Topic: Can Bitcoin Become Negative in Value? - page 6. (Read 1296 times)

Both of these are very unlikely to happen, especially "ban in the demand", which even doesn't make any sense. Demand is not something goverment can ban, it is determined by desire or ability of people to buy something. Governments can't stop people who want to buy something valuable. If people continue to see bitcoin as valuable asset, they will buy it and hold it. For bitcoin to stop being demanded by people, it needs to lose all the properties that make him valuable. If bitcoin weren't decentralized, secure, scarce, censorship-resistant, etc, it wouldn't have value at all and its price would be zero, but still no negative

This is why oil was in the negatives:


So strictly speaking, oil itself doesn't have negative value, the said futures contracts of oil do. Future contracts of oil that don't require you to take physical custody should still retain some value. But yeah, unless it somehow cost you money to hold Bitcoin (which can never realistically happen), no doomsday scenario can lead to a negative valuation.

This is not new to have a thought of what if bitcoin goes to negative value. We've seen people who were thinking of bitcoin to go zero then there's this scenario that happens to oil so people started to compare it with the latter. But you have to look for certain factors that might cause bitcoin to that percentage. But with this factor quoted below, it's highly unlikely that it will go to negative.


It can be back to a few centavos to 1 digit per piece but not negative.

first of all that number is not price of oil exactly. that is the result of contracts that were made months ago by the companies thinking their storages would be empty by now and they can re-fill it with the oil that they receive now. but since the usage were reduced and a lot of other things that led to their storages remain full, they can no longer store the new oil they are supposed to receive now. so they have to pay a less amount of money that it would cost them to transfer the oil to their place and store it somehow to someone else to take it off their hands. in other words they are trying to lose less money.
that is not something that can ever happen in bitcoin! storing bitcoin doesn't cost anything like oil does!

1. who bans bitcoin? the entire world? that would never happen. one or two or even 10 countries banning bitcoin is not going to change anything as it is currently banned in some of them.
2. the same as #1.

you can never prevent people from using something that is decentralized.

There are millions of dollars in lost Bitcoin! They will be lost forever, and more gets lost by unlucky people every day!

I guess that you either didn't reflect enough, either trying to rise a fake problem.
There's a huge difference between goods/objects that take space (storage) and computer/virtual things that don't need warehouses.

The oil negative price was temporary to avoid getting the point they don't have any means to store it and also avoid shutting down production.
Bitcoin is generated in the same way and the transaction go on in the same way no matter what's its price in US Dollar. 1 BTC = 1 BTC.

So basically you compared apples with virtual oranges.

Great comment.
But, look at the conditions I highlighted. What if those conditions were to be true, then what'll happen?

If there is no demand for bitcoin, then the inelastic will be forced to become elastic automatically.

Lol buddy, don't insult bitcoin. In your above sentence, bitcoin better be the apple while Oil is the generator.

Responding to the OP, the price of bitcoin can never be traded in negative figure, the only possible outcome is, the market will lack buyers meanwhile there'll excess sellers willing to sell their bitcoin at very cheap price but they won't find anyone willing to buy those coins off their hands. This is just an absolution though as the possiblity of this happening is nearly zero.

Bitcoin isn't been regulated by any government body that you'll think a ban on its patronage would be that effective to render the coin useless. China has tried that in the past but only had a short term success of affecting the price of bitcoin. Although it didn't send it to a negative value as that's just impossible.

No! It had reached to negative for a short moment and then again gone up. Currently the BRENT CRUDE is trading somewhere near to $16/barrel. However, this is also not a sustainable price so millions of jobs will be lost for this as OPEC countries will have to stop oil product to balance with demand, which has reached a record low due to the current situation.

But we will also have to understand that the situation is not permanent. As soon as the world comes out of the lockdown and the industries start their production - the demand for oil will come back to normal. Once demand increases, the price will increase as well.  


No for bitcoin! Bitcoin is not a traditional market asset. It's a good amount of production cost as well. In view of this, I don't see bitcoin going to negative value ever. A blanket ban can't be achieved on an asset like bitcoin, it has its own technical complexities!

The 2nd one is more serious and can't be entirely impossible! However, there's a chain reaction we need to understand. If we see existing bitcoin miners are moving out of mining, it would reduce the mining difficulty and it would give chance to another group of miners to jump in if the network difficulty reaches to an optimum level. We will never see a complete stop in bitcoin mining ever. There will always be a group miners waiting for an opportunity to start with mining provided it is profitable to them. So if one set of miner moves out, there will always be another set of miners waiting to enter the market. So while the 2nd option is not entire impossible but extremely unlikely to happen!

Hope this helps!  

As storage capacity fills up, the Oil producers are still gonna keep pumping. They need someone to deploy tankers and make arrangement to store it so they can keep pumping more. Shutting down the supplies is a costly affair as they have to pay off employees and the loans taken for setting up the infrastructure. They are offering to pay so they don't have to go into the shutdown spiral.

Bitcoin has no delivery costs. You don't have to spend anything to remember 12 word passphrase or store it somewhere safe. Miners will simply shutdown if it ever becomes "unsafe" to run miners and produce bitcoin. What they will never do is to pay someone to take it off from their addresses.

Only in bitcoin discussion can we attempt comparing apples and generators?

bitcoin's supply is perfectly inelastic. It's not possible for it to be negative.

And oil itself isn't negative, thats just a futures contract. you have to take delivery of that -$37 oil. 1000 barrels. They are basically paying you come get it.

I was shocked for reading a market breaking new as strange as this.

I paused and reflected again and again by applying this condition to other market assets.

I read from Blomberg that the price of crude oil has declined into a negative  of $-37.63/barrel.

What will happen to countries that depend solely on crude oil revenue?

What will happen to the investors in crude oil?

A very serious reflection is that fact that, is it possible for bitcoin value to also drop into the negative?

What if the following happen:
1. A ban in the demand for bitcoin and a ban in the use of bitcoin.
2. Backing off of bitcoin miners from the business of mining?

Could these causes bring the value of bitcoin to something similar to the historic oil Price drop of $-37.63?

What do you have to say about this?