Submitted by cpowell on Tue, 2019-06-04 00:19.

By Olga Kharif

Bloomberg News

Monday, June 3, 2019

Bitcoin has a lingering problem that few people are talking about amid the renewed exuberance of the recent price surge.

Hardly anyone is using the world's largest cryptocurrency for anything beyond speculation.

Data from New York-based blockchain researcher Chainalysis Inc. show that only 1.3 percent of economic transactions came from merchants in the first four months of 2019, little changed over the boom-and-bust cycles of the prior two years.

... Dispatch continues below ...



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Even though marque companies such as AT&T Inc. now let customers pay with cryptocurrencies, the problem is that few speculators want to use the digital coins to pay for wireless services when the digital asset's price might surge another 50 percent in a matter of weeks. That has become the main dilemma with the cryptocurrency: Bitcoin needs the hype to attract mass appeal to be considered a viable electronic alternative to money, but it has developed a culture of "hodlers" who advocate accumulation rather than spending. ...

... For the remainder of the report:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-31/bitcoin-s-rally-masks...



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