One of the reasons for Bitcoin’s value is demand, like any other market.
The big difference between cryptocurrency, such as Bitcoin, and fiat currencies (such as Sterling, Dollar or Euro) is that with cryptocurrencies there is an absolute limit to the amount. With Bitcoin, this is just short of 21 million. There can never be more than that. It’s rather like gold in that respect, although we haven’t got all of the gold out of the ground yet, it is a finite commodity.
Compare that with the fiat currencies. Theoretically, there is no limit. Governments are printing money like it’s going out of fashion. Short of money? Print some more. Fiat currencies are not backed by anything. The UK left the gold standard in 1931 and the US in 1933.
Fiat currencies have a value because people believe it. The same is true with cryptocurrencies.
Interesting Musk wants to save the world with electric cars but buys $1.5billion of Bitcoin; all a bit hypocritical, but like most probably just happy to make money anyway he can. The creation of BTC uses more energy than industrialised countries in a year - Austria, Belgium Switzerland and the like - and has a carbon foot print of 37 million tons of CO2 per year - it has produced more carbon dioxide than New Zealand.
Just a thought, will anyone be charged for the carbon tax on Bitcoin?
Ok so you’ve got your Bitcoin - where and how can you spend it? The ‘how’ has been quite extensively elaborated on in the main article, I won’t bore you with repetition, so that just leaves the where. In the UK there are an increasing number of locations that you can actually spend your BTC; this handy comparison website now actually pinpoints the crypto-friendly stores, retailers, locations and companies in the UK and you can refine your search by ‘type’ whether your desire to spend be on sport, groceries, travel, accommodation, nightlife and soon and so forth.
With an increase in acceptance by quite a few of the major international companies, many of which are themselves becoming heavily invested in cryptocurrency development, the breadth of usage for us all is slowly widening.
Moving on - I have done a little bit more local research, and found that pretty well all UK banks will block payments to cryptocurrency exchanges, and quite a number won’t even accept payments from an exchange which is quite worrying. Primarily this seems to be just a case of banks being protectionist as they see cryptocurrency as a very real and viable threat to their future businesses; this will no doubt all change in the very near future.
Such is the push by the ‘big movers’ in the market, I’m pretty sure the reality is that within less than 10 years the acceptance and usage of cryptocurrencies will be as normal as credit cards are today.