Lately I've seen the "medium of exchange is not the same thing as a method of payment" idea being floated a lot by BTC maxis. Saifdean Ammous tried to pull this out in his debate with a George Selgin. The Bitcoin Observer also mentioned this argument on Twitter in a discussion about Libra's failure. However, according to this paper, the distinction between a medium of exchange and a means of payment is that a means of payment is not necessarily settled immediately. They argue that currency is a medium of exchange, while checks and debit cards are not.
In my opinion, this exposes the fundamental flaw in the argument that "Bitcoin is not a method of payment". It's as if the Coretards are trying to separate Bitcoin UTXOs from the Bitcoin P2P network and Bitcoin mining, and arguing that the network isn't important, and mining is a given. However, without the payment, mining, and P2P validation network, BTC UTXOs have a clear value: ZERO. You can't separate them, the value depends 100% on the network and mining. And as we saw in 2017, when fees rose over $100/transactions, a fair percentage of UTXOs became unspendable, as the fees to move them would be higher than their value.
Of course, we live in a world increasingly dominated by electronic fiat, is this a medium of exchange? Electronic fiat has a fairly tenuous supply and value, and it also depends intrinsically on a payment network that is controlled by governments and corporations. Increasingly, electronic fiat appears to be more a method of spurring labor and creating debt.
Thoughts are welcomed.
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/dh3s26/debunking_latest_core_rhetoric_medium_of_exchange/
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