For a currency to be considered useful as money, it has to serve three fundamental purposes. It should function as a medium of exchange, as a store of value and as a unit of account. The fact that Bitcoin doesn’t fulfill all of these purposes to an adequate extent at least partially explains why it hasn’t gained the widespread adoption that many of its earlier supporters had hoped for.
There are two main challenges. Firstly, Bitcoin is considered too slow to serve as a satisfactory medium of exchange, with transactions taking anywhere from several minutes to days to get confirmed. Secondly, at times of high network traffic, transaction costs can soar. When Bitcoin was at its all-time high in December 2017, it could cost as much as $55 to make a transaction happen.
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