Given a powerful enough collaboration any market can be manipulated including Bitcoin(, & yes even Monero). If Bitcoin was treated like Monero, Bitcoin would probably only be trading at $10,000 to $30,000 right now but the fiat manipulators increased its price to price out people that want to use it as a currency. After all markets respond to signals.

I doubt that. Even with free electricity and bottom barrel discounts on machines it would cost way more than $30k to produce a coin. That's the base costbasis, then you add utility, collectible status, immutability, and fee rates you get quite high up there in fiat terms. (Another reason price discovery on Monero is near impossible price conteols on fees and mining limitations are defacto price controls on cosy inputs) This post is more about people hanging onto the rate that some exchange ticker gives them. Instead of their actual experience with the money.

How does the price - inflated or not - prevent anyone from using bitcoin as currency?

In the case of Bitcoin since Bitcoin is scarce it prices out people who would use Bitcoin as cash. A Bitcoin miner, or HODLer much like housing wouldn’t sell to a new family/individual bidding at a lower price but to the institution paying 2x to 3x the actual acquisition cost to drive artificial scarcity pressures, & consolidate control. There will be a point where Bitcoin will be both 1. Too expensive to transact with 2. Low in supply that it wouldn’t be able to circulate in a meaningful manner. This problem isn’t experienced in Monero since new supply will always be issued, and due to a lack of institutional influence, it keeps the currency at a more stable, and predictable price making spend, and replace possible on Monero. In Bitcoin by the time you’ve sent the Bitcoin, and attempted to buy more, it’s fluctuated in price by ~$1,000+ in either direction.

Would you agree that it would be helpful to try to estimate at every given moment an analog to "real purchasing power" of Bitcoin, similarly to how it's calculated for national currencies? Perhaps based on known wealth of Bitcoin holders and existing real Bitcoin markets.

If it weren't being manipulated I would say sure as an estimation tool. But I would say there's two problems using the ticker price: No one should offload their valuation as a reciever or sender. Again, how many sats would you trade is personal but how you price your efforts is also not up to wallstreet. No one uses money like that saying "how much is the dollar worth?" before you buying the milk that has had a similar price it's been for months. A real bitcoiner market has to emerge separate from the current fiat entwined one. For a true price signal to shine through.

That's fair. A bit of a chicken and egg problem is it not? My thinking is that attempts at that estimation could help that signal on its way. Because right now *all we have* are the exchange prices driven by spaz speculators who ultimately don't give a shit (and outright manipulators who want to destroy Bitcoin on purpose).

Each Bitcoin is divisible to 100,000,000 sats, so I don’t see the issue with those units getting too pricey. As to the transaction fees, that only applies to on-chain……at some point

I only buy quality goods with my bitcoin at a price I agree with. I will tell vendors "this is too expensive." If they are trying to use the wallstreet price. I value my bitcoin way more than the price they are offering. That's all price discovery is. But I would say the problem is customers are not being disagreeable enough when prices are too high because "they take bitcoin." Thry should be courting us to get our bitcoin as much as possible. But that's fiat training "the store's price is the price" don't like it, leave.

How do you arrive at the price you agree with? If you don't mind sharing.

I do a calculation around how much work I did to acquire the sats divided by total supply of sats. Then ask myself is this steak worth x amount of my life.

A pretty cool way to do it. Thank you for sharing!

I calculate sats per calorie, but money isn't the only value. I could stack more sats if I ate Top Ramen instead of steak, but I value my health more than the extra sats and believe steak is healthier than Top Ramen. Time is more scarce than Bitcoin.