SEC Chair Gary Gensler - Bitcoin is unlikely to become a currency

[legiteum]

In the USA, it’s different since Bitcoin is legal but treated as property.... So when you buy real estate, you’ll have to deal with paying capital gains tax based on the difference between when you bought the Bitcoin and when you use it to purchase the property. So essentially, you’re trading property for property, but when the seller converts it to fiat at a higher value, they’ll also face capital gains tax. It’s a bit complex. It would be simpler if Bitcoin were treated as currency, with only a basic tax applied.

Capital gains tax is calculated based on the value of the US dollar as a measurement. It has nothing to do with whether you call the investment "currency" or "property" or whatever.

[Abiky]

That's what he said.
...

What do you guys think about this? We know only two countries have declared Bitcoin as legal currency--El Salvador (the most famous one) and the Central African Republic. If they've done it and their economies haven't seen any major issues, like a spike in crime, then why does the SEC chair say it's unlikely for Bitcoin to become a currency?

By "currency," it doesn’t necessarily mean the main currency--fiat will definitely stick around. The point is that people should have more options, not just seeing Bitcoin as a "store of value" (which I agree with), but it could also be used as legal tender so we can enjoy Bitcoin even more!

He's right, you know. Most people tend to hoard Bitcoin as some sort of long-term investment. It's all about getting rich quick. Only a small minority uses it as a currency. With limited transaction capacity, I'm afraid Bitcoin will remain a store of value forever.

Altcoins are more suited as "digital cash" because of their inflationary rates (some of them) and greater transaction capacity. Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, Dogecoin, Monero, and a few others are ideal choices for daily payments. Yet again, most people just hoard these coins and convert to Fiat once prices go all the way to the moon. Therefore, Satoshi's dream of decentralizing the economy would be nothing more than a distant one.

[Natalim]

I'm afraid Bitcoin will remain a store of value forever.

I think that scenario won’t work, and it’s not what Bitcoin was designed for. Yes, it’s a store of value...one of its key traits. but if it’s only used as an investment, global adoption won’t happen, and that could affect Bitcoin’s future value. It needs to be both a currency for everyday use and a store of value to truly succeed.

Issues like slow transactions and high fees can be solved. The Lightning Network (LN) is already here to tackle these problems if people are willing to adopt it. It might take time, but the solutions are already in place.

[fruktik]

I think that scenario won’t work, and it’s not what Bitcoin was designed for. Yes, it’s a store of value...one of its key traits. but if it’s only used as an investment, global adoption won’t happen, and that could affect Bitcoin’s future value. It needs to be both a currency for everyday use and a store of value to truly succeed.

Issues like slow transactions and high fees can be solved. The Lightning Network (LN) is already here to tackle these problems if people are willing to adopt it. It might take time, but the solutions are already in place.

What prevents people from using such a solution? Why is there no mass total adoption? What is the problem? It seems to me that society is not ready for such a transition. The standard of living should be much better than it is today. No one wants to pay fairly high fees and wait a certain amount of time for a transaction to be completed. Yes, these are the problems that blockchain technology faces. At the very beginning of Bitcoin, it seemed that this was the solution to the current financial system, but we were wrong about that. The alternative did not turn out as originally planned.

[Marvell1]

I'm afraid Bitcoin will remain a store of value forever.

I think that scenario won’t work, and it’s not what Bitcoin was designed for. Yes, it’s a store of value...one of its key traits. but if it’s only used as an investment, global adoption won’t happen, and that could affect Bitcoin’s future value. It needs to be both a currency for everyday use and a store of value to truly succeed.

Issues like slow transactions and high fees can be solved. The Lightning Network (LN) is already here to tackle these problems if people are willing to adopt it. It might take time, but the solutions are already in place.

Bitcoin was not designed to be an investment or a store of value, it was designed to be a peer-to-peer currency, but we have not used it for its original purpose since the early days. If it wasn't used as a currency in the first place, what do you think will make it recognized as a currency by the world in the future?

We need to face the fact that most people need an investment, a store of value, not a decentralized currency. If we really need a decentralized currency, why don't we use it as a currency in the first place?
We always justify and complain when bitcoin cannot become a legal currency but the reality is how many people will use it as a currency if it is legal? or do we still just want to accumulate and get rich from it?

[DeathAngel]

If Trump wins the election Gensler will be out of a job so I wouldn’t take too much notice of what he thinks. He’s been hostile to Bitcoin & crypto for years. Will be good to see him fired.

[MainIbem]

If Trump wins the election Gensler will be out of a job so I wouldn’t take too much notice of what he thinks. He’s been hostile to Bitcoin & crypto for years. Will be good to see him fired.

The so called Gensler is a Bitcoin hater so I'm not surprised at his words but whether he likes it or not Bitcoin would thrive and there's nothing Gensler or other Bitcoin critics would do about it. At this point, majority of people in the crypto space wishes for Trump to win and fulfill his promises concerning Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency at large and it would be so interesting to see him emerge as the winner of the upcoming election and then put an end to the reign of Gensler and his like minds. However the aim of Satoshi wasn't to make Bitcoin as a legal tender for the whole world but as an alternative to the fiat currency and easier and faster way of carrying out transactions with any third party involved and so far it's gradually achieved that aim and beyond and even used a an asset class based on it's potential to keep improving in price.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Bitcoin is currency, since it's used everyday for Internet payments, so the assertion does not hold water to begin with. It is unlikely to become the only currency.

And I highly agree with Ever-young. We don't need legal tender laws. Sure, they do help, but the currency reset happens bottom-up, not top-down. The goal is to have an unstoppable currency that can revitalize the free market and outperform any state-backed currencies, not rely on the state to establish a free-market currency.

[JayJuanGee]

I'm afraid Bitcoin will remain a store of value forever.

I think that scenario won’t work, and it’s not what Bitcoin was designed for. Yes, it’s a store of value...one of its key traits. but if it’s only used as an investment, global adoption won’t happen, and that could affect Bitcoin’s future value. It needs to be both a currency for everyday use and a store of value to truly succeed.

Issues like slow transactions and high fees can be solved. The Lightning Network (LN) is already here to tackle these problems if people are willing to adopt it. It might take time, but the solutions are already in place.

Bitcoin was not designed to be an investment or a store of value, it was designed to be a peer-to-peer currency, but we have not used it for its original purpose since the early days. If it wasn't used as a currency in the first place, what do you think will make it recognized as a currency by the world in the future?

We need to face the fact that most people need an investment, a store of value, not a decentralized currency. If we really need a decentralized currency, why don't we use it as a currency in the first place?
We always justify and complain when bitcoin cannot become a legal currency but the reality is how many people will use it as a currency if it is legal? or do we still just want to accumulate and get rich from it?

Many of us should already realize that bitcoin is a store of value and a currency at the same time, whether any leader and/or administrator calls it a currency or a store of value or whatever.  It also does not matter what various members of this forum call it, even though surely, there are various programmers who attempt to emphasize one use case or another in various kinds of applications that they might build for bitcoin or some company that they might create around bitcoin.

Sure, there are some of us who might be able to speak or promote certain angles of bitcoin or to try to spin bitcoin in one way or another in terms of whether we might be trying to be descriptive of what bitcoin is or prescriptive of what we would like bitcoin to be. 

Maybe it can be a bit irritating to read a description that bitcoin was not designed to be a store of value, when that is not even true to make such a proclamation, since bitcoin was designed as a scarce asset and actually to be more scarce than gold, so how would that be designing bitcoin to NOT be a store of value?  To date, there seems a bit of success in bitcoin getting through various test periods in which its scarcity has been challenged, and there have been ongoing attempts to dilute bitcoin with various shitcoins, and even these days we likely have ongoing attempts at creating paper bitcoin that are likely NOT going to be successful when those attempts at paper bitcoin have to get resolved on the blockchain, and if some folks (entities) end up not having the bitcoin that they claim to have, they are likely going to get recked as fucked, even if legacy institutions (financial powers that be) try to bail them out with the printing of infinite supplies of cash.  Part of the challenge for status quo financial institutions is to try to break (and/or control) bitcoin before it gets too strong, which seems a fool's errand, even though they are surely going to try, and even though some folks are probably smart enough to realize that the best that they are likely able to do is to make it seem that bitcoin is under control rather than actually being successful in such.

Anyone wanting to whine that bitcoin is not being sufficiently treated as a currency within its original purpose and blah blah blah seem to be attempting too much into attempts at descriptively pigeonholing bitcoin, since it does not even matter very much if we might use bitcoin to buy a $3 coffee or we use it to pay for a $380 million dollar tanker of oil.  There are ways to structure our transaction(s) so that no one can stop the transaction from taking place, and maybe we might use 2nd layer solutions in the case of the $3 coffee, yet the BIG transactions really have a lot of power too.. even though there are all kinds of variations between $3 and $380 million, and we are even able to go outside of that range on either end, even though the lower value transactions might be batch resolved into the main chain rather than being economical to resolve directly into bitcoin's blockchain at the time of the transaction.  Transactions on either end have their use-cases and their customer base, and surely governments and financial institutions are scared of the power of various kinds of peer to peer transactions at all levels.. so the rhetoric and the misinformation gets stronger and stronger to create impressions of maintaining control, even though the more and more that may of us learn about bitcoin and find various kinds of user-friendly ways to hold decent parts of our value in bitcoin (or even second layers), then the harder it becomes to scare normies into believing that status quo institutions continue to control our private financial transactions in all cases.

By the way, the $380 million transaction can still be carried out peer to peer, even if you might not be considering it as a peer to peer transaction as you likely consider the $3 coffee transaction to be.  So bitcoin remains a peer to peer currency, even if (within the parameters of Gresham's law incentives) there may well be disincentives to spend bitcoin if there may well be other ways to spend less valuable assets/currencies prior to spending our bitcoin.

[Z-tight]

Bitcoin is currency, since it's used everyday for Internet payments, so the assertion does not hold water to begin with. It is unlikely to become the only currency.

Yeah, it is very true that it is unlikely to become the only currency and Satoshi didn't even create it for it to be that, BTC is just fine as an alternative currency for people who value its use cases and want to use it, and it is good that the number of such people continues to rise.

If Trump wins the election Gensler will be out of a job so I wouldn’t take too much notice of what he thinks. He’s been hostile to Bitcoin & crypto for years. Will be good to see him fired.

I don't know what will happen in the U.S. election, but i do hope that regardless of who wins, we can see the back of Gary Gensler and his action of regulation by enforcement.

[Abiky]

I think that scenario won’t work, and it’s not what Bitcoin was designed for. Yes, it’s a store of value...one of its key traits. but if it’s only used as an investment, global adoption won’t happen, and that could affect Bitcoin’s future value. It needs to be both a currency for everyday use and a store of value to truly succeed.

Issues like slow transactions and high fees can be solved. The Lightning Network (LN) is already here to tackle these problems if people are willing to adopt it. It might take time, but the solutions are already in place.

If the Lightning Network didn't had its issues, people would've already used BTC as currency. Even so, most people only want to make money off Bitcoin. They're not interested in using it on top of Fiat. It's all about getting rich quick. Because of this mindset, Bitcoin will always be a store of value no matter what. A Gold alternative to say the least.

Like I've said before, SEC chairman Gary Gensler was right all along. It's the only good thing he has said since taking charge of the government agency. Luckily for us, Mr. Gensler will no longer pose a headache to the crypto industry within the next 4 years. That's because Donald Trump already won a second term as President of the US. I'm sure he will keep his promises and make crypto great again. Perhaps, former SEC chairman Jay Clayton will make a comeback? Only time will tell. As long as the SEC leaves Bitcoin alone, there should be nothing to worry about.

[freedomgo]

If Trump wins the election Gensler will be out of a job so I wouldn’t take too much notice of what he thinks. He’s been hostile to Bitcoin & crypto for years. Will be good to see him fired.

He won't be fired unless he violates his role. His term runs until 2026, but Trump will want to show he’s keeping his promise. Gary Gensler might just be pressured to step down- that would be more appropriate. Whoever replaces him will still be under Trump’s influence since Trump will appoint them. So, if Trump keeps his promise for pro-Bitcoin laws and policies, we might see a more bullish market during his term.

15 U.S.C. sec. 78d provides for appointment of commissioners, but contains no statutory guidance as to their removal from office. In Free Enter. Fund v. Pub. Co. Acctg. Oversight Bd., 561 U.S. 477 (2010), Chief Justice Roberts' majority opinion noted that "[t]he parties agree that the Commissioners cannot themselves be removed by the President except under the Humphrey's Executor standard of 'inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office,' and we decide the case with that understanding." Id. at 487 (citations omitted). In a dissent joined by Justices Stevens, Ginsburg, and Sotomayor, Justice Breyer complained that:

[Ever-young]

If Trump wins the election Gensler will be out of a job so I wouldn’t take too much notice of what he thinks. He’s been hostile to Bitcoin & crypto for years. Will be good to see him fired.

He won't be fired unless he violates his role. His term runs until 2026, but Trump will want to show he’s keeping his promise. Gary Gensler might just be pressured to step down- that would be more appropriate. Whoever replaces him will still be under Trump’s influence since Trump will appoint them. So, if Trump keeps his promise for pro-Bitcoin laws and policies, we might see a more bullish market during his term.

Exactly what's he's going to do, which everyone, including him (Trump), is aware of the law that protects the commissioners even before he publicly made those statements, and Gary Gensler will already be in preparation of handing over without much pressure since he knows the newly elected president doesn't like him.
 
In one way or another, he will definitely be pressured to have over, even if he tries to resist; he won't have much of a church rather than to take the safest path. Trump needs who he can contro in that seat, and Gary Gensler is not the man.

[Rabata]

As the head of a regulatory agency, I will never support being forced to accept what Gary Gensler says. He may be making a comment on behalf of the Biden administration or his comments may be biased but if we look at it from a neutral point of view Bitcoin does not only work with one specific feature. It doesn't just mean store of value. Moreover, Bitcoin has no particular intention of competing against fiat. I have no problem treating Bitcoin as a decentralized asset only if I don't focus on anything else. Gary Gensler he is in power so some may give value to his words but when he will be fire he has no value but Bitcoin is an asset that was valuable before his time and will continue to be. While he can take whatever decisions he wants in the Biden administration, he must be held accountable in the Trump administration. It is better to remove an incompetent person like him from the power of SEC as soon as possible.

[benalexis12]

Until now, Gensler still doesn't really understand the good purpose that it has. That's why if only I can be followed and I am the sitting president, probably on my first day as president, I will immediately remove Gensler from the SEC.

Since Trump supports Bitcoin, anti bitcoin or crypto should be changed Gensler, because we know that Gensler's reaction to Bitcoin is purely negative and most people in the bitcoin industry know that.

[justdimin]

As the head of a regulatory agency, I will never support being forced to accept what Gary Gensler says. He may be making a comment on behalf of the Biden administration or his comments may be biased but if we look at it from a neutral point of view Bitcoin does not only work with one specific feature. It doesn't just mean store of value. Moreover, Bitcoin has no particular intention of competing against fiat. I have no problem treating Bitcoin as a decentralized asset only if I don't focus on anything else. Gary Gensler he is in power so some may give value to his words but when he will be fire he has no value but Bitcoin is an asset that was valuable before his time and will continue to be. While he can take whatever decisions he wants in the Biden administration, he must be held accountable in the Trump administration. It is better to remove an incompetent person like him from the power of SEC as soon as possible.

Honestly, it is quite likely that he will be fired quite soon. Trump is a bitcoin friendly president, and he will appoint someone who is not as hard on crypto as Gensler. However, the reality is that it didn't matter anyways, we are not using it as currency at the moment, most of the world use it as asset, while of course there are some that uses it as currency, the number is lesser than the ones who use it as asset.

This is why what he says is partially true, and I believe what he says doesn't really dictate how things are going, he is not really a big decision maker, and never mattered much. But like I said that part is done, he is not going to be making decisions to begin with, I believe we are going to see it become something normal in the end again when he is sacked.

[Baofeng]

Until now, Gensler still doesn't really understand the good purpose that it has. That's why if only I can be followed and I am the sitting president, probably on my first day as president, I will immediately remove Gensler from the SEC.

That's one Trump promise, so we should be expecting that once he officially sits as the 45th President of the United States, he will replace Uncle Gary. And most likely Gensler could have been settling down as he knows that his neck is on the line and by November, he is out of job.

Since Trump supports Bitcoin, anti bitcoin or crypto should be changed Gensler, because we know that Gensler's reaction to Bitcoin is purely negative and most people in the bitcoin industry know that.

We can't blame him though, he was a nominee by the administration and so he has to follow the party's stance and that is going hard against Bitcoin and the rest of crypto. Although Gensler has a fall back, he could go back on becoming a professor again.

[bettercrypto]

He's not wrong, but not entirely correct.

That's true Bitcoin is unlikely to become a currency, but he did mention "cryptocurrency" after Bitcoin, which is wrong because there are stable coins that could become a currency in the future. Some coins with cheap fees like Litecoin or Doge are possible too.

Of course the country and the stores can accept Bitcoin as an alternative payment, but I doubt people would prefer to use Bitcoin to buy daily needs.

Currently it is not practical to use or make Bitcoin a payment option like a credit card that is paid to any merchants that accept such in our daily life. Especially if you believe in the potential of Bitcoin, I'm sure you won't pay it to any department stores, and others.

It can only be done to do that right now, it's really just an alternative, although in other countries like El Salvador and in parts of Africa that made Bitcoin legal tender, that's because their government is pro-bitcoin.

[mirakal]

I think that scenario won’t work, and it’s not what Bitcoin was designed for. Yes, it’s a store of value...one of its key traits. but if it’s only used as an investment, global adoption won’t happen, and that could affect Bitcoin’s future value. It needs to be both a currency for everyday use and a store of value to truly succeed.

Issues like slow transactions and high fees can be solved. The Lightning Network (LN) is already here to tackle these problems if people are willing to adopt it. It might take time, but the solutions are already in place.

What prevents people from using such a solution? Why is there no mass total adoption? What is the problem? It seems to me that society is not ready for such a transition. The standard of living should be much better than it is today. No one wants to pay fairly high fees and wait a certain amount of time for a transaction to be completed. Yes, these are the problems that blockchain technology faces. At the very beginning of Bitcoin, it seemed that this was the solution to the current financial system, but we were wrong about that. The alternative did not turn out as originally planned.

Indeed, most people aren’t ready yet—and that is due to a lack of confidence as well. If they truly understood the risk level, like the possibility of their accounts being hacked, they wouldn’t force themselves to try it, they’d just stick with fiat money. Those who use bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies are typically people who have the right knowledge about it. Another factor holding back mass adoption is that non-techy individuals find it challenging. So maybe we shouldn’t force this on everyone. It could simply stay as an alternative currency, and that’s fine. But expecting the majority to use it? That’s uncertain, even ten years from now.