Bitcoin does not have a killer app, “I can’t use it to buy coffee”, says Mastering Bitcoin author

Andreas Antonopoulos, the author of Mastering Bitcoin and a Bitcoin proponent, spoke about the limited supply of Bitcoin and whether it is better to hold the cryptocurrency than trade it, in his latest Q&A session on Youtube.

The author was asked how to incentivise the spending of Bitcoin when it is worthwhile to hold the currency as the value increases. This is taking into consideration that there can be only 21,000 Bitcoins, and the demand increases as more people hear of it, and economic theory suggest the value of Bitcoin trending up.

To which, he said:

“That’s a great question. As someone who has spent a whole lot of bitcoin and then been racked… by guilt and regret for every single one I have ever spent, I can tell you that… the instinct to hoard — even if you know that is true — doesn’t apply [all the time].”

This was followed by the author speaking about the hodling Bitcoin. He stated that the reason why people who were able to buy Bitcoin at $3 hold them for 20 years, is that for them $25 or $100 is “the moon”. According to him, from an investment perspective, holding is hard as the perspective keeps shifting.

“The other aspect to this, what we call “hoarding” in the English language is – in the vast majority of the world – called “saving.”  I know, Americans are not familiar with this. Language barriers and all. The idea [is to] save your money so you can buy things like houses, cars, consumer goods, or perhaps even an education for your children that doesn’t cost half a million dollars.”

Antonopoulos further stated that Keynesian economists define ‘hoarding’ as the sensible act of building wealth for the next generation. He added that the economics of Bitcoin are “really strange” in a world where people are used to “massively inflated currencies”, which are going to have lesser value in comparison to their current one, quoting the example of Greece and Argentina.

“In the case of bitcoin, you [must] start thinking about the broader ecosystem. If Bitcoin remains the system [with] a monetary policy as hard as gold, that will serve a specific purpose. If that purpose is saving, that is the app!”

He went on to say that Bitcoin does not have a killer app, and that it cannot be used to buy coffee. However, investing for the future is the killer app, the author added.

“Saving [people] from the Venezuelan economy is a killer app, it is just not the killer app for you [right now]. Beware what you wish for […] It has happened to every single other fiat currency in history. That is the norm.”