Concrete Values: What cryptocurrencies need to be viable currencies

In my view, most cryptocurrencies act more like commodities than anything else with their values constantly fluctuating and buying and selling happening rapidly throughout the day.

This has led the majority of people to claim that "they're not currencies! they're not real money!" And you know what? They're right. As they act right now, there really isn't a single cryptocurrency that acts all that much like money, at least not a stabilized currency that anyone would want to spend. At the moment, they act more like investments than anything.

Not that "traditional" currencies can't be investments, for the right people who know how to effectively trade their values against eachother they certainly can. But a currency tends to be at its most useful when its value fluctuates around a particular range.

Based on some of the recent information we're seeing lately, though, we can see a handful of them starting to settle near particular values that just might make them useful.

Imagine a world where we had a largely stable Bitcoin with a value of about $10k. What could you buy with that? A used car? A downpayment on a nice house? A shopping spree for the world's wealthiest?

To a lot of us, this sounds like a massive sum, but to a good deal of the world's middle class and wealthy this is an easy to spend amount that would be legitimately useful on a daily basis, or at least an annual one.

What about an Ether that settled near a value of $1000 USD? There's all sorts of things the middle class could and do buy with that value.

Or a Pascal settling around $5? Now you're getting into the range of the working class in most of the developed world. That's a meal in a lot of places, though in major urban centers you're probably looking at parting with two or three $5 equivalent value Pascal coins to get your lunch.

A few $1 Siacoins could be used to pay for your subscription services. Netflix due? Throw some Sia at the problem.

So, in my mind there's one very crucial thing that every cryptocurrency needs in order to act like a currency, and it's the one thing that would be terrible for investors but excellent for the future health of the currency itself, and that thing is a concrete value.

Of course, if they never get that they can still act like commodities indefinitely, helping people hold onto the value of their money and guard against inflation. Maybe they could become the new gold.

But, if we're ever going to be able to spend cryptocurrencies and be fairly confident we're not going to kick ourselves the next day for either accepting them or giving them up, the values will have to stabilize and I think there's some evidence that they are starting to do exactly that.