Let's face it : even though the price of cryptocurrencies in fiat should not be a goal in itself (since in the end, fiat should fade into irrelevance), some people keep on looking at it. And like all prices on young shallow markets, these prices are driven, in the short run, by buzzwords, hype, irrational exuberance like FOMO on the upside and irrational fear on the downside.

This is not all that bad in that it gives the opportunity for the mainstream medias to shine some lights on the technology, albeit with their oversimplifications and conceptual shortcuts that leads to simplistic equation such as "bitcoin is for drugs" and such.

However in the long run, what drives price is adoption.

And if some news such as the creation of Bitcoin ETF (Exchange-Traded Fund) could help in that matter (by smoothing prices and giving traders the ability to enter this market), don't forget these ETF are still complex financial vehicles for average Joes that will not help real adoption on a global scale .

In fact, when looking at it, adoption comes in two flavors.

Banking the Unbanked

One of the first claims Bitcoin had was to give all third-countries people the opportunity to "be banked" . And even if this claim faded into oblivion for Bitcoin Core as soon as the blocks started getting full and the fees went through the roof (thus forbidding poor people from using this tech ), the goal still stands for Bitcoin Cash that keeps low fees as a important feature.

Cryptocurrencies give the ability to securely exchange value without a trusted third party : this is of utmost importance in a large part of the world where third parties precisely tend not to be trustworthy. The current example of Venezuela and some African countries is very telling : economy can turn sour very quickly if an incompetent government meddles with its currency.

As one example for Bitcoin Cash, Cointext , an application that allows people to exchange BCH using SMS messages, provides such an easy way for these populations to use the technology without relying on corrupt government, shaky financial structures or untrustworthy third parties.

By extending the way this "unbanked people" can access the technology, adoption can take a leap forward.

However, there is another way to increase adoption.

Unbanking the Banked

As anyone with a little lucidity can see, rich countries are not exactly protected from turning into economic circus and unwanted dictatorship.

Democracy is definitely not some kind of fairy dust that would alleviate all economic problems and as anyone can witness in USA or in Europe, the line is getting thinner between getting taxed by the state for the "common good" (if it exists) and getting plainly robbed at gun point.

A passing glance at the current public spending in Europe gives an inkling of what is going on : the State is getting voracious, often taking more than half of the country's wealth to run , this translating into ever-increasing taxes ; in some countries, these taxes will amount to more than half of your salary, for an ever degrading quality of social services or for piss-poor infrastructures that fall into disarray whenever possible. On these taxes, the average citizen has smaller and smaller leverage and his voice does not count anymore, leading to situation where people are getting taxed to pay for things they are more and more vocally against.

On top of that, the general economic situation of the richest countries in the world is a bit worrisome, with increasing public debts, uncertainties related to employment, retirement or health care. An economic collapse such as the one seen in 2008 is definitely not out of the question for the coming years.

In this picture, cryptocurrencies have a very important role to play : they give a practical solution for the Banked to escape the overreaching fingers of Big Brother states and to safeguard at least part of their wealth from bankruptcy or theft by the state : either direct theft by over-taxation, and indirect by (hyper) inflation (such as Venezuela or Zimbawe for instance).

BCH : a proven capacity

Whether adoption comes by "banking the unbanked" or by "unbanking the banked", Bitcoin Cash is the only cryptocurrency able to answer the global needs this adoption represents.

Ethereum has already demonstrated it is capable to handle about 16 transactions per second (in december 2017) ; however, this came at a price, fees increasing above 4 USD per transaction at some point, due to the clogging of the network : applications such as Cryptokitties (a simple game !) show how brittle the infrastructure seems to be.

If anything, Bitcoin Core demonstrated to be incapable of handling any significant volume. December 2017 will stay as a clear demonstration to what limiting the size of blocks can do to a blockchain.

However, Bitcoin Cash demonstrated a few days ago that it can sustain a high peak of activity without registering neither latency nor spiking fees. In preparation for the September stress test in which some users of Bitcoin Cash will attempt to completely fill up 32 Megabyte blocks, the tests this August shown that using the current infrastructure to handle 700.000 transactions does not cause any trouble .





And contrary to what happened for Bitcoin Core, fees did not spike and mempool adapted gracefully.

The September stress-test will allow for more information gathering and will also bolster confidence for the future of Bitcoin Cash : if it can easily handle 32 Mb blocks, it can easily grow to Paypal size, thus giving "adoption" a true meaning.

In its turn, this can also lead to some other adoption patterns such as big funds, as explained a few years ago by Jeff Garzik in this video (the "Fidelity problem") :