What would it take for you to accept Bitcoin as useful?

I think it will take a generation gap. Bitcoin people have done everything but try and build confidence in bitcoin. There's no consensus on what bitcoin is, is it a currency? Is it an asset class? Is it a scam? There's no ownership over the fact that it's essentially an operation that turns pollution into money. There's no trust or oversight in whales who own large amounts anonymously who can make large market shifts. Nothing about bitcoin even has any value except that people claim it does. At least with magic cards I can go play a game or a piece of art I can look at or actual money I can spend anywhere to get things. Bitcoin does none of those things. All bitcoin seems to be good for is let weirdos live in the Bahamas in their weird sex cults stealing money from their currency exchanges.

Volatility is steadily going down.

The only "stability" crypto has is due to stable coins --- unaudited, unregulated and likely fictitious ties (can you prove otherwise?) to fiat -- the very thing it is designed to replace.

In other words, any stability is an illusion --- it's built on circular logic.

Fix stablecoins --- either eliminate them or audit/regulate them --- not some BS, non-binding attestation that can evaporate the next day. Make redemption a legally binding contract --- not subject to the whims of con artists.

Do this and then we can talk about stability and putting our life savings in crypto.

> Volatility is steadily going down. If this continues, Bitcoin will surpass gold in stability

Also steadily going down is the block subsidy. In 21 years it will be 64x less than what it is now, and some decades later it will be negligible, leaving only fees to incentivize miners to secure Bitcoin.

Research suggests that Bitcoin might become somewhat lacking in stability then [1].

[1] https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~arvindn/publications/mining_CC...

Stability, possibly backed by gold or some other stable product. Also the way wallets work would have to be more robust such that there are means to recover after hard drive failures, and revert if an exchanged is hacked. Without that, there's not going to be (or should be) any serious thoughts of more general global adoption of it. It has its uses though. I recall early days nearly buying 10 or more bitcoin ... but it's value was fluctuating even then, such that the service I eventually decided after half a year I'd pay via bitcoin for a discount, still had their bitcoin price from two or so months prior. Instead I went the way of a near useless virtual credit card - some VC business obviously could do what they promised, I just made the mistake of picking a fly-by-night toolshop which had worked out the right things to say to drum up business.

As long there is no regulation and safety, I won't accept that. The reason is the volatility.

I don't care, if it's used for criminal things nor for legal. It's just the volatility. I don't want to risk my wealth just because some guys say Bitcoin is the future.

Awful big "ifs" in that second sentence ... "if this continues" ... "if it continues further"

"Volatility is steadily going down" ... it IS?! Everything I see shows it as volatile as ever

Gold is continually minable (to some indefinite future point when it's not ... but that is an awful long way in the future)

Bitcoin will max-out at 21m coins (a notable number of which are gone forever (including 5 or 6 I had when it was only "worth" fractions of a cent))

Building an economic base/standard on something that is not fixed in nature is, IMHO, a far better system than basing it on something that is either fixed or quasi-fixed (eg gold/silver)

The transaction (tx) rate is too low and tx cost can fluctuate wildly in addition to costing far too much. Some sort of side chain (like the lightning network) could help boost tx rate but there’s nothing currently anywhere near what could be regarded as near peer in regard to visa or other financial network tx rates.

And, above all, the immorally high energy consumption required by mining needs addressing. Again, lightning offered solutions but it’s not enough to satisfy larger scale adoption.

I keep hoping though.

Hell freezing over: for it to discard its nature and thus cease to be what it is.

Proof of work is unacceptable.

The transaction cost (monetary and emissions) is unacceptable.

The transaction time is unacceptable.

The behavior of exchanges is unacceptable.

The lack of regulation is unacceptable.

The shadow manipulation of the market by conventional financial players attracted by the lack of regulation is unacceptable.

Need I go on?

Fix as much of that as you can and it becomes regular finance with extra steps, and thus, pointless.

Reasonable transaction cost, higher speed, possibility to revert transactions to a scammer, dropping proof-of-work. So practically never.

no transaction costs, fast transactions, low energy use to do so.