Bitcoin is definitely the most famous cryptocurrency ever, with the whole world observing it carefully and ready to jump on it at the right moment.
From a macroscopic point of view, this is certainly excellent news for all those who believe in it, but in the current state of things it changes very little.
Knowing that tomorrow it could become an internationally used currency, it doesn’t mean that something changes in the life of an ordinary citizen today, does it?
Actually there are reasons that can lead to holding it nowadays, which go beyond the simple speculation that does not interest those who do not know how to trade.
There are many small and large applications that Bitcoin already has now, which can be used to change the life of an ordinary person for the better.
This does not mean that the use of cryptocurrency automatically allows you to go and live on the tropical island sipping mojitos and forgetting the problem of money, this is the point.
What is interesting is to understand that Bitcoin, already today, has many practical or theoretical use cases to which a person can really be interested.
In any case, whatever your personal decision is, this article is not meant to push investment and should not be taken as financial advice whatsoever.
Bitcoin as a store of value
Ok, this is one of the most classic cliche, that everyone says right and missing just to fill the draft, without even understanding its meaning but using it as an advertisement by their own choice.
Gold has always been defined as the store of value par excellence, thanks to its incredible solidity, that has seen it survive through the centuries.
If we look at the price of gold from 2011 to today, you will notice that it has not changed a lot, settling on values very similar to those it had a decade ago.
So this makes it an effective store of value? More or less, given that his earnings would not even be able to beat inflation, which is somewhat indicative.
Bitcoin, on the other hand, has gained a large amount of mind-boggling percentage points, but it doesn’t really make sense to make this comparison, as Btc was something semi-unknown at the time.
This speech can be done endlessly, with cryptocurrency lovers pushing to say that gold is useless and the detractors who instead say it is the good par excellence.
In all this chatter is good to let logic prevail, which says that there is never a single truth polarizing and that it is always good to go and look for it somewhere in the middle between the two fires.
Bitcoin is a store of value that cannot be the only one, as it is too unreliable, but it makes perfect sense within a portfolio of more assets wide.
In the end, some similarity between physical gold and digital gold will have to pop out sooner or later, also because the prices are made by the people, the same ones who give the nicknames.
With Bitcoin you can buy goods
With Bitcoin, you can already buy a whole range of goods through normal physical or online stores.
In fact, there is a site called Bit2me you can search to find out which places around accept Bitcoin as a form of payment.
Obviously, the list may not include all the stores (which in fact seem a bit small compared to the real value), but it helps to get an idea of how things are going.
Added to this is an endless array of online sites that accept payment in this cryptocurrency, sending the products directly to your home.
Sure, it is still too early to say that you can only live by paying in Bitcoin, perhaps it would be technically feasible but rather limiting in the choices.
Bitcoin can be used to obtain loans
This is perhaps the point in this ranking which is a little more hypothetical, as it is possible to do this only in a few ways but we are talking about expanding the possibilities.
Basically, in the current state of affairs, the first banks are starting to talk about accepting Bitcoin as collateral for mortgages and cash loans.
Bitcoin can nowadays be given as collateral for a loan on many De-Fi platforms and also on different exchanges, which is very useful for some people.
Borrowed money can then be reinvested in other assets, giving rise to loops that allow for great dynamism, to your own capital instead of leaving it stationary and unused.
Obviously this is a type of operation for people who are knowledgeable and experienced in the field of investments, but still deserves to be mentioned here.
Bitcoin can be used to change cash
One of the uses it does the most often cry out to scandal, is the fact that Bitcoin can in some cases be exchanged directly from cash.
This, according to many and even at first glance, could be the perfect solution to move money in the black, thus evading the tax authorities.
This assumption derives from a very poor knowledge of the functioning of the blockchain and of the data that move on it, because you never lose track of anything.
Every single money transfer, even the smallest, remains branded in printouts that are always there for everyone on the reference chain.
News from a short time ago was precisely the discovery of an amount of Bitcoin stolen on an exchange by an American rapper, who she thought she had gotten away with it after several years.
Thinking you can escape the law through Bitcoin is perhaps the most stupid thing that an attacker can do, since he’s just signing his future sentence on an indestructible and always accessible piece of paper.
Actually, in the current state of things, the law struggles to keep up with these transactions, but this for a more technical reason that of effective ease in covering up the thing.
Even if today the finance does not have the adequate tools to prosecute all crimes on blockchain, the data is always there and will remain there until the end of days, so it will be able to always come back to work later.
Read also: Crypto mining: a basic overview
Well, what is Bitcoin for?
Nowadays you can quietly say that Bitcoin still has fairly marginal uses.
People is always reluctant to change, which occurs through the phenomenon of the snowball that rolls down from the mountain, at first harmless until it creates an avalanche.
In the current state of affairs it is difficult to say where the world is in the snowball, since things are progressing on the one hand but stagnating on the other.
There are also clear cases of accession that mark turning points, such as the always known El Salvador which uses it as legal tender as well as other countries that regulate it.
Added to this are websites for online purchases, physical exercises that embrace philosophy, ATMs to change money to Bitcoin and a whole series of large and small examples that, combined together, make a nice bunch.
On the other hand it is hard to notice how things move a bit like the price of cryptocurrency itself rising and falling in macrocycles.
On the other hand it is not wrong to remain cautious and not take too sharp positions at the investment level.
