The person you replied to said “crypto” not “Bitcoin”. They can convert their coins to an algorithmic stablecoin and make the payment in a single transaction with no price change.

So is Bitcoin no longer being pushed as a currency? Is that “official”?

I mean there’s very little you’ll find as an official spokesperson for Bitcoin but yeah, the dream of on-chain transactions being used for anything other than a funny speculative asset is pretty much gone.

It’s actually kinda crazy in a “voting yourself money” kinda way. Because as long as people believe that BTC should always increase in value then in the long run the returns should gravitate toward something like the weighted average worldwide inflation rate.

The downside of course is that unlike normal investments they don’t spur the real life economic growth necessary to sustain that inflation.

> The downside of course is that unlike normal investments they don’t spur the real life economic growth necessary to sustain that inflation

Wouldn't it indirectly, because people trade bitcoins for USD most of the time, and that USD you'd assume eventually goes to buy products or services?

For many years now Bitcoin has been generally viewed by a large consensus to be a low throughput store of value, akin to digital gold. Many disagree with this ofc but it is a pretty mainstream view.

Those goalposts got moved years ago

It is definitively 'official'.

If you cannot use Bitcoin to quickly pay for your groceries at your local supermarket then it is quite useless to use isn't it?

There are other cryptocurrencies which are more suitable to these very basic use-cases hence why Bitcoin is the easiest cryptocurrency to attack for most critics.

As bizarre as this state of affairs is, Bitcoin is legal tender in El Salvador, who in turn have a seat in the United Nations.

That makes it an official currency: low transaction rates, energy costs, and wild fluctuations relative to other national currencies aside.

Who are you looking to "officially" decide that? Best you can probably do is look at what hard forks have occurred (such as bitcoin vs bitcash in this case) to see community splits.

I don’t know, that’s why I asked. I’m not sure why a legitimate question is being downvoted.

I don’t participate in the community. So I’m not sure if the project maintainers have different visions than the investors or whatever.

Trying to pay in Bitcoin or any other non-stable crypto asset sounds like a nightmare. I think that people rightfully don't do this anymore but instead use stable coins like USDC (https://www.circle.com/en/usdc).

If the downpayment was accepting bitcoin then it would be a set amount like 0.1btc and not a dollar value.

Well, no, because the value would flail around wildly. No sane person would do that. BTC crashes 10% in minutes, who would knowingly expose themselves to that kind of forex risk for the few hours it takes to get the confirmations needed to feel comfortable? When one could instead liquidate their position in seconds, confirm the amount, and wire it to their recipient - free of charge often. Domestic wires are free on FTX but sending USDC-ETH to your own wallet costs $25. There's literally zero good reason for doing what you suggest.