Five days ago, a friend of mine studying Economics at High School had a discussion with its teacher, regarding Bitcoin, since I told her about that. Here's what the teacher said :
1. That's illegal : He did not bring many proves here, just saying that since it has not been regulated as a currency, we were in a grey area, and something in a grey area is rarely something that will become totally white from one day to another. He added that the sole purpose of that was to buy all kind of drugs over the Internet.
Misinformed the legality of Bitcoin depends on the jurisdiction because of that it is not necessarily an entirely accurate statement in fact less areas are in the grey as tax rules and laws have been set down in various countries regulating Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies perhaps he should be told of the Blockchain and it's infrastructure first and not look only at the fiat side of Bitcoin.
2. It will crash : He said that he had studied Bitcoin's price evolution through out the time (what I doubt) and said her that being so constantly rising was a sign that it was not a viable project. Its proof : manipulated prices of things like silver or wheat are very stable !
Well then I guess your professor knowingly did not look at Gold or mention it and how it has performed since the year 2000 as a leverage against the US dollar and Fiat currencies, he also for an economics professor seems to omit the fact that Quantitative easing was because of an unregulated stock market and that these artificial bubbles of wealth in housing were under this type of system.
Furthermore what is wrong with an asset appreciating in value as more people contribute to the system increased usage leads to price appreciation a fixed supply of Bitcoin sounds far more attractive than unlimited printing of new currency as it acts as a real cap on inflation and a mechanism of provable price appreciation.
(There was a run on Silver historically
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Thursday) Fun fact it failed but if that is his reference to bubble pop it is quite weak as the physical assets or digital assets of Bitcoin are owned by individuals and disbursed meaning it is susceptible to collective psychology like anything else.
3. Anyone clear in its head wouldn't use it : First, he doesn't recognize any kind of manipulation of the money and the danger that there is for people keeping all their savings in fiat. I know that because I had him as a teacher too some times ago. So trying to explaining him about the fact that there is a clear war against cash and evident facts, like that that shows our money need to be converted into something viable to be protected from massive surveillance, is useless. Him not understanding that, since its the best argument I have, I couldn't have replied. When she told him about the speed of transactions, he replied "we have PayPal", so I said me that it wasn't worth to ever try explaining anything. As a final point, he said again that the sole real use that is making standing apart is that you can buy drugs on the Internet...
Bank runs and crashes are more than common look a person in the face and tell them that in Greece and Cyprus and they will say you are wrong looked what happened to us. Even India recalling all of its 10,000 Rupee notes leads to chaos and you see financial risk in normal Fiat and Banking.
Consider the underbanked in africa and the fees they pay to bank plus the distance and time it takes for rural africans to even bank and its just not a viable solution for all. Just because your money is safe plausibly under deposit insurance to an extent doesn't mean much when real shit goes down and in normal times bank balances as an investment class are terrible with low interest rates like anything else for comfort.
I guess you could buy a mutual fund and lose out on a lot of money and potential earnings from commission and brokerage fees as well and unless you have a big enough balance stocks are not in the cards. Or you could own something like Bitcoin directly and cash out at your leisure and at a reasonable price.
(We have literally 1000's of places that take Bitcoin now in cities all over that drug part is invalid in Japan alone 20,000 by the end of this year)
The future is bright
https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/japan-see-20000-bitcoin-accepting-merchants-2017/
4. Bitcoin at a bigger scale would fail : I couldn't explain you much what he said because what she told me wasn't very clear so I personally did not understood, as her I presume how confuse her explanation was. To summarize, he said that it's still a little market and that it will fail to scale and will go back to close to nothing in value.
Bitcoins been called dead countless times, its well alive and kicking.
Me and nearly 1.5 Billion Dollars invested into Venture capital will sit here and humbly disagree.
http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-venture-capital/
I'd like to get your feelings on that. Just call the arguments 1, 2, 3 and 4 and tell me what you would have replied back and what it does inspire you !
It inspires me to tell him to go back to school for he got schooled
