Topic: Bitcoin's Weak Points (Read 475 times)

It isn't private / not fungible. This is one of the key properties of moneyness. As I understand it, Bitcoin can't achieve base layer privacy so certainly a question on whether it can really be internet money in the long run.

One of the biggest issues of Bitcoin is the crime rate of ransomwares. It costs millions for the victims just to retrieve their data. It is also a non foolproof technology because if you put the wrong address, it's gone. You can't reverse the transactions once you start to send it. The scalability issue, everytime the price of Bitcoin is moving up. The transaction costs is going higher also as they're so many users are sending and receiving. Sometimes it's not worth to send small amounts anymore because of unreasonable cost of transaction. It's not decentralized anymore because you can't liquidate it if you don't comply KYC/AML procedure.

Unfortunately there still are many weak points.
For example:
- High fees. The fees needed to confirm a transaction may very even dramatically over a short period of time. But in general it is not so cheap, especially for micro payments.
- Long confirmation time. This is somewhat correlated with fees, but in general remember Bitcoin transactions are not instant.
- High volatility. This peculiarity of Bitcoin make it more used for speculation and long term investments, as a digital asset, but not as currency. To become a real method of payment Bitcoin's volatility should be less dramatic, otherwise merchants will never be prone to accept it.

I had been watching some videos on bitcoin being banned in few countries. Thus, was undergoing a though process of the pros and cons of the feature anonymity that is provided by this technology.

Pros:

• No-one has the actual stats of how rich or how poor you are
• No need for you to account your earnings or even pay taxes until you convert it to fiat
• You can have the complete owner ship of your funds Example: some banks and other functional bodies have withdrawal limit if funds are in your wallet exchange as per your wish
• Transferring the ownership is simply by sharing private key

Cons:

• Money-laundering is carried out by spammers
• Criminals can demand for funds and it would be hard to track the criminal

It can never lose the volatility while it's priced against steadier elements. Volatility can ease off the bigger it becomes but it'll never be fully steady. Gold still has plenty of movement after thousands of years.

Even if volatility was somehow magically dealt with, the inflation or devaluation of what its value is measured against would ensure the price moved quite violently at times.

It is both a weak point and a strong point. I doubt people would have adopten bitcoin without its volatility attribute. Besides, imo, that's just for now. BTC supply is still being released constantly and the market is still in its infant stage. This makes the price constantly change and therefore why it is volatile. I expect it to actually reach a stable price when the last coin is mined. Plus, the government refuses to accept BTC because they can't control it. No one could.

We can never have the best of both worlds, the world requires balance that's why things needs to have their advantage and disadvantages, the bad and good side, the pros and cons and this also applies to bitcoin but that doesn't mean that will define bitcoin and will change the minds of crypto enthusiasts that uses it.
           Well bitcoin's decentralization is obviously a good thing and counts as a disadvantage, a pro, and a good side of bitcoin but this exact feature has the disavantage, the con, and bad side, for the the decentralization is what makes the cryptocurrency free from the control of the government, the government won't be able to do anything once you lose your coins through scams and fakes for they don't have the control over it.

For anything in our real life, there are always two sides exits concurrently, pros and cons, strength and weaknesses, so I don't think that weaknesses of bitcoin will destroy it or will result any kind of death for bitcoin.

Over time, bitcoin will be upgraded by developer team. If someone need an example, the most intesting one is the hardfork in 2017. This is good for bitcon, but if someone actually stood in crypto market those days months ago, they knew that good things were fudded and become bad ones. Fortunately, eventually good things will be always recognized as good ones - "Render to Caesar what is Caesar's".

If someone does not have faith in bitcoin at beginning, that sort of person will always suspect about the value of bitcoin as well as survival ability of bitcoin. They are weak-handed guys and often shake their hands out when market and bitcoin movement turns to bad directions.
Bitcoin, in realitly, has impressively survived over last ten years, while over short period of longevity so far (months/ years), bitcoin-forked coins lost their values terribly.

Personally, I have strong faith in bitcoin, if not, I have not stood here, in such a very highly volatile crypto market. There are only 3 millions of bitcoin left to miners over next few hundred years, and millions of bitcoin likely lost forever. So, why do we need to seriously take weaknesses of bitcoin into consideration?

Without bitcoin, there would be no crypto market at all.  

Transactions cannot be canceled, by confirming the delivery, you also agree. I don't think it's a weakness but it's an important point to always remember. Nothing is perfect, this also applies to bitcoin and other altcoins. In the market, maybe for some people who have a large amount of BTC can easily reduce their rising prices, volatility and high fluctuations will be a weakness if bitcoin is used as a currency to replace fiat.

When it comes to the evaluation of weaknesses, they are many that cannot be exhausted and it depends on what appeals to you the most that you regard as weakness while others might even see it as an advantage. For someone who have been scammed before, we will all agree that one weakness is the fact that transactions cannot be reversed. The moment one confirmation is done, your fund is gone. No one to report to, no way to freeze the fund pending fulfillment of obligations which then makes it possible for third parties to come into the picture before transactions can be done which for me, defeat the purpose of peer-to-peer transactions.

In order to compete with our fiat systems, Scalability is one area bitcoin falls short and then there is the lack of support from some governments which is the legal lining to make this Cryptocurrency great.

Didn't lightning solves this issue already which its fee is less than a USD?
When the devs decides to change its transaction fee it can be reduced. It wouldn't be reasonable to send 1 BTC and pay that big. It isn't yet as urgent I guess but consensus intervene one day.


You wouldn't like it either if the price of BTC will somewhat be stable, you find it that way and shall be like that no matter how much it will be. It would be solved if the government see BTC that it could function as GOLD, we never know.

Part of the weak point of bitcoin is no turning back. Once you've made the transaction, you cannot undo it. Once someone steals your bitcoin, you cannot find and get it back. No one is responsible for our btc, only us. Another bad side of bitcoin, mining affects the environment. A lot of illegal and criminal activities are transacted here in crypto. But even with its negative sides, I'd still chose to remain with bitcoin. Everything has its imperfection.

It has been created and been using like that since then.
This may consider as a weak point but a solution for faster transactions is still unreachable. But I think it is not the weak point, its the vulnerability to be stolen. In any side of this world, hackers are always there, even bitcoin can't avoid them.

I think Bitcoin's weak point could be its volatility. Bitcoin price is very tend to change every time. Because of this, governments do not approach to Bitcoin to make it as local their currency instead of fiat money.

I sorta agree with your statement that the transaction speed is slow, We also need to pay more fee if we want a faster transaction. The feeling of the instant transaction is the one bitcoin is lacking. We can't change this fact because it is built like this. We can't blame satoshi because this is how blockchain works.

Nope. What power are you talking about? And why you comparing to fiat? Really? In fiat even if you holds 50% of the total supply(just for example even tho fiat is unlimited) , You can't control its price since its value is fixed compared to BTC. How can it be bitcoin advantage if someone holding the majority of the coin can fck up the whole crypto world? Bitcoin is a decentrelized currency. Which means no one can control your assets, it includes also the value of your asset. If someone can manipulate the price then its not fckn decentralized.  

I like it when my money becomes more valuable over time, even when it does it in a wobbly way



you're making a common mistake

Choose:

• fast, expensive transaction
• slow, cheap transaction

there is no "slow expensive" option, you're right, that would be dumb



default fee has changed before, as has the minimum amount. Big increases in Bitcoin price are exactly what provoked the change. But you can do something yourself before that....

You can't set a lower minimum amount in the Bitcoin software, but you can reduce the minimum fee. If more people did this, pressure would increase for the fee floor to lower

One of the strongest as well as weakest point of Bitcoin is the concept of mining.
At one place it ensures fair verification of every bitcoin transaction and creation of new bitcoins without involving any third-party. But on the other side, the competition among miners leading to huge wastage of resources. As this competition gets more stiff, we may further see more spending on electricity and equipment for the creation of computing power which also have negative impact on environment. Also fees will increase further due to lack of bitcoin scalability.

From what I have experienced with bitcoin. It's weakness was always the slow transactions. Whenever I send some btc into my wallet, i experienced a whole day before receiving it. Fees are also high just like what others are complaining about.

Aside from that, I can never say any weakness of it. And oh wait, when it comes to the exposure. Scammers mostly used bitcoin in their fraudulent acts and that also makes his reputation so low.

The whole world knows that there are two weakest points of Bitcoin one being high transaction costs while the other being high transaction times. Scalability is the main issue of bitcoin and LN is a solution which can help all of us. Moreover another issue is the money laundering taking place in Bitcoin but that is because of it's quality of anonymity. Also I am pretty sure that some people even consider the trace-ability of bitcoin too as a disadvantage but that can be easily avoided by using mixers.

I'm not sure if we can say that accessibility is weakness of Bitcoin because if we are talking about mass adoption then it means that Bitcoin must be accessible to everyone or any kind of person on every part of the world. I have thought about this because there some remote areas in every country that blocking access to Bitcoin, also people who are visually impaired having trouble on adopting this new technology.

instability is the very one trouble issue.
second one - is the speed and cost of transaction. for example, let's see typical transaction fee for transfer 0.001 btc,  when usd/btc rate is $10000 you will pay $10 for any of your transfer.
not much I would say. but if usd/btc will be $100 000, the cost of transaction would be $100, this is too much..
 

We have often heard about the advantages of bitcoin, let's discuss the weaknesses of bitcoin. There aren't many weaknesses
bitcoin as I know, I only know two weaknesses of bitcoin, that is Bitcoin is prone to be misused and its price is unstable.
Regarding prone to abuse, we know that bitcoin cannot be controlled and therefore take advantage by criminals such as money
laundering, terrorist financing, and drug transactions. Then with unstable prices, it will be difficult to be used as a means of payment
replace fiat.

This has been an issue actually not just of Bitcoin but also with other top alts like Ethereum. Now, this is actually one of the birth pains that a growing infrastructure or platform has to face, had there been no good growth this scalability will not be an issue. Now, I think there are already many solutions offered for this problem and soon we can Lightning Network really get so popular with merchants who will be happy with faster transactions at a better cost. One thing that amazed me with Bitcoin is that one thing that some consider to be a strength can be viewed by another group of people as a weakness. Just for example: the limited supply of Bitcoin this is good because of its deflationary nature and not inflationary like the fiat money but there are some economists who think that this is not actually good if ever Bitcoin can be utilized as a global currency and they got points to support their claim. Another thing is its irreversible nature so once the Bitcoin is sent then there is nothing we can do to reverse the transaction except if the receiver will send it back, this can be bad if you made a mistake or if you are fooled by a scammer but good if you are on the other side of the table. As they say, there is no perfect thing in this imperfect world and in view Bitcoin is also like that but at least it is much better and a great innovation.

This was also my first thought.
The government is Bitcoin's biggest enemy. This is the weak point of bitcoin, as it will stop the use and hold of bitcoin and we can be considered criminals if we do what the government prohibits.

I think there's a weak point and positive point to this - which is bitcoin's decentralized aspects which almost make it what it is known for.

For example, Bitcoin's decentralization is why stablecoins have been accepted and have progressed in front of Bitcoin, even though they aren't as popular, but they are controllable and that makes it a good public crypto-currency.

The other side of the coin, it's decentralization is what makes it popular and it's the reason why it was adopted by so many people, but now it feels like a handicap due to big companies and countries...

The number one weak point I can think of is stability, volatility is the one who is stopping people to use and adopt bitcoin volatility is the one killing our hope even though it is the most exciting feature of bitcoin but also the most hated feature of bitcoin. The second will be the irreversible transactions of bitcoin, bitcoins once sent can't be retreive of reflected back to the wallet no matter what is the reason behind it, no matter if you got scammed or wrong sent you just basically gave away money.

simple experiment: watch people at a busy crosswalk


alot of people wait for the walk light, afraid of being spotted and fined for jaywalking.

But it only takes 1 snowflake to start an avalanche: 1 person crossing when the light says don't walk will embolden 3, 4, 5 then almost everyone waiting to just step out onto the empty road. A handful of extremely risk averse people remain, and they're in a very small minority.


Seriously, watch crosswalks and this exact pattern takes place over and over again.

They can easily manipulate the market whenever they want, it's their biggest advantage since they hold more bitcoin than any regular holder of bitcoin.
This is the biggest weak point of bitcoin, the more you hold bitcoin, the more capability you have to control the market price. We can't do anything with that reason because they have enough money to buy more bitcoin, it is their advantage.

Bitcoin can't exist without it. It has absolutely no reason to exist without it. I cannae believe this is even up for debate.

The elements that people whine about are in place because they're needed to keep decentralisation. It's not slick and it's not sexy. It's onerous and expensive and risky. It's necessary because the whole thing is utterly worthless without it.

It's a good job enough people can be arsed to fight for it. If it were up to the bone idle pinhead majority it would've been toast years ago.

While most of us  see decentralization as one of the strongest points of Bitcoin, it is also one of the weakest point of Bitcoin.  Bitcoin's decentralization would have been a great thing if there is no central authority that governs each of us.  It is also one of the biggest hindrance of Bitcoin adoption since government frown upon something that they  cannot control.  And for Bitcoin to go mainstream, it needs the government approval whether we like it or not.

It can't work any other way.

The ability to reverse means someone somewhere has enough control to respond to your appeal to their authority and meddle with a transaction that has already gone through. That means centralisation. If it happens once it'll be attempted a billion more times.

Lack of centralisation is the prime factor that gives BTC its value and future but many people refuse to wrap their heads around that.

The whales can indeed manipulate the whole thing at a whim and it's the biggest disadvantage with Bitcoin  but even with that it takes other investors as well, A whale decides to sell and everyone starts to panic and starts selling and thus the domino begins.

That is how the market flows, the more BTC you hold, the more power you have.
We can't call it as a weak point, having more BTC holdings gives you the power, it is your advantage for being early on investing in bitcoin. This is the same as having a fiat currency. If you are rich then you have the power. That's the reality.

Truth as Fck. This is the reality, Disregarding all scalability or whatevs weakpoints of BTC. In reality, You can count in your finger nails those peoples holding huge volume of BTC and any moment. They can dump down to zero the BTC price. This is sucks about BTC. Since the price was already soar high, all early investors and miners can manipulate the price.

If you want reversible transactions, censorship or centralization, just use visa.

Bank system can reverse transactions and even give you a negative balance. This is not something good but something bad.
Would you like to get paid, send your product, then the owner of the centralized network decide to reverse your transaction?

Ethereum transactions were reversed in the past.. but that's not good

Like anything else, Bitcoin is not perfect. But users need to learn how to accept bad sides and benefit the most from the good sides.
Volatility is for some week point but for some is advantage that enables traders to make the profit. So some things also depend point of view.
Similar refers also to scalability, ireversible transactions and other issues.

That's right, we the world out there might probably not have the interests in learning how to make transactions with the use MEW, ledger of any other cryptocurrency wallet but if made simple with just some few clicks i think that would be great. There is this project (BitCash -https://www.choosebitcash.com/) which have made it possible to send cryptocurrencies by just using the name of the person on Twitter, Twitch, Instagram.
NB: i have not tried it myself but they have a community using it so i guess it's all good to go after you do your own research as well.

I would say that the biggest bitcoin or maybe even the entire blockchain tech. problem is irreversibility of transactions.
We live in a world full of imperfect people, this financial system that requires perfection, is naturally being perceived as user unfriendly.
This is of course a "designed flaw" or rather a feature than a bug. Wendell Phillips once have said; "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty", and I must say, this is also very true in the cryptocurrency world. However many, many people won't accept such burden, and so, the adoption will remain rather low. The only solution appears to be the global awakening, to the fraud of Breton-woods system.

For the scalability and the speed of transactions problem we have the lightning network. Businesses just need to run a LN or use someone else's and they're good to go. Transactions are instant as far as I know using LN. I agree with you that blockchain technology is hard to understand for the average joe and most of them don't want to put the effort to do it, so I think the solution would be to create user friendly interfaces and ecosystems where the user can use BTC and other cryptocurrencies just like he would be using money - eg. select a name, enter the amount to send and tap on "send" button & vice-versa. QR codes would be useful as well. As a matter of fact I've just given myself an idea. lol

There are many limitations about bitcoin as well just like any other product and the but the surprising thing about bitcoin's weakness is those weakness acts as it's strength as well and I would say it's the anonymity which makes bitcoin popular as no one can track you but thia has been taken for  granted as bitcoin is used as most secure extortion method for kidnappings,  terrorism funding and money laundering. Just like anonymity we have volatility issue as well which may be a negative aspect but it does help traders to earn more.

The weakest point of btc which is causing hindrance in its growth is the scalability issue. For btc to become a currency of the world, scalability needs to tackeled. The other point is that it is hard to understand.  You cant bring everyone to the the cryptos because of that. This limit its use. Also, it isn't really convenient for everyday retail transactions. It is slow and cumbersome in such cases.

We are always talking here the many benefits, advantages and power of Bitcoin, but we know that for every coin there are always two sides. Bitcoin, am sure, also have its own many weak points that may or may not need some good attention or focus.

Please share here some weak points of Bitcoin that you know and feel...let's discuss them one by one and see how solutions can be applied into them.