Once someone was able to buy that first pizza with Bitcoin is when it became legitimized. As long as people are willing to exchange it for real items, it’s a legitimate currency.
He paid someone else in Bitcoin, but that person bought the pizza in USD. Even today, no major business is accepting direct crypto payments for anything besides publicity stunts. There are, however, plenty of services which automate what happened in the “crypto pizza” case: they’ll convert it to USD for you so that you can say the transaction was kinda sorta done via crypto.
That doesn’t negate all of the real stuff you can buy today with cryptocurrency. It may not be legal stuff, but it’s still physical and still commerce. And the fact that there are people willing to convert cryptocurrency to USD and exchange that for stuff means that cryptocurrency is considered a legitimate currency. As soon as no one is willing to trade real dollars for crypto is when crypto will die. Of course this is cryptocurrency’s strength, and it’s fatal weakness. It’s only worth something as long as someone will willing to accept it, and that can change in a heartbeat.
He paid someone else in Bitcoin, but that person bought the pizza in USD. Even today, no major business is accepting direct crypto payments for anything besides publicity stunts. There are, however, plenty of services which automate what happened in the “crypto pizza” case: they’ll convert it to USD for you so that you can say the transaction was kinda sorta done via crypto.
That doesn’t negate all of the real stuff you can buy today with cryptocurrency. It may not be legal stuff, but it’s still physical and still commerce. And the fact that there are people willing to convert cryptocurrency to USD and exchange that for stuff means that cryptocurrency is considered a legitimate currency. As soon as no one is willing to trade real dollars for crypto is when crypto will die. Of course this is cryptocurrency’s strength, and it’s fatal weakness. It’s only worth something as long as someone will willing to accept it, and that can change in a heartbeat.