[parsimo2010]

This is part of the same reason many people don't use Bitcoin- you can't actually do much with it because retailers don't accept it. But China is definitely thinking about how to fix that problem, and soon they will make it possible to pay directly in CNY in other countries. Once you can buy things with it, the CNY is attractive from a practical perspective. A lot of your stuff is already manufactured in China, once/if using CNY makes your purchase easier then it's going to gain ground on the USD.

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/econographics/what-to-...

[mothballed]

Retailers don't accept crypto not because of the technology so much as the fact it is a capital gains event every time you transfer crypto, which means both the buyer and seller are now forced to keep a log of their gains/losses against the dollar everytime they buy a pack of gum.

Obviously that's extremely impractical and at best you're hiring a 3rd party to streamline that for you. It's a clusterfuck at tax time (edit: stable coin doesn't help here -- you must still report gains on stable coins as it is still a $0 capital gain which is different than no capital gain).

Retailers already dealing with capital gains and with high chargeback rates love it though. For instance, it's usually the cheapest same-day clearing way to buy precious metals online since credit card rates are high (chargeback), ACH takes days, and wires tend to cost $15+ with many banks.

[linkregister]

Reticence among retailers predates the capital gains policy of the IRS. The volatility of Bitcoin's value induces excessive exchange risk. However, we don't see capital gains nor exchange risk with stablecoins. I assume that network effects are insufficient to drive retail demand for stablecoin support.

[Sargos]

You do not need to report a $0 capital gain when using stablecoins. Sure crypto can seem like the wild West with CPAs having different opinions on what little official guidance is out there but that one is simply absurd.

[kevinak]

Funnily enough you can use Bitcoin at most merchants that use a Square PoS device, which is like 25% of merchants in the US. It just takes time for folks to change their behaviors. And why would they, if they're getting X% cashback on all purchases using their credit cards?

[slongfield]

The other thing about Bitcoin is that it's deflationary, which leads to people holding the currency rather than spending it, as predicted by Econ 101.

[selectodude]

Paying Chinese companies in RMB isn’t the issue. If I sell something and a Chinese company pays me in RMB, I can’t really do anything with a billion yuan. Can’t buy a company (limitations on foreign ownership), can’t buy property (99-year lease that can be canceled on the whims of the government at any time), can’t buy Chinese debt (terrible yields, very small foreign market access, incredibly opaque laws and accounting), and nobody else in the world wants it so I have no choice but to sell it back to China in exchange for a real currency at whatever horseshit exchange rate they’ve concocted.

It’s worthless money and I don’t see anything out of china that would cause that to change.

[HWR_14]

What about buying rare earth metals or containers of electronics or purses? It's a bit more work, but it's not impossible to solve the problem.

Also, it's not like a 99-year lease has no value. That's your entire lifetime+.

[mullingitover]

> Can’t buy a company (limitations on foreign ownership)

This is quickly going away[1].

[1] https://www.nortonrosefulbright.com/en/knowledge/publication...

[throw310822]

I guess this is naive, but can't you use it to buy (or sell it to people who want to buy) Chinese products? It's not like China doesn't have an enormous amount and range of products on offer.

[KaiserPro]

Thats a feature not a bug.

The Chinese government spend a lot of money keeping the value of the RMB low.

[jama211]

I mean, you can buy goods and services within china, and you can sell those goods and services. The “horseshit” exchange rate can’t deviate too far from the real value or it incentivises laundering too much. The exchange rate isn’t _that_ bad as a result.

[tayo42]

Don't we already pay in foreign currency? I do this online with foreign websites and credit cards.