People today will consider BTC as an investment as its inherent use case of BTC. It doesn't really matter how a person will treat Bitcoin, they may look at it as a tool to gamble online or simply to send payments off the grid, whichever it is, its adoption of BTC.

If you mean peer-to-peer in a decentralized way where 2 people make transactions with no platform in between, humanity has lost trust in each other.  That's what's happening. Face-to-face transactions would be possible but still risky.

Bitcoin has a number of uses and there are people who argue which one is best and which one we should be promoting

A peer to peer cash - the original concept of Satoshi
An inflation hedge - this use of bitcoin is popular especially in South America and Africa, where fiat currencies are suffering the most, yet people don't have enough wealth to use it as investment.
A speculative asset - that's what most newbies and traders use it as.
A digital gold - in the eyes of the hodlers.

IMO all these uses are great and you should use bitcoin the way you choose to, yet not all these uses are equal. Transacting in bitcoin is a far better use than trading it on a centralized exchange. At least that's how I see it.

I don't think so, bitcoin is mainly used as a peer to peer method of transaction. People trade bitcoin at a large number every day. And only a few percent of them hodl bitcoin in form of an investment. Those who do hodl for long are quite the investors of bitcoin and those who hodl for few days should be seen as the peer to peer traders. Aside those trading bitcoin on exchanges the peer to peer market still boom everyday. Most people due to the volatility of bitcoin use it as a form of investment, for profit purposes. And because people hear the massive gains they make through bitcoin, using it as an investment goes viral than trading it peer to peer. They're multiple methods of trading bitcoin peer to peer; swapping bitcoin to other coins, merchants offering products for bitcoin, and selling bitcoin to vendors for fiat. Each and everyone of us who are into bitcoin may have done such transaction, but only a few amongst us have held or have the intention to hold bitcoin for 5 to 10 years without selling. You see why those who hodl for few days or months still fall in the categories of bitcoin peer to peer trade I mentioned above. Given a specific period of loss or profit, they'll go back to sell their coin. Which is not a good functionalities or attributes of an investor. No doubt when bitcoin is mentioned most people would see it, in their perspective, as an investment. Yet practically, the ongoing peer to peer bitcoin transactions is on the increase. Just that it's not fully discussed or popular like when an investor shows the profits they've made from holding bitcoin for 5 years. That's why people are being told to hodl their coin.

Can it be helped? As you’ve mentioned, Bitcoin and this industry in general still has its limitations. Investors happened to find it more beneficial as an asset because of its profit potential and volatile market value. There’s nothing wrong with it and we cannot force other people to follow its ‘purpose’. We are just simply taking advantage of its characteristic more than its usage and that’s just fine ‘coz it is still having progressive growth over years. Bitcoin became more popular and acknowledged by more people and companies. With countries’ approval, we cannot do about it other than to wait for things to be better. For now, since it is more helpful as an asset due to high transaction fees, then let us allow ourselves on how would we be able to use it as long as it won’t cause any harm to other investors and to ourselves. Adjustments were done on its usage and I cannot see anything wrong from it.

Maybe this fact is one of the truth that first holds our interest on bitcoin the moment we heard about it, you can see that everyone had always been looking for an investment opportunity like such that could be reliable and trusted, so when you heard about bitcoin and what it offers, it remains irresistible to you to afford going without taking a look if you really want a change.


You're free to use any approach for bitcoin as long as you're adopting it's use, i believe it's best applicable on one important aspect of your life.

As adoption reaches its peak, bitcoin will reach its peak value and no longer have much upside potential. Though people may continue using it for savings, nobody will be investing in it. By then we should know how well it works as a currency.

Yes, you are correct, the initial design of Satoshi is that it will become a payment system, an alternative to what we have right now. But you have to understand that when Bitcoin was traded initially, The New Liberty Standard Exchange, and then we have the Mt. Gox exchange the whole game play has change. And more than a decade, we have hit $69k as our last all time high. So it has evolved, not that it's bad, but it now become an asset that can be traded in many exchange now. But we can still go back to it's grassroots if you can. You can send anyone for anywhere as bitcoin is borderless. And then there are groups who saw it as money, so they spend as regular fiat. And when the pandemic happens, Bitcoin become a hedge and store of value. So it's really up to you on how you are going to treat and use BTC.

You are extremely right on this. Bitcoin was not created as an investment opportunity, in fact, I do not think Satoshi thought it could blow up this much (or maybe he did, who knows). Bitcoin’s purpose is to be another form of money, money that respects privacy, money that has no middleman, money where you’re totally in control of you own, money that can be sent to anyone anywhere at anytime. I like to think that the price increase which calls as investment opportunity is just coincidental.

I tend to agree and that's the fact of the white paper of Bitcoin, it supposedly didn't promise gains.
However, people see that Bitcoin has gained recognition as a digital store of value because of its limited supply that becomes Bitcoin's price is also influenced by speculative trading and traders may buy and hold Bitcoin with the expectation that its value will increase over time, allowing them to sell at a profit.

That's their perception now instead of following the main purpose of Bitcoin why it was created.

Bitcoin is obviously a means for sending payment from one person to another. Which is one of the main features in the whitepaper. However, it is also considered as a store of value because the price increase in value and people now anticipate it. Allocating capital to a store of value with expectation to generate a huge return in future or appreciation of the underlying asset is quite literally why it is generally called investment. So, if it doesn't increase in value or have the potential to, people won't invest in it.