Sam is making valid points. But bitcoin's survival is not a function of its price in USD, and its adoption rate is also not a function of its price in USD. If we want to think of bitcoin as a currency, we have to stop thinking of it as a store-of-value/investment asset and start thinking of it as an efficient means of exchange.

There is no such thing as "buy pressure" or "sell pressure" in liquid markets (BTCUSD is liquid enough to qualify). Buying and selling are two sides of the same coin. There are scenarios that push people to sell (as mentioned in the article, miners selling to pay for electricity), but the volume of such trade orders is just a fraction of the volume built up by speculation, and speculation goes both ways.

I would argue that bitcoin's default "price pressure" is up because there is no easy way to short it (for the average trader) and early adopters (who own a large amount of bitcoin) are extremely evangelistic holders and buyers.

The argument that bitcoin may not survive is a valid one. Not because it's not being adopted by merchants (merchants couldn't care less about bitcoin, they receive fiat currency), but because consumers are not using it to make purchases or transfer money. Consumer adoption is the real measure of how much the ecosystem is evolving. Merchant adoption is just pure marketing at this point, and I believe that companies such as Coinbase and BitPay that are pursuing merchant adoption aggressively are in the wrong business.

I feel nobody here likes to hear it and I feel like a lot of people in SV are tuning this out, but bitcoin is really, really struggling to find a relevant use case, especially with consumers. Regular consumers have absolutely no reason to use bitcoin. The "1-click" payment and 1% price discount are not appealing enough to the average Joe who already gets 1-2% cash back, airline miles, and consumer protection on his credit card (and 1-click checkouts on many e-commerce platforms). And more regulation isn't helping the "crypto-anarchist" decentralization angle either.

Bitcoin is great, for MERCHANTS.

But payments is a two-sided market. A winning product must appeal to both sides, the buyer and the seller. Bitcoin appeals to the seller at the expense of the buyer. Even if the blockchain technology overcomes all of its flaws, we would have bootstrapped a value exchange system that does not offer greater benefit to the one that exists today.

Many are making the flawed and simplistic analogy of comparing bitcoin/blockchain technology to the early days of the Internet... That analogy is not valid. When it comes to money, consumers actually want a central authority. They want to be insured and cuddled and protected and not run the risk (however small) of being criminally liable for transactions and have someone to speak with if they make an erroneous transaction or have their card stolen. And they can already do all that, which makes it tremendously difficult to compel them to change the habits they've had in forever to adopt a system that does not provide them with significant advantages.

I've been in bitcoin since 2011 and used to be a big believer, but I don't see bitcoin or blockchain technology gaining traction with consumers, because it simply doesn't solve a problem for them.

It could be destined to eternally remain a store of value (like gold) or find targeted applications (like machine-to-machine payments). The underlying blockchain technology could be of more use if adopted by the banking system, for example, but that is still far in the future.