy behind bitcoin.

Henry Tang

Bitcoin lovers. My bitcoins appreciated many times

59w ago

Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, maybe your question is why use bitcoin instead of USD (or EUR or whatever currency you use daily)

For normal currency it’s easy to answer, you use whatever the other side accept. If you buy things from foreign store and it accept EUR, then you pay EUR. Same to bitcoin, if it accept only bitcoin, then you pay bitcoin. Or if they accept multiple currency, you pay the one charge you less (as there’s usually some discrepancy in values of different currency as exchange wait keep changing seconds to seconds)

I know, that’s not a convincing answer. Even there’s many more shops accept Bitcoin, they are still minorities. But there’s some more actually probably Bitcoin can do.

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING ACTIVITIES MAY BE ILLEGAL IN SOME JURISDICTIONS. CHECK WITH YOUR LAWYER BEFORE ACTUALLY DOING IT!!!!!

Get through Capital Control – There’s actually not few countries having capital control. i.e. there’s limitations of the amount of currency you move in or out the countries. Some people who want to move money out of the countries leverage bitcoin. They buy bitcoin, transfer it outside the countries and exchange back to currencies. That’s a grey area activities in many jurisdictions, as many countries still don’t regard Bitcoin as currency. If Bitcoin is officially regarded as currency then it’s likely illegalHide Wealth – Some wealthy people who would like to hide some part of their wealth from bank / security accounts. Swiss bank was a good choice to do it but not anymore. The common way is to put cash or valuable goods or commodities (like art piece, gold, diamond) but those take up spaces and you need to find safe space to store them. Bitcoin is one of the very good choice here as it’s digital. You can store your bitcoin even on a piece of paper! (physical wallet)For people with no bank access – There’s still many people in the world that don’t have bank access, while internet access is more easy (what a fun world!). Bitcoin allow them to pay others easier than bank transfer and credit cards for transaction which isn’t face-to-face.

There’s many use cases along those line because of Bitcoin’s properties of

Not officially regarded as a currency but can serve the purpose of currencyEasy to access – you only need an internet accessEasy to store and hide

Belavadi Prahalad

Economy and Value driven

27w ago

Cause you can account to where your money went.

Cause you can have a ledger that records everything.

Cause you’re promise of value isn’t just another promise but is indeed value

Certainly,Bitcoin cannot solve all that cash does.

Cash cannot solve all the problems that bitcoin does.

Bitcoin does not solve all that cash does.

Cash does not solve all the problems that bitcoin does.

At the end of the day, both are necessary in their very own respect.

I send out a monthly newsletter on Bitcoin, Blockchain and Ethereum and write on The Blockchain Fanatic.

Do sign up at Contact:Bitcoin/Blockchain Newsletter to receive my monthly newsletter.

Sagar Takiar

BA Finance, Vilniaus Gedimino Technikos Universitetas

50w ago

Hello Friends

BITCOIN is a crypto currency, maybe your question is why to use bitcoin instead of cash. Here I stated few points above to differentiateCash vs Bitcoin.

It’s very interesting to know the difference..check out here

Aman Sonewane

M.S Industrial Engineering, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg

51w ago

Original site on Quora

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