Bitcoin “adoption” is an illusion. I guarantee these sellers are liquidating their Bitcoins for actual money as soon as fast as humanly possible. Not one of these sellers is stupid enough to bank these things, account with them, or do anything more than rapidly exchange them for actual dollars.
Don’t call this anything more than it is: barter with a quick sale of the Bitcoin to something actually backed by law.
Sir, respectfully your denial of this technology will not serve you well in the future. The Bitcoin protocol is here to stay and if you have any questions about its legality, I would refer you to the IRS.
I don’t have any hard numbers at this point but the “adoption” by Square of Bitcoin as a payment option will double Bitcoins market exposure, “give or take”. That is classic exponential growth.
To look at the reality of what is happening and deny it, one would have to be delusional.
I’ve been following the bitcoin saga for a while now. To be quite honest, I thought it might be done-for recently. Guess what, it’s taken a licking and has kept on ticking.
It’s not as shaky as some folks thought.
If it can take a hit like the negative publicity over the last four months, and still remain at it’s current levels, it’s something that isn’t a flash in the pan.
It may die yet, but I’m certainly not predicting it.
There are valid negative observations to be made, but then those haven’t caused it’s demise yet.
That's all that's necessary. It's not intended to be a unit of account or a store of value, just a medium of exchange. The more exchanging that happens, the more stable it is.
BTW distributed ledger has some cool implications on authenticating transactions in digital book-keeping. There's a wealth of useful ideas in BitCoin that would be applicable in bookkeeping and auditing and ensuring the legitimacy of transactions, or in revealing tampering or unauthorized activity.