I am curious about one thing. When Bitcoin started it wasn't supposed to be used only as speculative asset, they believe it would be great to be used as a currency substitute as a well. Anyone using Bitcoin for trades or other purposes besides investments? Why it has sort of "failed" as a currency and how this could change in the long term?
Bitcoin is slowly being adopted worldwide and it appears that the adoption rate is accelerating (recently a cafe and a pizza delivery shop in my area started accepting cryptocurrency which was exciting to see). I predominately deal in cryptocurrency now; I've hired freelancers with crypto, purchased domain names and web hosting. For sites that don't accept crypto yet, there are others that offer a payment processing service who allow you to purchase from anywhere using crypto (as in, you order through their site and link to the product, and they buy it using PayPal/card on behalf of you and you receive the goods/services. Small fee involved but no dealing with fiat). If you were forced to, you could pretty much deal exclusively in crypto through both direct payments and third party services, which is a great sign of the currency's success.
As to your specific questions, they don't really make sense. Firstly, Bitcoin is not used only as a speculative asset, I'm quite surprised you haven't seen any sites offering it as a payment method. It is a currency first and foremost, there was just a lot of hype late last year, a lot of newbies got into the space and bought the price up above where it should've been; now we are experiencing the price falling as expected. When the price was really high and a lot of people were making lots of money, that's what the focus of conversations were. Now that the price is lower, we'll start hearing more discussion and innovation on the tech side.
Why it has sort of "failed" as a currency and how this could change in the long term? What do you mean by that OP, are you talking about the 6 month price chart, and if so I'd advise you scroll out a little. Because price-wise, Bitcoin is performing spectacularly. It's at $6100 currently and just 12 months ago it was $2500. 12 months before that it was $650. 12 months before that it was $240. In a bear market now of course, probably at least a couple of months before that trend changes. The next run will be interesting as so many more people have heard of it now, and these people will jump on board once the price is high as the bystanders always do the second time they hear about it. The currency is experiencing a natural market cycle, again, as expected, so price shouldn't concern anyone who is not visually impaired and can read a line graph.
You weren't very specific on your concerns but I'll have a guess as to what you were referring to with it's failure in addition to price which I explained above. Let's start with volatility. Here's the deal guys: Bitcoin and all other cryptocurrencies are volatile because they are SMALL. Once Bitcoin is BIG, it will NOT be volatile. Saying Bitcoin will not work as a currency because it is volatile, is the same as saying 'Bitcoin will not get big because it is small', which is a statement that doesn't make sense, so stop saying it. Small = volatile, Large = stable (very simple to understand, I hope).
As for scaling issues, they are as expected. Price grew faster then the tech, got to scale before it could handle scale appropriately. There is a tonne of money in the game now; if you think the teams of world class coders who are working their asses off all day and all night right now, are not going to solve scaling issues, you are out of your minds. I'm looking forward to seeing how the lightning network operates and whether it works as an effective scaling solution for Bitcoin. If not, that's fine; someone will figure out how to scale the tech in due time, just as all other tech has scaled.
Now, I am curious about one thing myself: Does anyone here have a legitimate argument against Bitcoin (or other cryptocurrencies) who understands what it is, how it works, how markets works, etc.?
