Oddbean

I put myself in the camp of those not really willing to use Bitcoin to purchase goods and services, and I agree with @saunter that this is a problem. He recently wrote: > "We have more bitcoin merchants than Bitcoiners willing to spend. We don’t need more merchant adoption, but spenders adoption." I believe that the "spend-replace" practice needs to be a no-brainer. https://m.primal.net/LVdS.gif I used this approach a couple of times for fairly large purchaes I made. However, it meant that each time I had to complete the BTC payment with my wallet, then move the fiat equivalent of the bitcoin I spent to an exchange, then use that money to purchase BTC at a rate different from the one applied for the initial BTC payment to the merchant, then move the new BTC out of the exchange and back to my wallet. Of course, this is very annoying and not sensible for small purchases. In those cases, it makes more sense to replace multiple BTC spendings with a single BTC purchase. However, doing this manually and on a regular basis, is going to be complex and time-consuming. A more convenient solution would be to have your wallet automatically manage the "spend-replace" process in collaboration with services like @Relai 🇨🇭, @GetBittr, @bitcoinwell, etc. I could simply receive an alert saying: "Threshold reached! It's time to replace your Bitcoins! Transfer xxx EUR/USD to Relai/Bittr/Well/... bank account to purchase approx. YYY BTC that will be received right in this wallet.". I would immediately switch to a wallet offering this feature! (/cc @Eluc, @joenakamoto that recently posted about this topic)

If you don't focus on buying back exactly as much sats at the exact same rate, then it's not so cumbersome. I know I spend about x amount per month + I know I will got to a conference and spend some, then when I see a drop, I stacks enough to cover that + some margin. If I had an unplanned sats spend, small amount is ok, larger I also try to buy back in the next 2-3 weeks as much sats or more if I can afford. If you do that you should be able to spend sats without bothering about the rate as you always buy back a bit more and on average it should more or less be the same rate unless it's during one of the short and rare parabolic phase where you might plan differently. Eventually we will do the opposite, as it will be more profitable to hold everything in BTC and keep only a small amount in fiat for daily purchases, then you sell when you need to pay a bill or something. Some service will allow you t pay bill in BTC directly and the bill is settled in fiat for you in the background, until everyone accept BTC. When you have only one month of budget or less in fiat on your bank account and that it's a fraction of your BTC holding, you are doing it right.

> When you have only one month of budget or less in fiat on your bank account and that it's a fraction of your BTC holding, you are doing it right. Nice metric! 😃 Btw, how do you deal with tax reporting of purchases made with BTC?

The main problem I see is that the primary incentive is usually "do it to support the network, bro." People are doing what economically makes sense. It doesn't make sense for me to get paid in fiat, have mostly fiat bills, and spend a fee to use Bitcoin, spend a fee to replace the Bitcoin, and then have to live the nightmare of tracking all of the buys and sells for my taxes. There are so many differences between jurisdictions that there is no single answer to more people spending Bitcoin. The incentive where I live is to spend fiat and save my extra in Bitcoin. I usually have a disincentive to spend and replace. The only time that hasn't been true is when there is a 10% discount on some larger purchase I'm making. Even then, I usually don't want to deal with the tax tracking of it. This is a multi-faceted issue, but I do agree that more merchants would not solve my issues. I actually don't even need merchant adoption as much as I once did (with all the conversion options). What I need is simpler tax tracking or no taxes at all on Bitcoin for the full economic incentive to bother with spending and replacing. I donate a lot more Bitcoin than I spend because the tax situation isn't complicated for me when I donate. I don't think the network is any worse off doing what I do. I'm still pulling value out of the fiat world and putting it into Bitcoin on a regular basis. I'm just not micro transacting myself to death when my reality simply isn't set up for it. If Bitcoin was legally a currency without taxation, I'd be living completely in it today, even if I lost a percentage for doing so. I would do that on principle. But the amount of work I'd need to do right now is beyond what I am willing to do. There may be ways to make it easier, but not easy enough. The UX and laws just aren't there for me yet. And this isn't really surprising. The Fiat rails have almost a century on Bitcoin. We are going the right direction. I'm on more of a Bitcoin standard in my own life than I've ever been, even with how I use it right now. Like nostr:nprofile1qqsw3znfr6vdnxrujezjrhlkqqjlvpcqx79ys7gcph9mkjjsy7zsgygpr9mhxue69uhhqatjv9mxjerp9ehx7um5wghxcctwvsq3samnwvaz7tmjv4kxz7fwdehhxarjd93kztnrdaksz9thwden5te0wfjkccte9ekk7um5wgh8qatz7tvu4p said, we're gonna make it. nostr:nevent1qqsv9arslqzc35ll8t3lwghcnga0ru6kqrcv00e36fl3jmkp3zhe30spz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduhsygpul2qkhdyf97ntaxf6cu4flndmpzdaagx9myq3l5sy6929ghazmypsgqqqqqqs2lwvfs

Merchants must save in Bitcoin. Many people will grow their own food in their back yards before they spend the hardest money they have. The adoption curve has to complete before spending bitcoin becomes a desirable outcome. I have given people bitcoin with the hope that it motivates them to study it. If they just sell it for fiat currency after I spent months trying to explain it's value to them it feels like a slap in the face. Merchants are even scarier because you don't know if they just sell it for cash immediatly/automatically. Then the recipient of your spend is unknown to you. It might be coinbase getting your bitcoin on some back end api. There are good ways people manage to spend and earn in feasable circular ways, it's just not going to be the next big thing for another cycle or two. More hodlers would have to survive a cycle or two for spending to increase. Think of each cycle as generations reproducing. The first meaningful cycle of adoption (population boom) was the 2016 cycle. We need more cycles to have more bitcoiners who did not fall in the bear market battle. We are already in a much better place than we were two years ago with regards to merchant adoption, I'm just stingy, would rather give bitcoin away to teach an individual before I spend it. If merchants can mine fiat, they can save in bitcoin. It's the Saylor way. And he's smiling.