I had a recent conversation with my parents about sending money to help pay for my sister's wedding, which they agreed to split evenly with the groom's parents. The issue was that my parents don't live in the U.S., so transferring funds from a local bank to an American bank is quite troublesome; e.g., filling out wire forms, or even sending a USD denominated check to my sister who then needs to go to a physical branch to deposit, etc.
Then it suddenly clicked to me that if my parents and sister had access to Bitcoin (or a similar cryptocurrency) they could easily complete the transfer. I explained to my parents that Bitcoin's concept is very similar to that of say, gold or diamonds, in which one could purchase these assets, then physically transfer them to the recipient who then sells it to an exchange like one of these shops in NYC:
Bitcoin simply removes the burdensome layers and allows the two parties to quickly and efficiently transfer an asset. I couldn't believe that there was a real world use case right in front of me. For all this time, I had considered Bitcoin, at best, a risky investment asset with high risk and (hopefully) high returns. For this reason, I think with clearer regulation the crypto industry has plenty of room for growth. With more regulation, it will bring more investors, who will provide more liquidity, ultimately leading to greater price stability. The biggest obstacle that I see is price volatility. Look no further than this chart showing Bitcoin's price in the past 24 hours:
I don't think there is a future for Bitcoin until the issue of price stability / volatility is addressed. According to Kitco.com, gold's performance has been relatively uneventful when compared to the stock market return for the same period:
Gold's market cap is $11 trillion versus Bitcoin's $1 trillion. There is a lot of room for Bitcoin to grow but we need stronger regulation to help improve investor confidence.