Some bitcoiners want bitcoin as money and think price appreciation is counterproductive because it makes people hold bitcoin instead of spending it. Other bitcoiners want bitcoin to keep appreciating as an asset without becoming money, so it doesn't upset the government. In my view, bitcoin can't become money without its value rising, and its value can't keep rising without it becoming money. If bitcoin keeps working as designed, it keeps appreciating until it becomes money.
Money is the general medium of exchange, the thing people are most likely to trade. What you are most likely to trade is the thing in which you have the largest cash balances. Bitcoin will only become money when its cash balances are large and held by a very large number of people, and for that to happen, Number must Go Up. If bitcoin cash balances are tiny, it cannot be money, no matter how much we larp circular economies and annoy merchants to accept it only to convert it to fiat to pay their rent and staff. If bitcoin keeps appreciating until its cash balances are the largest of any cash in the world, people will use it for trade, and it will be money. You won't have to pester a merchant to accept it, because his own cash balance, and the cash balances of his landlord and staff, are mostly in bitcoin, and they all want it.
Bitcoin will have to appreciate enormously to work as money, whether you like it or not. And if bitcoin keeps appreciating, people will use it as money, whether you like it or not.
Embrace the NGU.
