Finally, the entire conversation revolves around the most critical assumption that Bitcoin is and will be the only option anyone ever has.
This is something that always gets me about the maxis.
Even at what they want it to do (supplant fiat currency) it's not good at that job. There are so many better options for fiat-like transactions in the alt-coin space. HIVE as a great example.
Nobody is going to pay $20 to process a transaction to buy groceries, and given that they want the base layer to supposedly do that - it's a goal that will never happen. Whether some folks like it or not, the "BTC will be tomorrow's currency" folks are out to lunch - at most it'll be a corporate currency to make large transactions easier... but for the regular Joe Blow down the street, it's never going to be a viable currency in its current form/without moving all of that to an L2.
Expanding on this a bit there are several solutions to this problem.
First off, there is some margin available because credit cards charge merchants 1.5%-3.5%.
So every $1000 spent today is already a $15-$35 fee.
I would personally have no issue building a credit line with Amazon by sending large chunks at a time rather than on every single purchase. This doesn't work for everyone else living paycheck to paycheck.
There's also the ability to borrow against the Bitcoin which is probably the best option.
Never sell the BTC and just borrow thousands against it.
But again maxis reject the idea because they assume eventually there will be nothing else to borrow and everything will be Bitcoin. So yeah it just reaches absurdity at a certain point.
Yeah, definitely could see that being viable. A $20 fee to get a 1k line of credit isn't as unreasonable, and I think folks would go for that.
Yeah, for now at least that does feel like it'd be the best option. That hinges on nobody in power deciding it's time to tax unrealized gains though, as, once that happens I think any lending against an asset like BTC (or traditional stocks/etc) becomes unwieldy pretty quickly. Which I only have in my mind because I recently watched some fool argue for taxing unrealized gains and I was tempted to nope out of the internet for the rest of the day lol. Currently borrowing against it as you said would be the best option for everyone in a world where we were using BTC as a fiat-like base.