Topic: biggest criticism of Bitcoin (Read 736 times)

I believe the biggest criticsm of Bitcoin is its decentralized nature.  Yes, it is the biggest and strongest market point of Bitcoin but at the same time, it is the source of lots of criticism since being decentralized means there is no initial backing from the government.

In a legal stand point, without the backing or approval of the government,the activity simply means the it is illegal, and the decentralized nature hinders the Bitcoin network from being fully embraced by the institutions due to many legal grounds.  The government loves to control and the decentralized nature of Bitcoin forbids such action.

This is also one of the major reasons why many old school businessmen/investors  dislikes Bitcoin and think that it is just a bubble.

Manipulating the price causes the price of Bitcoin to be lower than it should be. Having so much Bitcoin that you can manipulate the price is a negative situation for both the market and Bitcoin. There is no complete precaution that can prevent this situation. The fact that all states invest in Bitcoin and there is not much difference between investment amounts can prevent this situation to some extent, but it is very difficult to prevent it completely.

Bitcoin holders are not the only ones manipulating. Influencers or famous people whose words are listened to on social media can also do negative things that will affect the price. These are among the criticisms of the market and are very difficult to fix.

Not yet accepted or acknowledged by all countries as a mode of payment and for a currency, I guess one of its downside is volatility but as an asset, it is an advantage bwcause on a bigger time frame, consistency with upwwrd motion is present. If Bitcoin will be compared to our fiat system then of course it will be prone to criticism especially from people who aren't really that knowledgeable of this industry. Despite of mentioned criticisms, many people are still in belief and are making use of this technology by means of investment and sometimes as a mode of payment.

Criticisms are normal. Bitcoin has a lot of developments on its way and it is still too early to conclude whether these things would be permanent or not. Being promising does not mean imposing a guarantee in an instant. Just trust the profess for this industry and we'd get there.

Bitcoin does have use cases and a few features that are superior to gold and fiat currencies. But the value and sustainability of an asset depends on supply and demand, and achieving the greatest demand requires that the asset have its legitimacy and acceptability. But clearly, in this aspect bitcoin has not yet been able to surpass gold and fiat currencies, bitcoin has not yet become more popular and widely recognized so that is why I think bitcoin cannot be more sustainable than gold. Bitcoin still has greater risk than gold and fiat, that's what's happening and we can't deny that.

The possibility of being manipulated by big players: the institutional investors and governments. If governments and big corporations own large portions of Bitcoin, they can drive this market upside down, as they are already doing. Bitcoin should be better distributed among more different hands of independent individuals, instead of belonging in large portions to governments' wallets and corporations.

In my view, that is the biggest weakness of Bitcoin. That is how the centralized parties subvert Bitcoin's initial purpose, which was to give more freedom and independency to common individuals who have never seen their interests satisfied by the groups of power which rule life in society.

I think the biggest criticism that one could throw at bitcoin is the fact that it is not scalable, not even in the slightest. We found this out when Inscriptions and bitcoin Ordinals came in, we thought it was going to be an awesome test of just how bitcoin could go on par with other "protocol" networks that came way later than it, what we got instead is a fucking slug fest where people are waiting for their transfers for weeks on end, having to pay hundreds of dollars just to have it resolved.

And don't get me started with the blocksize wars. People arguing and outright debating on this forum and beyond whether bitcoin's block size should remain at 1mb, meaning it will stay as it is untampered, or if it were to be moved up to a higher block size, which will make it scalable, of course as it stands today you know who won.

So yeah, that for me is the biggest flaw that bitcoin has from a blockchain perspective, pretty sure other people have qualms with bitcoin in other aspect but to me, this is most adverse.

Some countries banned all its use as a currency though (Like my country) and that cripples the currency part of a crypto currency, which I would say is the most important part. At the moment businesses here can’t accept crypto legally for their products and services. Yes they can accept it informally (or illegally) but they can’t show it on their books.

People can always use btc when they are trading their used goods but if it is a house you are buying and you are paying it with btc, then the seller might collect the money and run off with the house. Nobody can do anything about it because the state doesn’t acknowledge it as a currency. The only way to get your money back is to give him a beating but then you will get punished for that so… It is not the best idea to use btc to buy expensive stuff here.

I think the biggest criticism of BTC is people think that it was a scam and I think that is because it didn't came from the banks that we know and then it doesn't have a physical form. I can see it as a big hindrance of course to attain a full adoption that we always wanted but there might still be a chance for the people to get curious about it and research it. That should remove their criticism about the coin.

If I were confronted with it, I will obviously defend BTC and show them proofs. If they will be convinced that what I'm saying to them is true then it can be a win-win situation because they might also ask my help to teach them about it more.

Bitcoin has become too big to fail which means for those people thinking that Bitcoin is going to fail, their wish is not going to be fulfilled. One of the biggest criticism of Bitcoin is that Bitcoin is a get rich quick scheme just as you said but if you invest in Bitcoin, you will come to a realization that Bitcoin is far from that. You have to have patience to benefits from investing in Bitcoin, if you do not have patience you are going to miss out on the opportunity to make life changing money. Bitcoin is not very fast because network can get congested at times but Bitcoin is secured and can not be hacked. The criticism of Bitcoin are most times due to the fact that those spreading the information might have been misinform but they do not know because I do not think Bitcoin has any much reason to be afraid of investing.

Surely it is not a stable coin or currency, BTC is volatile and the price can move up or down. I am having a hard time understanding what you mean by 'permanent currency', BTC is already acceptable in so many countries, just not as a legal tender, as long as BTC is not banned completely in a certain location, then the people over there are allowed to use it.

I have known about Bitcoin since late 2012, when my friend introduced me to it. From there, I am on this journey. When I first heard about Bitcoin from my friend, I was curious about how it works and why it is becoming so popular. He told me that this is the only currency that will govern all currencies in the cryptocurrency world.

Since then, it has seen many ups and downs and can be said to have reached its current position. I have friends new to Bitcoin who I describe to them when they get together and ask if it's a stable currency. Although Bitcoin is not as permanent as gold currency, if it is valid in all countries, it will be permanent at some point.

Some will even add that bitcoin price is highly unstable and that there is no guarantee that anyone is going to get returns from it, thats their fears and there is no point convincing them or anyone to invest in bitcoin if they are not convinced themselves that they are doing the right thing. Bitcoin is not for weak people who are scared of taking risks,  if anyone fears so much that he might lose his money while investing, then such a person should not bother investing because they might not be able to endure the pains if what they fear the most finally happens.

Only those who truly understand the worth of bitcoin should invest and wait patiently for whatever the outcome of their investment may be. I am a top fan of Bitcoin and there's no going back on this.

Bitcoin is the only one coin that is safe against centralization, can be send to anywhere, and secure, do you think it's not enough?

There are no assets that completely decentralized, borderless and secure except Bitcoin.

Fiat = Borderless, not decentralized and not secure.
Gold = Less decentralized and secure, not borderless.

That's true, that's why I never say Bitcoin will change someone life, Bitcoin will make you rich etc.

And I think it can also be considered a normal thing on the Bitcoin network when there are many transactions at one time or at peak usage. Apart from that, when Bitcoin transactions feel less practical for daily use, it can actually save Bitcoin a little from experiencing price drops more easily. Because when there are many people who always make transactions for the release of Bitcoin, even in small amounts, the transactions can be very large, there will definitely be an influence on the price of Bitcoin itself.

The future is something no one can predict, so we cannot confirm anything, but if we compare bitcoin with gold, it is not wrong to say that gold is more sustainable, the future of gold is still much safer than bitcoin.

Bitcoin is gradually becoming popular and governments are increasingly recognizing its existence. The Bitcoin ETF is the beginning of bitcoin's legitimacy and global recognition, but that is not enough to claim that it is as sustainable or more sustainable than gold. Use cases and utilities cannot guarantee the sustainability of bitcoin, we need more factors to evaluate the sustainability of bitcoin.

Even though we are bitcoin investors, we should be realistic and not worship it blindly.

You are right, of course investing in Bitcoin is not a way to get rich easily, of course it takes a long process to be able to make a profit on Bitcoin investment and those who think that investing in Bitcoin will make them easily rich, of course there is something wrong with them. understand investing in Bitcoin and it could be that they only see the results that other people have gotten from investing in Bitcoin and they don't see the process they have gone through in investing in Bitcoin until they have made themselves rich.

In this case, of course we don't need to debate whether Bitcoin is good or not and this will really depend on someone who understands Bitcoin and maybe for some people it is not suitable as you said because they don't try to learn it well.

Bitcoin is not a quick and get rich quick scheme, for any one to have benefits from Bitcoin as an investment it will take alot of time with patients and consistence investing, another criticism is that most people always said that Bitcoin will crash some day buti usually let them know that Bitcoin is not a scammed project just like most of other coins, while they will be having negative feeling about Bitcoin others will be taken advantage of Bitcoin, but there is no reason for arguments perhaps Bitcoin is not for everybody and it is not by force for anyone to be convinced about Bitcoin potentials.

In all fairness, yeah, there isn't any assurance that Bitcoin would still be here a decade from now. But there are more than enough reasons to believe that it would still be here. For one, who can stop Bitcoin? Can any powerful entity shut down Bitcoin?

Gold has been trusted since time immemorial. But if you buy gold today, are you assured that it would still be there 10 years from now? There are also reasons to believe that gold would still be here a decade from now. There were many years in the past, however, when owning gold was made illegal. Everybody has to surrender their gold or face huge fines or imprisonment.

Is there any assurance that bitcoin will still exist 10 years from now? I don't think so, therefore, we can be assured about its sustainability unlike gold and other physical investments and this is one reason why it is called a high-risk investment aside from its volatility. It is not giving doubts to the community but we can't deny the fact that the future of bitcoin is uncertain. It was not like discouraging people but this gave them the real picture of bitcoin.

There is always a saying " invest the amount that we can afford to lose" It means that there is still uncertainty about the future but we trust because we believe that it will stay long. At least, it that span we are able to make (good) profit.

The only people who criticize Bitcoin indeed are those who don't know about Bitcoin, and the biggest criticism is that Bitcoin is a scam, it's just so high when you invest in it. If you do, it will eat up all your money and it will suddenly drop and you may face irreparable losses. And other people who are not in favor of online investment and doing business are also against Bitcoin and criticize it, they also think that Bitcoin cannot be as profitable as a physical business can.

The only reason for all this is that people who don't know much about Bitcoin or don't have that much knowledge about trading say things like that because what we don't know about or so we either keep quiet about this thing or we start criticizing it.

And one of the main issue of it is talking about its scability on which on the moment that the network would really be having that clogged situation then fees are really that becoming insane on which it is really that
way more than on what ETH could have. Remembering those recent network spam or clogged on which it did really make the fees soar up high up to $200 as far as i remember on which this one would really be
hindering out if we do speak about global adoption or talking about integrating it as a main option when it coems to payment and other similar transactions on which it doesnt really fit out into that aspect.
Somehow despite of its cons or its disadvantage compared with some new coins in the market, but still community support would really be something the main reason on why its still sitting on the top.

If we do speak about potential when it comes to investment aspect then there would really be no doubt with that and pretty sure this is the main consideration on why
it is really that mainly been supported by investors until up to this moment.

One of the criticisms that usually got my attention is about people ever referring or considering  Bitcoin in terms of other coins performance and existence whereas Bitcoin is the King of all other coins such that it's performance determine the performance of other coins, Bitcoin has a solid foundation and can never be compared with other coins I whichever way one could think of, Bitcoin is among the best if not the best when it comes to the world largest digital asset class. However, many are so short sighted to truly see the potentials that Bitcoin holds hence mixed being a beneficiary of it why others takes advantage of thier ignorant.

My response to any form of criticism that concerns Bitcoin will have to do with the persons point of view and on what basis they are drawing their criticism.id it's such that I have good knowledge about, just maybe I would educate them so they get a better understanding about Bitcoin otherwise I wouldn't be involved in any u fruitful and unnecessary criticism as it may be just a mare argument between a group of person who may have lacked enough exposure on the Bitcoin space and may possibly not want to improve on how much they know but just wanting to prove their biasness.

There are so many things with Bitcoin of which to a great extent they have got answers or are still been worked up on to fixing those aspects that looks unclear a d needs answer and this flexibility is one thing that keeps Bitcoin standing out from other digital assets.

I agree with you, criticism of Bitcoin that is slow and expensive is not something that will anyone thinks is not true, that’s a fact because we all know that Bitcoin is slow and expensive, many other altcoins are very faster than Bitcoin but they are very risky than bitcoin because some are very dangerous that you can later regret investing in the coin, since I know bitcoin I have never heard about someone criticism bitcoin that it is a shit coin that after investing in it he or she didn’t get anything from it or nothing good comes out from it, bitcoin is a very safe investment that you can trust because you can never have any problem with it unless the price is down and you decide to sell your bitcoin without having any profit.

No one can criticize Bitcoin that it is a scam or coin that it is a waste of time because even from the nature of Bitcoin you will know that Bitcoin is different from other cryptocurrencies, bitcoin is very safe unless you as an investor don’t know how to hold your bitcoin or doing some kind of stuff that can lead you to get scam by the scammers, so the only criticism that someone can criticize is that bitcoin is an unpredictable investment that we don't know when the price will rise or fall.

I don't agree with you, BTC is surely sustainable, yeah it is volatile, but even its volatility has been gradually reducing over the years. BTC is different from the many cryptocurrencies in the market, because it has utility, it is useful and that is what gives it its value. BTC does not have to be as old as gold and other traditional assets before you understand that it is sustainable, it is, and there is no reason to prove otherwise or doubt its future.

I think one of the biggest criticisms of Bitcoin is its scalability issue. Bitcoin's blockchain can only handle a limited number of transactions per second, which can lead to high fees and slower transaction times during peak usage.

This scalability problem makes it less practical for everyday transactions compared to traditional payment systems like Visa or newer blockchain technologies with higher throughput.

I would say if you are so rich and holding so many Bitcoins security will be the biggest criticism as self-custody is good but, those who are not very skilled and experienced may find it difficult to manage the security of the funds, at the same time if you are a person who wants to use Bitcoin as a payment mod on your small scale business buddy be careful with the market volatility and manipulation as it can cost the heavy loss in your business if you are not managing it well. Its slow but transparent and much more decentralized so you dont have to worry.

For the rest, you are all ok.

Your responses is as though you read my mind. Generally, enough good project and inventions gets criticized because, everything has advantages and disadvantages. And for Bitcoin the disadvantages may not be much yet, government still fight Bitcoin to make sure they drag it to the ground. They have been looking to forward to pose Bitcoin as a threat but they are only jealous because they cannot control or manipulate Bitcoin to give them a desired results. And most news and videos we Watch online are materials made by critics who only seek to make the adsorption of Bitcoin reduce.

Whenever I get to talk about bitcoin with my peers, they always ask me if that would be sustainable like other assets or investments. So as a bitcoin investor, I want to tell them that it’s legit and reliable, but I don’t think it’s highly sustainable compared to gold or even other physical properties. Bitcoin is still very unpredictable, and its future is undeniably uncertain. But if the demand and promotion continue and its global adoption will be achieved, not only bitcoin as an investment will be completely sustainable but most particularly, bitcoin as a currency as well will be now taking its spotlight.

In each things, there will always be critics and it does not mean that they are always a fact but they are only just an opinion. In terms of Bitcoin, I think it is subjective because if one uses a recommended fee or higher than it, they won't ever experience a slow-down and for them it is still not expensive. For the poor users, there are still solutions to it and you already said a couple of them. There are still altcoins that are decentralized and in fact more private than what we could enjoy with bitcoin. They are also secure and trust worthy but bitcoin still has its own charm and that is the reason on why it is still the leading cryptocurrency up to this very moment.

There are two reasons that I can think of for which I wouldn't blame the majority of people holding their bitcoins instead of using them. The first one is of course a lack of opportunities for them to use their Bitcoin. What does an average person do with money? They buy groceries, pay their bills, and do other similar things with the money they earn, and if such an ordinary person buys some Bitcoin, they wouldn't think of using it for all these things mainly because they don't have places for it.

I know that if someone tries, they might find a way to do all these things using Bitcoin, maybe by finding third-party services, etc., but that wouldn't be convenient.

The second reason is that it generates money. If you buy $100 worth of Bitcoin when it's priced at $20k, your $100 turns into $200 when it reaches $40k, and people can see that happening, so they are doing what others are doing, and who doesn't want to earn money?

Merge mining with drivechains is an existing and interesting idea. They need a softfork though, afaik, and developers are still skeptic. This is acually an example that I do also advocate for some protocol changes (but neither tail emission nor big blocks).

Also your logic is flawed: If only big transactions are viable on L1, then the transaction fees must be much higher than now. TX fees as of now are about 5% to 10% of miner revenue. After 2 halvings more (i.e. when you argued in another thread that Bitcoin mining will collapse), tx fees even on the current level would be thus around 20-40% of miner revenue. In your "only big txes are possible" scenario, I guess we'll have fees at least 3x or 4x higher than now, so the fees would actually be similar to the block rewards after the ~2028 halving or even similar to now.

From your argumentation in this thread I guess you like the big block idea. For some time, I have also advocated for slightly bigger blocks (Segwit2x).

But I think L2s are indeed a better idea. Why should every full node have to validate, relay and store each coffee somebody has drunk ... or the activities of a weather app storing all temperatures of a lot of stations, like it was the case on BSV?

And ... fees would actually be much lower in a big block scenario. Look at the fees at BCH and BSV. Why is not everybody using these chains? LTC, which has a relatively small-block model (although a slightly higher capacity than BTC) is much more popular for transactions than the big-blocker forks.

With this logic, if you use a Bitcoin service (e.g. an exchange) then you are not using Bitcoin either, because you're dealing with IOUs.

But Lightning is deeply rooted on L1, much more than other ideas like sidechains. For small amounts it works fine. The theoretical attacks that have been discovered (and yes, they are hard to fix, in the case of the Replacement cycle attack) are only viable if they could be used to steal big amounts.

The thing is that energy consumption isn't what people should worry about because mining bitcoin does cover a lot of energy and yet total combined isn't as much as people think it is so that is not the real worry, we should consider that energy is something that could be made for them as well because they could use solar or wind too.

I think the biggest issue for users is the fee and timing, you send some bitcoin and the transaction costs so much and it happens sometimes as late as half an hour later, that is our biggest issue. I get that people could be looking into something different at times, but we shouldn't really be worried about it. We need to consider the fact that we should find a solution to that if we know what we are doing.

The biggest criticism of bitcoin is coming from those who have less knowledge about it moreover we experienced some spams doesn't mean bitcoin is not well protected.

However something you don't have knowledge of always seems difficult but bitcoin is one of the forum that will experience rapid growth in the near by future
The experts in the house can relate.

The biggest criticism that i have always come across is when people always say every year that bitcoin is a scam, that won't exist any more. People who don't also believe bitcoin,  in the bear market when the price of bitcoin falls very low they always say it is the end of bitcoin and it will never come up again.  So many criticising of bitcoin but still bitcoin is still doing well and more people are adopting. If bitcoin was an innovation that depends on people criticism would have destroyed it.

If the network offered privacy in the protocol level, then i am sure that the U.S government would have started its attack directly on the BTC network, right now they are attacking BTC privacy solutions, like mixers and CoinJoin, imagine what they would have done if there was privacy in the BTC protocol, they would try everything they can to destroy it.

I think it is better we achieve privacy with other tools than directly on the network.

It means you convince them by showing you're making money through Bitcoin? that's bad idea to counter their criticism, they will see you as a rich person and they will become fake since they're want to get close with you. Money is everything now, that's why a lot people like to follow the rich in order to get their money.

I've seen many people are saying Bitcoin is scam, but I never get mad with that, usually I reckon their opinion and also say Bitcoin is scam. So, it will make them not know that I'm Bitcoin holder, my privacy will be fine.

If scaling up block size is simple and does not cause side effects to other things, it would have been done already. Other blockchains can have bigger block size, for example Bitcoin Cash, but demand on that blockchain is low.

Security of that blockchain is lower than Bitcoin blockchain too.
https://howmanyconfs.com/

It's really hard to attack Bitcoin network but it's more easily to do this with altcoin networks.
How many Bitcoin confirmations is enough?

You can continue the discussion on Bitcoin side chain in a thread created for this purpose.

Sidechain Observer - Bitcoin L2 Projects & current state of development

I guess it's Bitcoin's scalability that's the biggest problem. It simply can't handle a large number of transactions. And whenever the network is clogged, it would immediately result into exorbitant fees and very slow confirmation of transactions unless you're willing to pay ridiculously high fees.

If this is brought forward as a criticism, I probably end up citing L2 networks and sidechains and whatnot. And although I'm definitely far from being sufficiently knowledgeable on these topics, I could easily mention the likes of Lightning Network, Liquid Network, Rootstock, Stacks, among others. But the truth is that these aren't Bitcoin. They're separate networks. In which case, they're actually not solutions to the problem. An off-chain solution to an on-chain problem might not be that convincing of an answer.

For me, the most important to respond to this in conversion is to always acknowledge it, acknowledge the issue or concern, and not invalidate it.
Next is don't focus on the issue or negativity, showcase or highlight also the positive highlights of Bitcoin, like mentioning some positive things about Bitcoin.

The biggest criticism I see is that bitcoin is always called as scam. Then also hard to convince those people who's close minded for the things they don't know and ignore your explanation to possibly help them to learn.

And my respond to the is after I receive their declined towards learning this then I don't try to waste my time again to explain. I just show the result of the effort I spent then let them see the result what I get from by investment on bitcoin. Because its hard to push our want to people doesn't like to learn, but for once they realize that bitcoin is good then those people would come then tell that they are ready to learn. Then I am the one will avoid them since I would able to let them learn bitcoin in hard way so that they would realize that its not easy to get a knowledge about bitcoin.

Some users might argue with what I'm about to say, but the biggest weakness has to be the manner in which most users view it as a store of value... The vast majority of people ^{[especially in the past few years]} prefer to hodl it, as opposed to actually using it!

Considering that the easiest route is through the use of traditional methods, only an insignificant portion of it involves Bitcoin ^{[some government officials exaggerate the numbers, but there have been multiple research studies with different results]}.

Stop dreaming, El Salvador was a failure:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asmOZh-E8W0

LN is a failure on technical level and it's reflected by the usage, something around 1% of total transactions.
And it's been downhill for some time now:

https://bitcoinvisuals.com/lightning

It's becoming more and more centralized because that's the nature of the beast.

You are pushing the narration that kills Bitcoin, YOU are the problem and people like you are the reason Bitcoin is not scalable on L1.

Tell me how the F Bitcoin suppose to survive on fees and too small block reward in few years with this scenario where only big transactions are viable on L1 ?
Pushing everyone out of L1 is a good idea in your mind ?

Everything outside L1 is NOT Bitcoin, by using LN you are not using Bitcoin. You can as well use PayPal.
Or any other receipt network.

Bitcoin Layer 1 is like Fedwire. Fedwire is an electronic funds transfer system managed by the Federal Reserve, used to settle large-value transactions between financial institutions in the U.S., such as banks. Unlike Fedwire, which is only available to banks, Bitcoin is available to everyone. Anyone can be their own bank and settle large-value transactions. Thus, Layer 1 will be used for large-value settlements because it offers immense security and decentralization. Meanwhile, layers 2, 3, and 4 will be developed for micro-payments. For example, the Bitcoin Lightning Network is currently very popular worldwide. The Bitcoin Lightning Network can perform hundreds of millions of transactions per second. In San Salvador, where Bitcoin is the official currency, it is widely used for everyday payments. Here you can see what a payment with Bitcoin Lightning looks like in McDonald's restaurants in Salvador.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/25_VkeiT4R0

Payments with Bitcoin Lightning are instant and almost fee-free. There is a website, btcmap.org, where you can see all the locations worldwide—hotels, restaurants, gyms, etc.—that accept Bitcoin Lightning and on-chain payments. On the site spend-sats.com, you can also find some online merchants that accept Lightning payments.

There are some reasonable avenues of concern with Bitcoin. Mining does take a lot of energy, and energy can sometimes be scarce and also often come from very ecologically harmful sources. Bitcoin can also be very volatile, which can make some people, who are more used to fiat, very nervous. But the biggest challenge, I believe, is scalability. Once there's more adoption, the network gets congested, the fees spike, and transactions get stuck. That's a big problem if we want mass adoption of Bitcoin. As for a response, there are centralized solutions offering 'instant' transactions if that's what one's looking for, and some middle ground solutions like the Lightning Network, although I'm not sure how efficient it is these days.

Well, I think the biggest criticism that I know and hated the most if people mentioned is that bitcoin is a scam, I mean they are not doing bitcoin stuff and just getting their idea of bitcoin from being scam to does people who also doesnt have knowledge or idea about bitcoin or to those who are just wanting to bad mount bitcoin as they cant enter in the market early and the chain reaction comes in, I dont get those people that's why instead of fighting them or lecturing them I'm letting them say what they want atleast I know how great and helpful bitcoin to many of us, in my mind I'm just thinking that they are missing a good opportunity, instead of knowing and accepting bitcoin or crypto currency they choose to bad mouth bitcoin without getting any benefits from it. I just view them as small-minded, and I just laugh about them when they say those things. We can't really please all people.

I will not go far but I guess Bitcoin will always be criticized as a get rich quick scheme because the government always supported that accusation. Now asking how to defend that, I would not actually go in details but always tell the people to do their own research. I think that's the best favor I can do for bitcoin, not easily believing on lies but learn to verify those criticisms through in-depth research first.

Is this based on personal opinion or opinions that are often circulated?
Hmmm, the problem is that many people believe in some negative things about Bitcoin which always become ongoing criticism. No matter how well we explain it, it will become another criticism at some future opportunity.

Hmmm, actually what hasn't been achieved is related to the original purpose of Bitcoin being created. Yes, indeed in some areas or occasions, it has been quite successful. But unfortunately, it is really limited to several parties and countries because it collides with regulations. Even though Bitcoin was created to decentralize things and to avoid various controls such as fiat and banks, in reality, it does not run smoothly because the country will always intervene in various things to still be able to limit Bitcoin and its use.

And as for other criticisms, perhaps some of them are related:
- Volatility (although on the other hand, this is something that is very useful and beneficial for several parties to gain profits)
- Mining Bitcoin (often linked to the issue of global warming)
- high fees (the more crowded, the higher the fees and this is often complained about.

However, even though there are many criticisms, why do we still believe in Bitcoin?
The answer is yes because, it's Bitcoin. We fall in love in Bitcoin. And Bitcoin actually has answers to these criticisms, and that also depends on how we respond to them. Because of some of these criticisms, we can actually get all the benefits.

A point which has not been mentioned still (I think) is the relation between volatility, static supply and value proposition.

Bitcoin's value proposition is heavly tied to be a decentralized currency and store of value. If we continue to see so heavy price swings like in Bitcoin's history, then it's difficult for Bitcoin to become a currency which can be used as an "unit of account". The (a little bit less ambitious) "store of value" concept works currently in the long term but not in the short/middle term. You can still not be safe to not lose 10 or more % in a single week.

Static supply (21 million coins cap) on a first glance is the underlying reason: if supply is static (or grows slowly) then the price depends largely on demand swings.

I don't consider this problem unsolvable though, even without protocol changes. Because the "technical" Bitcoin supply (all Bitcoins in circulation) is not all available "on the markets" and thus probably doesn't necessarily drive the price down. So it's a challenge where solutions should be found by creative businesses, service providers and programmers.

One possible version of the challenge is: how can you convince people that in times with lower demand for BTC it's better to reduce the available supply at markets? For example you could imagine models where you "park" your coins somewhere, for example locking them and getting interest like in the "staking" concept but only in bear markets. Now imagine that in a non-custodial way. As for example options can be designed with atomic swap technology, perhaps more complex models can be designed with Bitcoin Script too.

The other possible way is simply using it more as a currency to boost liquidity and make it less vulnerable to price swings, but that depends on scalability and on L2 development.

I'm still waiting for a coherent response on what I wrote in the thread about Ordinals. In general I think your view of the mining industry is too static, there's a lot going on which will counter the problems you enumerate, from miner diversification to surplus energy mining. If there was a good moment to attack Bitcoin it was the 2021 Chinese exodus.

@DrHodler59: It would be cool if you'd participate in the threads you create :p

before I know what is Bitcoin I have experienced many castigation people condemn Bitcoin how do they say to my hearing that the objective of Bitcoin is for scam and since bitcoin is into existence I have not seen anyone who has been defrauded with Bitcoin and what people are saying concerning bitcoin is that it is used for money laundering and I think that should be one of the reasons why government is against the existence of Bitcoin today so if you base on the condemnation or criticism of people concerning Bitcoin I don't think that you  will have the mindset to invest in Bitcoin

Nothing is perfect. Despite some weaknesses, bitcoin still provides many financial opportunities.

I would criticize bitcoin for being unfriendly to newcomers and the majority of the population. For such a financial product to be truly widespread and global, bitcoin had to be easier to use (without losing benefits) by all members of society, and not just tech geeks (I would like to watch you teach your grandma to use bitcoin ).

I would answer that if you simplify bitcoin, it will get rid of all the advantages.

The biggest criticism that I have seen growing over the recent years are the concerns over the energy being spent mining bitcoin, however as we know those numbers have been exaggerated just to try to get the young, which are environmental conscious, to not adopt bitcoin, however the biggest weakness for the average user is the confirmation speed and the fees, as even people like us sometimes have problems getting a confirmation when we want to move our coins, and we may have to refrain from sending any transaction at the time as the fees are higher than the amount of bitcoin we want to send.

It's not a myth, I would say that even green energy used on mining is a waste producing a waste because "green energy" is not that green and energy alone could be used for something different.

As for Banking system taking more energy than Bitcoin mining - overall it might be true (still) but the problem with Bitcoin mining is the big centralization of this energy use which makes it very difficult for the surrounding environment as we can see in Texas today.

As for difficulty drop, you know what else will drop ? security of the network and due to the fact Trillion+ dollars are in this project there will be state sponsored adversaries who will be able to attack the network.

Will they actually attack ? we don't know, what we know is that the security will be low.

I don't have more time for discussion so I close this by saying: If nothing changes to the Bitcoin protocol, it will collapse.
It's economically impossible to survive.
Cheers.

This is a myth that has been injected into the crypto community again and again but it's not extremely dangerous to the environment as you exaggerate. Yes, power consumption of mining operations is high but look how much power we use/waste for the banking system to operate and I would say Bitcoin mining operation doesn't even consume 1% for mining compared to the banks so it's not just a complete waste and if miners are not being profitable anymore then there will be adjustment in the difficulty happens after every 2016 blocks mined so lesser the difficulty mean less resources are being consumed.

The situation is really worrying as this mining companies are purely driven by profits and they have professional advisors who can show them they can earn twice as much on different project.
On the scale they operate even couple percents would be worth switching but due to high volatility the profitability of mining must be much greater for them to switch from one project to another and the halvings make this decision much simpler - unless the market cap will be able to multiply in value after each halving in which I don't believe at this trillion+ levels.

As for BlackRock and other sharks, they just want to multiply their FIAT - they don't have any love for cryptocurrencies but will say otherwise to pump the price up.
They will have no second thought to cash it out after getting their target or seeing that there might be some unrecoverable trouble.
Again, they are not HODL'ers, they are not Bitcoin lovers, they are businessman who want to multiply their stack of FIAT and they have a lot of professional advisors. Nothing else.


Ethereum was a big contender but they switched to PoS.
Monero is feared due to their past of changing PoW to fight off ASIC's but maybe they will be interested in CPU mining - who knows.

Edit: it is already happening: https://cryptonews.com/news/bitcoin-miner-profitability-halving.htm

All the other projects are noise but I could be wrong and they can view it differently.

I think one of the biggest criticism of Bitcoin which comes with the very inherent flaw of it. I believe it was never designed in a way to be used by so many people. So the biggest problem it faces is the scalability issues, the moment you see a lot of on chain traffic immediately you will see the fees skyrocketing up, you will see slower transactions. Apart from this obviously the environmental impact of the Pow consensus is also a big criticism which a lot of pro environmentalists pose on bitcoin. So obviously the PoS or the hybrid solutions are becoming much more relevant to the overall situation in cryptos right now. and honestly I don't have any proper answers to the question on the scalability issues.

People who argue these speed of Bitcoin lack understanding of the 3 bodies of a coin such as the decentralization, the security and the speed. If you want to build coin, one must he sacrificed among that 3 and Bitcoin choose to prioritize decentralization and security before the speed. If there is no decentralization, the network will become a failure and if there is no security, nobody will have confidence and say they will buy Bitcoin that is this expensive.


Most altcoins today are prioritize 2 among these 3, mostly they prefer to make people think speed is what they need and they ignore security and decentralization, hence why most of the altcoins aren't that security tight and aren't decentralized, it's either they are hack today or the team just make decisions about the network, this never happen in Bitcoin network because of how decentralized it is for everyone.

I really appreciate that you shared this critical view with us. What you say makes a lot of sense, and linked to the other argument about halvings it's truly worrying. But if there is such a real risk in the mid term (8 years from now) what do you think could be the reason behind BlackRock and other funds are are accumulating so aggressively?

And, on the other hand, what more profitable projects do you think miners would switch to?

Don't forget about layer 4, 5 and 6

What a clusterfuck...

The challenges in LN are unfixable, first you would need to modify Bitcoin protocol which is written in stone.


Have you ever researched what 51% attack and centralization is ?

It's like talking to kids, what a waste of time.

Have you ever researched what the Difficulty Adjustment is?

Bitcoin is criticized either by cunning fraudsters and shitcoiners or by regular nocoiners who still live in the fiat matrix and do not yet understand what Bitcoin is and what money is. You need to understand that Bitcoin is not Visa or Mastercard; Bitcoin is a monetary network and protocol. Bitcoin Layer 1 is something like Fedwire; it is only used for settling high-value transactions. Further building can be done on Layers 2 and 3, etc. The Lightning Network can perform millions of instant transactions per minute, but there are still significant challenges. The problem is that Bitcoin is decentralized; there is no foundation, no one taking care of Bitcoin. This is unlike scam altcoins, which have entire teams of developers and marketing teams, and who have kept a large portion of the supply for themselves before launch, earning huge amounts of money which they invest in marketing and developers.

The energy the mining farms spend for mining Bitcoin was already debunked a long time ago which I think is not anymore going to resurfaces since Blackrock is already in the side of Bitcoin.

There are still people who believe BTC is released by the government though. And it's a big PsyOps, especially the ones who believe more in Gold and Silver.
Matthew Kratter explains it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdauERKEW-Q

There's no necessity to defend bitcoin at where being criticized especially in the public. It's okay to be an anti bitcoiner because it's a digital asset surrounded with other related potential characteristics such as the Altcoins. The federal authorities could also be against it due to its decentralized modelitty.
So, there's no way we can expect everyone to talk good about the bitcoin. Let whoever that want to say anything about bitcoin do and your endivoirs of engaging on arguements with it is like trying to convince them to what they don't believe.
Bitcoin is a real digital currency and criticisms can't make changes over its potentials.

We can't deny that Bitcoin mining has huge environmental impact and already harmed it a lot but it's a fair price to pay IF it works.

Now IF the projects drops dead at some point, then this whole mining will go to waste and Bitcoin will become the biggest waste of resources in the history of mankind. (this needs Clarkson voice-over in your head)


The solutions are already here but they won't implement it because they want to make money on a failure called LN (which would further kill profits on L1 - if it actually worked as promised).

That's the biggest risk around Bitcoin. Once mining companies stop making profits from mining, they will surely switch to a profitable crypto to mine. Because most of the mining companies are businesses. They won't run the machines unless they see a way to make profit out of their mining activities.

Even if they do, they will solely have to depends on the transaction fees which may not be sufficient and as a result bitcoin transactions will become more expensive than the current level.

I am sure the Bitcoin Developers will think of a way out of this.

I feel that the environmental impact of Bitcoin mining is still a criticism that many people often make about Bitcoin, and it bothers me to this day. You see, Bitcoin is mined by many miners and these miners use electrical resources to support their various mining equipment, but the government instead says that this is just a waste of energy and it has an impact on global warming because the electricity used mostly comes from non-renewable energy. Do they only deal with Bitcoin mining? what about factories that use millions of tons of coal? are they not to blame for global warming? and what about energy use in the financial industry? it is much bigger compared to the Bitcoin mining industry. And in fact, the Bitcoin mining industry is much more aware of this problem compared to other industries, and is starting to improve and streamline their mining equipment, carry out mining in cold places, and use some electricity from renewable energy to support their operations. There are many actions being taken by the Bitcoin mining industry to improve itself, and criticism about the environmental impact of Bitcoin mining is becoming increasingly irrelevant today.

It's always the speed and the volatility of the fees. When the network is congested, fees get up and become very expensive. Just a few months ago, we saw that the network had been attacked and spammed, resulting in its fees reaching up to $100+ just because of that.


I'm not a developer but it's always been said about scalability. Maybe, there will be a real solution for that someday but I agree to Jawhead that despite that disadvantage, Bitcoin is more secure than the other cryptos. And with those cryptos that will say that they've got solution to Bitcoin's problem, just wait for them to get clogged and they'll also experience the same problem.

Criticism against Bitcoin is a lot, you can read with https://endthefud.org/ and https://bitcoincleanup.com/

About strength of Bitcoin, please read The bullish case for Bitcoin.

Don't hope to find absolute strength or weakness of Bitcoin blockchain. There is no perfection but Bitcoin blockchain is good enough to be trusted since 2009 and it will move to future with good growth.

There are many but for me the biggest one is the deadliest one for the project:

The unsustainability of mining due to halvings, two more halvings and it's over if nothing is changed.
There's also a threat that this mining companies will switch to more profitable and less demanding projects way before this halvings.

This companies will reevaluate at some point and numbers will speak in which direction to go.

Some info about the costs:
https://youtu.be/sw6aMxaNmXA?t=416

• The fact that there's very little privacy by default. We currently don't have a way for the normies to achieve privacy, as mixing/cj and coin control is very unfriendly for newbies.
• The fact that bitcoin is still very slow and expensive for most people(small transactions in USD). I don't think Lightning is ready for prime time at all.

Hence, bitcoin is mostly(note: I didn't say only) just for SoV right now. The other 99% of criticisms? Pure BS.

If someone criticizing Bitcoin is slow and expensive, I don't think there's an answer because it's a fact.

There are many altcoins that faster and cheaper than Bitcoin, although they have many disadvantages that actually these are Bitcoin's advantages like decentralized, secure, and trustworthy.

We have side chains and layer 2 for Bitcoin, but it's not as safe as the on-chain.

Hello!

I would be interested to know what you think is the biggest criticism of Bitcoin or where you see the biggest weakness?

And what would you respond to this criticism if you were confronted with it in a conversation?

Thank you for your critical thinking!

Yours, DrHodler59