Topic: Can BTC really be a safe haven? (Read 935 times)

I think bitcoin is a safe haven, because other safe events seem to exhibit negative and risky correlations such as stocks, oil or high yields, but bitcoin doesn't show any related articles other than cryptocurrency. Bitcoin can break even higher prices and always corresponds to good moments.

I guess Bitcoin can be a safe haven when we saw less wales holding a huge amount of Bitcoin because they will make huge sharp price  movements and mostly they are manipulating the price and filling their own pocket by the money from little and newbie investors and traders. The word safe haven means the price is increasing by the time yearly and in the long term. In this case Bitcoin was always a very good invest-box for long-term investors. Generally, if you buy smartly using a proper strategy like stairs and invest for long term, Bitcoin is always a safe haven for you.

Safe haven is like a paradise where you will not have any losses in your assets and there's no such things as that. When we talked about investment, there is should always a risk that we need to deal with. Investments are not a 100% profit, it depends on how you will deal with the market, but if you will treat bitcoin as a safe haven, then you should hold it for a long period of time. In order to do that, you need a lot of patience in order to achieve profits. Bitcoin can secure your future once you believe on its ability as a store of value, but sometimes you need to make it grow by making transactions.

That $9000 can still increase sooner or later depending on those factors that can affect its price.

This month, I'm glad that its price is stable about $9000+.

We are experiencing it right now, that global economic crisis that you are saying is happening now because of this pandemic. Most of the countries are struggling so hard to maintain and recover their economy due to all those expenses such as those PPE's and other necessities in a medical sector.


As basic necessities are really required during quarantine, most of us are looking for a source of profit as businesses aren't allowed to operate due to the risk of this Covid-19 into our health. So maybe some people are finding cryptocurrencies as a source of profit or source of value depending on how they will use it in their own benefit. Bitcoin is really a safe haven like Gold, but it can be a short-term investment when you are good buying and selling. But as a source of value, I guarantee you that you should invest in Bitcoin.

I think that soon we should be convinced of this when we enter the period of a tough global economic crisis. In the context of a sharp increase in inflation of the common currencies of states, a decentralized cryptocurrency can become a good refuge for preserving monetary savings of citizens. We have been talking about this for a long time and for the first time we will be able to see it in practice.

You are right, the price of Bitcoin is not stable, now it can be worth $9000, after a while it can be $10,000. The volatility in crypto is high, the risk is high; The higher the profit, the higher the probability of loss. On the other hand, the price of gold is stable, it has regulators, and the return on investment is low.

To many debate regarding on this talks and some answer are good but actually I like your given opinion since this is much near to reality maybe the other think about bitcoin is safe due to some pumping times happening but they forget on how many times the price dump and situation will be change for that if you store your funds on bitcoin only since as you said you will might not get the same value when you start storing it and chances for you to lose when sudden fall occur.

And for the others who says its safe haven do you think guys its safe to store if you know the risk that might you will lose money? Well for me its a no since I define safe as stable one.

I am among those who argue that bitcoin can be a safe haven with certain conditions. So that bitcoin becomes our safe haven
must keep it long-term, minimum hold bitcoin for 5 years. If we save bitcoin for short-term it certainly can't be safe haven,
because the price is volatile. So it must follow the provisions in order to become a safe haven, by long-term hold bitcoin.

Indeed, most of the people consider bitcoin as an investment and to provide my own definition of what a safe haven is, it is a storage of asset that you can use especially in times of needs and when storing huge amount of funds to keep it in a long time without decreasing its value. Bitcoin is too volatile and how come it can sustain your asset? I am not against bitcoin but I think bitcoin will be more fit in terms of daily use and transactions because with its volatility, your funds might not be the same value when you need it.

I don think this important at all because today we can pay overall and for everything, without even touching real paper money or coins. TBH I don't remember when I have paid with cash last time?

I have multiple banking apps on my phone, in my watch, and even in my fitness thing. One can pay using cards and all is contactless at least here where I live.

This didn't happen yesterday and I use it already a couple of years. I am sure that this will go even further and finally, there will be no need for real money at all, I assume.

I don't remember when I had to take cash from ATM the last time. I know that a couple of years ago, I was constantly by the ATM withdrawing funds, but from some time I don't do this anymore.

That is why I think that your speculations about viruses are totally insignificant and have no impact at all on BTC and that it is or could be a save heaven in the future.

I think and I consider bitcoin as the safe haven because I already started on the topic I recently created on that which is the bitcoin uses to save their money because it is more efficient and safe than the use of the savings. Some of the people don't want to use the physical money or the paper money because they know it is dirt and came from the different people that already have a virus and as a person do you make any sanitation in that? Of course, no so why not use the digital currency and there is no aspect of having a physical interaction on the money and the came from the receiver and sender of the money. Many people today are already adopting the use of digital currency most of the stores today are using this to make easier and transparent transactions also it is more secured than the use of the traditional way or banks.  Also using the bitcoin is good too because the market is volatile there is a chance that you will get a huge market income when you bought when the market price reaches the dip of the coin. But still, the market volatility can become your friend and sometimes an enemy so take care of it.

No investment is ever and will ever be called a safe haven. Regardless of the asset, there is always someone or some company speculating that they will make a profit out of your investment. Real estate is likely one of the biggest assets that everyone at one point in their life is going to be in contact with. And here as well many millions can be made or lost. The advantage with crypto is that there are no middlemen that are attempting to make a profit from you as well as here it is us that are trading directly. But of course at great risk as with everything else.

I would rather retain my holdings than going along with this scammers because this is inhumane and not a basic way in joining these scammers moving their BTC.

why need to listen to those telling you this and that? remember you have been here in crypto for how many years now and you experienced the advantage of being bitcoin user or holder.


this market or Bitcoin is safe haven if you know how to manage your crypto,if you know what Holding means and how selling the coins when there is a pump.

Either because of the scammers moving their scammed BTC or the pandemic, I would go with the scammers.

Bitcoin is volatile, that is the usual answer people tell me why Bitcoin would never be a safe-haven. But the thing is that people are actually getting a profit out of it, despite the fall it will go back to its normal price suddenly. In the long run, it gave a lot of profits from its users and investors and I think that is the reason why we should consider Bitcoin as one.

I tend to agree with you in the long run if the price goes up, but this is not sure and we see many 10, 20% or even higher flash crashes during the last few weeks only and there are multiple examples in the BTC history with the price volatility ranging even to 50% in one day. Of course, it has bounced back up slower or faster, but it is hard to call such an asset a save haven.

I keep repeating my theory from the opening post that this huge volatility is caused by high leveraged trades and their liquidations. Such big flash crashes start from a big sell-off and are continued by the liquidation logarithms, with big enough initial dump speculators on the crypto market can cause such insane flash crashes, like this one from 13 March, which could plunge BTC price almost to 0$ if Bitfinex would not take the switch off.

For many Bitcoin is a save heaven, although it's a risky investment and asset.
World is heading towards economy crisis, maybe the bigest and the hardest in.history and many will consider Bitcoin tp be alternative in such hard times. However, will that really be so it's yet to see. We mustn't forget about volatility and unpredictable Bitcoin market, so.time will tell.

Very accurate observation and we can experience this high volatility and price swings in the last days even more. This is true that many traders try to make money from this and there is even a name which is swing trading and BTC is just great for this. Exactly as described, I try to catch this volatile BTC price swings by myself, with high leverage because patterns like the Bart Simpson one are so common right now that it is hard to not use this knowledge to your advantage. Only in the last 3 days, I have seen a couple of 5% swings, so it is even more profitable to trade them, as to just be long or short.

Still, in my opinion, the forex markets are just much larger than BTC and that is why the volatility is lower. Additionally, these are currencies that are monitored and backed by governments and they do all that possible to make it stable and strong influencing the market in any possible way. This is the beauty of BTC that it is driven by different forces.

I cannot say that bitcoin may be a shelter because recently we saw a serious panic where the worth drops such a lot and it's not a characteristics of a secure heaven. the foremost popular shelter is Gold but its value is additionally drop when the pandemic start, the worth of bitcoin is just too volatile and on behalf of me it's not consider as a secure haven investments.

You need to know that bitcoin is not for a long term investment, you should manipulate it depending on the market situation. We all know that bitcoin is volatile and the market so every time that you will make a move, you should consider a lot of factor that can affect its price.

Bitcoin is only for a short term investment because the action and strategy that you will perform should be based on the market movement in order to prevent losses. For the bitcoin to become a safe haven, people around the world should adopt bitcoin as a digital currency and the volume of people that uses it should increase so that bitcoin can no longer have its lower price.

You can grow in using bitcoin but I guarantee you not to treat it as a long term investment.

I wanted to add an observation to that issue. In my opinion, the vulnerability of the BTC market to drop significantly even if there are only a couple of medium-sized sell orders together, is not only caused by a lack of market size but also by the expectations of the market participants.

On the EUR/USD forex market nobody (or at least almost nobody) would place a buy order for 1 USD on EUR 0.50 for example. Most orders will be very close to the current price, because people know that the price is extremely unlikely to drop more than ~5% in a single day. In Bitcoin, we have lots of orders well down and above the spot price. People are expecting Bitcoin to rally and drop more heavily, so they set their orders accordingly, to benefit from these moves.

I think this is a kind of vicious cycle: Bitcoin is volatile. So it attracts people who want to benefit from the price swings (positive and negative ones). And this leads to thin order books that do not "back" the Bitcoin price very much but make it vulnerable to drops - and to FOMO on the other side. Your observation that many people trade with too high leverage ratios is also connected to that - it's simply too easy to make profit with it, so people try to bet on big price swings, even if the risks are large, too.

Personally, I like to earn money and buy coins from panics for fractions of their value. Subsequent increases are merely the icing on the cake ". Personally, I always set positions without leverage. If ever
I decide to use the leverage only in "certain" situations and in cases positions being small fractions from the reserve of capital and leverage at levels on the order of 2-3 times, and max. 5-10 times with "certainty". Personally better I achieve results, and without unnecessary risk, by trading the traditional method: cheap to buy, and quite expensive to sell, after waiting patiently or on "needles". Protection already of owned capital should be more important than its possible multiplication. and disturbance of the balance between capital protection and risk taking - it is already
pure gambling. And you don't earn on gambling (!). This is how trading differs from gambling - Common sense and an approach completely devoid of unnecessary (!) Emotions, which disturb perception. For pure Joy; D the time will come when we will see the effects of this cool, common sense trade and when we reward ourselves for these effects. When we pay a fraction of the yield, reinvesting the multiplied capital.

What is wrong with people these days is they are scared of what they know, it's pretty natural to human but the fact that bitcoin is still standing still conquering heights that we have already set is the thing that what it makes so strong digital currency right now. But there are really some instances that a bad news is going out and making some destructive impact on bitcoin's image as digital currency and asset those are scams and frauds that used the name of bitcoin in illegal way.
Because gold has been here for ages, gold has a physical value as it is a precious metal unlike bitcoin but there is nothing to worry about gold and bitcoin.

People call bitcoin is highly volatile asset because they hate it. They want to own bitcoin but they fear when they look at newspapers, websites, fake news, and price movements. Years ago, the term "virtual currency" is very common. That term, once upon a time, prevent people to learn what Bitcoin is and invest in bitcoin. Nowadays, we don't see that term too common but there are still many people who hate bitcoin and keep spreading fake news, wrong technical terms on bitcoin.

Instead of looking at Gold price and its volatility, people simply says Gold is a stable asset. LOL.

Of course, you will move BTC price more easily than Euro or USD because these markets are significantly bigger. That was my major concern because from some time we see very high leveraged trades that are possible on multiple exchanges and flash crashes caused by liquidations of these trades. In my opinion, this is the main problem that causes so high volatility and stops BTC from being a safe haven.

Of course, we can do nothing to stop exchanges that offer such high leverage and we can only hope that the BTC market will grow significantly and fast without any further flash crashes which will bring the price finally to 0$. We were very close at 12.03 when BTC dropped to 4000$ and such an event is very likely to happen again because nothing changed.

Nobody learned a lesson from this event and next time there could be no such luck as last time that bots caused Bitmex to go offline for half hours during the sell-off   .

While this is true, the volume of Bitcoin transactions in comparison to the trading volume on exchanges is still small. It's about 500 million to 2 billion USD per day, which is less than 3-5% of the volume on exchanges, in the best case (only a relative small proportion of these transactions are real payments, most are exchange deposits etc.). We could add LN transactions (which we can't measure that easily) but there is still no real boom on LN, so I guess these transactions don't really add much volume.

In the case of major fiat currencies, in addition to the already high forex trading volume, a high volume of daily trades to goods and services of all kinds is carried out. And even more important: a merchant only in exceptional situations (mostly in countries with major inflation) will change the price of a good once or more every 24 hours. This adds a lot of stability.

This may be true in some cases, but even very inflationary fiat currencies (ARS, VEF ...) are normally moving much less erratic than Bitcoin: they move often only down, and by a slight percentage per month (in the case of the ARS the depreciation is about ~2-3% per month). The corona crisis is also a heavy-impact event which doesn't occur every year.

I think however that Bitcoin should aspire to deliver better numbers, eventually, than weak fiat currencies.
Yep, compared to the total volume 100 BTC seem not to be so much ... but what I wanted to say is that you can significantly move the price with a major market sell order on a single major exchange.

I just looked at the Bitstamp order book: if you sell a market order of 100 BTC you will lower the BTC/USD price about 55 USD (from ~7770 to 7715). This is an 0,7% move, which I consider already significant. You can say now that most people would place a limit order, but in forex markets you would need much more volume to move even 0.1%. And if this 100 BTC market sale occured at Bitstamp, chances are that due to arbitrage on other exchanges it also would drop. With a bit more (200-300 BTC) you can already start a micro-panic. (Not considering that we're currently in a slightly bullish phase and order books are thicker than usually on the bid-side).

OK, here I think I agree

When you buy a coffee with bitcoin, that volume doesn't show up in coinmarketcap or whatever website. This reported volume is only for exchanges volume, this has nothing to do with blockchain transactions.

All this volume that happens on-chain is not reported in the volume or liquidity we are talking about here.



Only USD is considered really a safe haven, maybe euro. The rest of the 100 fiat currencies out there are really not a safe haven. The currency of my country just lost about 30% value against USD in this corona virus crisis.


I strongly disagree with this, and all data provided by all websites like coinmarkecap shows exactly the opposite: We have a daily  46 billion usd volume, which is like 4,267,041 BTC daily!!

100 btc is nothing here, as we get new 3000 BTC everyday just from mining.

Well, we can agree that we disagree.

Of course it does. That's billions of dollars of churn with coins and dollars that rarely leave exchanges. If someone turns up with an urgent need to get rid of several thousand coins at once we'll sure as shit feel it reverberate through the market.

If there was a proper panic and everyone ran for the door you might be able to realise a respectable price for 1-5% of the entire supply before the price was flattened completely.

The reason for all the violent moves we get is the lack of liquidity.

Well, this is hard to say because this technology called Bitcoin was created as a method of payment, also, it potential was found as an investment method which when invests on a long-term can yield profits. Bitcoin been seeing as a save haven from bitcoiners should be rethink because we could have imagine Bitcoin to stand the trying Period during the early outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. This pandemic has shown to us that, Bitcoin shouldn't be see as a save haven but method of payment and investment.

For a speculative asset, it may be enough. For an asset aspiring to become a global (and potentially more stable) currency, however, liquidity is really low. Currencies are not only traded on forex markets. You trade your currency every time you buy a coffee or whatever, or even if you buy Bitcoin or stocks.

Additionally, in currencies order books can be viewed as extremely thick. If you buy your coffee, you don't set a limit order 2% below of the real price, but instead buy instantly at a value very close to the price, because you assume the price of these goods are fair and won't change during the day (there are exceptions to this rule, like hyperinflations, of course).

That is one of the main reasons why currencies are so stable and are seen often as a "safe haven". Bitcoin still can't really count with that advantage. If you sell >100 BTC often you already move the price. Those who want a "safe haven" status have to find other reasons, like its scarcity or the "stock-to-flow" theory, but these reasons in my opinion are not convincing enough to last long term and sustainably - altcoins show that even very "scarce" cryptocurrencies can erode completely.

So an increase of liquidity is still top priority for Bitcoin is important if it wants to become a safe haven in the same way than a fiat currency. (Gold, as I wrote, is completely another story because of its millenia-long tradition as value storage.)

I doubt the 95% fake volume because most of the top exchanges has more than 40% of this trade and If they do where did get that high on the fake volume. They trade high volume, have high number of users and traffic, also located in places of high interest. Another portion of the OTC is mostly not added to this volume and it huge both for altcoins and bitcoin,

Can't call gold volatile? Gold has high volatility, it is not stable against USD.

in the last 1 year gold was up 57%, while bitcoin is  46%.

57% man! In a single year. That's pretty high volatility. Since 2014 it is 260%!!!

260%.

Gold stable for year? Tell me one stable please...

Volatility is a huge obstacle, I agree about that. Another big problem I see is scalability. If Bitcoin is to be a save haven, many people should be able to easily transfer their money/assets into Bitcoin and perhaps use Bitcoin in the meantime or indefinitely if other things fail. The problem is that while currently transaction fees are pretty low, they can get ridiculous pretty fast if many people suddenly join the game.
I don't think that it's even comparable, come on. Gold can be stable for years and huge changes there are still very small ones if compared to Bitcoin. I don't think calling gold 'volatile' is correct in this context.

We know how vulnerable we are into hacking events, thousand and millions of bitcoins has been a hack that coz alarming for big investors to take the risk. We can't deny that we are not really at 100% or even near to that and it is added by its volatility feature that coz more worries, especially for the weak hands.

It wasn't to disappoint everyone and for the readers but this crypto investment is not really as a safe haven. Even though we say that this is not a safe haven but still people will come for investment because they are taking the risk and knowing that they can still make good money in here if they are wise and smart enough to manage the risk.

Everything you said is fine but most people here are either in bitcoin for making a profit rather than waiting for long time for its price to skyrocket and the margin trading is the best way to earn or loose a large amount very quickly and I know it very well as I have experienced both the outcomes.
Also bitcoin is more of an investment system rather than a payment system and now people should be able to see the Price movement in order to invest in an accomodity, and that price movement is provided by the margin trading to be honest.

Fully agree with you that Gold is the best and so far longest used safe haven, for sure we should keep close attention to it, but also we have to remember that the time is going forward very fast, especially when it comes to technology and finances, everything is evolving, so fast as never before.

This can and for sure will have an impact on everything, so maybe in 10 years gold will be not used as safe haven anymore, maybe BTC will, despite everything. Why?

Because gold is not easy to store, move, pay with, secure, send, buy, sell, etc. Lately, I have heard a discussion between two investors and they agreed that gold is a good investment right now and they would like to have it in their portfolio, but the problem is, they don't want to trust to anyone, only really own this brick of gold and to have it safe in their own possession. If you want to buy more gold there is no easy way to check the gold you are buying. There is no easy way to check the hall brick from inside, outside for the purity correctly. It makes the gold in our times less and less usable.

Of course, BTC is the opposite of gold because it is easy to store, send, pay with, and mainly because of this many people started to literally call it safe haven, but they are forgetting about many problems... like volatility.


Of course, I am speculating, but based on strong facts.

https://hacked.com/bitcoins-price-recovery-stalls-as-bitmex-shuts-down-u-s-accounts/
https://cryptoslate.com/advanced-botnet-attack-caused-1-2bn-in-longs-liquidation-on-bitmex/

Bitcoin has no liquidity problems.  Even if 95% is fake, 1 billion usd volume is pretty high.

Do you need to sell more than 1billion usd in bitcoin per day? Ffs
Saying that bitcoin cant be a safe haven because it lacks liquidity is just false.

Lately, we dont see articles and arguments that compare Bitcoin, ethereum and every other coin. We are back with Gold and Bitcoin comparison which was more around before the last ICOs and altcoin seasons. it is now getting to a cycle on the trend of asset comparison. BTC has more advantage as a digital asset and portability, the volatility's disadvantages is just the scare, 95% dump could be heart breaking for hodlers that dont take profit or buy at bull market .

I think it is somehow a safe haven, but not that strong. With our imaginary price resistance range, we have seen the price of bitcoin not going beyond a certain range of price for the last 2 to 3 years and that is the very reason why users, websites and even merchants pursue to have bitcoin on their payment methods. I guess people calling it safe haven because they already rid the price of bitcoin in skyrocket.

Volatility is what makes bitcoin not the safe haven because it does not behave like the tether or other stable coins. For now, what fits best with bitcoin is a form of investment especially the price per bitcoin is high.

That is a so-called volatility effect and this is also a reason why merchants and business owners decline Bitcoin as another mode of payment. It was the worries that bring in their mind and of course, the high risk of losing their money at any time. If this coin shows only less volatile (then to be a stable one), it will be sure that people will adopt the system easily but these market changes give away not to consider as a safe haven.  

I think when we say save haven; it is an indication that with bitcoin you can't always have losses, but reverse is the case.
Bitcoin is a very good token; vast and used for international transfers by its users, or for payment on webpages, but to me bitcoin is not a safe haven.

If you have 1 bitcoin today, it could be worth 7000$ today, then tomorrow it could be 4000$ or 20,000$; that is not an example of safe haven.
Stable coins should have the tag safe haven

I think Bitcoin is a kind of safe haven. When we say safe haven this can be a comfort to many people. This will serve as a source of income to many people. Because the other safe havens seem to show negative correlations with the so-called risk assets such as stocks or oil or high-yield bonds, bitcoin shows no related articles to anything apart from cryptocurrencies.

Bitcoin is digital currency have value and could be lower price at the some moment, many time bitcoin back lower price and give us reason how to manage bitcoin and try for investing with bitcoin and altcoin correctly, not trust all by invest your money without selling after bitcoin break to higher price and always get touch with good moment to buy and sell bitcoin.

I would say that the suggestion of OP looks good because it might cause the less volatile price of bitcoin by lowering allowable leverages on crypto exchanges. Something like a universal allowable leverages.

Unfortunately, it is in theory. In reality, traders are always greed and be affected by emotions. Do you really think that with lower leverages, lost-traders will not see liquidations on their accounts or contracts. I do strongly believe such lost-traders will get liquidated repeatedly.

The problem starts from that. Newbies hear of many terrible anecdotes on leverage tradings and liquidations. They don't dig deeply to consider which leverages greed traders usually use and how easy each leverage will cause liquidation. Or even if they hear some story like "I trade with 2x leverage on crypto exchange, with bitcoin as collateral, and get liquidated many times. Now, I am broke". They will fear and never join crypto. Even 2x leverage can be so risky like that. No, I will never join that risky place. 

I get your point here,even though I don't agree 100%.
The crypto exchange platforms are the root of all evil.The Bitcoin price shouldn't depend on shady marketplaces,that are faking their trading volume and offering x100 leverage.Unfortunately,there's no alternative.We can't force all crypto exchange platforms to lower their leverage to x3.Only the governments can do that.Even if somehow all crypto trading platforms are convinced or forced to lower their leverage,some shady unregulated platforms would still offer x100 leverage and get all the "gambler" crypto traders.
Having high leverage is always more preferred by a trader.
Most of the Bitcoins are concentrated among a few crypto whales and early adopters,but we can't change that as well.

The term safe haven which means than asset that can retain its value or even increase its value during a crisis. I cannot say that bitcoin is a safe haven because recently we saw a major panic where the price drops so much and it is not a characteristics of a safe heaven. The most popular safe haven is Gold but its value is also drop when the pandemic start, the value of bitcoin is too volatile and for me it is not consider as a safe haven investments.

The analysis is interesting, and I think you have identified correctly one of the sources of Bitcoin's volatility. But I disagree about the solution you propose.

Unfortunately, there is nobody who can really "limit the leverage". Even if there was a worldwide recommendation by the FSB or a similar body, and exchanges had to abide them, nobody would prevent people to set up DeFi-style contracts in the same way.

I think the big problem is that Bitcoin even without the side effects of "modern" trading (like liquidation algorithms) tends to volatility. We've seen this as early as 2011, when there was no (or insignificant) leveraged trading. This is mainly caused by its almost purely speculative usage. Let's face it: most Bitcoin "investors" want to buy in cheap and later sell high - to fiat. This "hoard and sell" mentality is what creates the dramatic up- and downswings. And these swings are also the reason for the atractiveness for leveraged trading. If you see that Bitcoin in most years has at least a 50% change in price (it doesn't matter if it's upwards or downwards) then your tentation is big to "try your luck" and "ride the waves".

Only increased liquidity, which is most easily achieved by more offers of goods and services, will solve that problem in the long run.

Everybody can help, even without a business or a job where you can be paid in BTC - for example, sell your used goods for Bitcoin, and pay with BTC (re-buying the amount later if you want) always when it's possible without too much hassle. This is what finally will lead to more liquidity, order books will be much thicker and volatility can be effectively lowered.

How do you know? There is no direct evidence of that.


It's probably the concentrated and low circulating supply that is the real cause of volatility. Leveraged markets may only have a secondary effect, if any. It's also possible that the increased market depth from leveraged markets can, in many cases, reduce overall market volatility. That's the basis for this idea that the CME Bitcoin futures market is "taming" Bitcoin.


95% of reported Bitcoin trading volume is fake.

I think it can be a safe haven. It's not looking like that to buyers who got it a few months ago but to long term holders who got it for less than 3000 dollars 3 years ago it's very much a store of value.

I feel like Bitcoin punishes nervous speculators who think about it only in terms of fiat value. Those who buy and forget about it for a couple years are fine.

I also don't agree with that statement about 95% of coins being on a small number of addresses. It only means that bitfinex, binance and coinbase have a lot of users and people are stupid and trust those companies with their money.

For this time now it might not be so. I see bitcoin as just investment opportunity and I see many thinking that too. Bitcoin is still and cryptocurrency not being able to be predicted so it will not have that reliable trust that a save heaven should have.

Some very good points here.  If we are looking to find a safe haven, a hedge instrument, then the very first thing you should be thinking of is gold.  It's been around for a very long time as a mode of currency/safe storage.  A LONG TIME.  So, bitcoin needs to continue to gain user adoption which will help stabilize price as well as increase it's power as a store of wealth.  This isn't to say it isn't already there somewhat right now though, because it is.  There's enough faith in it that many use it as a safe have they believe can grow ..not so much one that wont/cant fall.

It's down to size and saturation. Both are a fraction of their possible eventual dimensions. If it doesn't continue to grow and distribute wider it'll forever be the plaything of a few creeps on bucketshops.

The leverage thing won't go away. That's what attracts people to it. What'll temper it is more of them ballsing up and wiping themselves out and real world usage prising it out of their hands. To get to safe haven status will take many years with many bumps along the way.

Considering Bitcoin as a safe haven for me is not possible because of the volatility. Golds and other assets consistently change by its market value the same as with bitcoins. Supply and demands have a big role in its value including access to this bitcoin may affect the trading and exchange cost of it. If anyone plans to make it as their safe haven it could be safe somehow but you must consider first the drastic or even the slightest change on its value. IMO

Wait man  you are thinking the wrong way.
Btc has no liquidity problems. Volume in the last 24h was 43 billion dollars.
How can you say that it has low.liquidity? This makes absolutely no sense, as it is bigger than many stock exchanges around the world. It is bigger than Brazil stock exchange daily volume. Much bigger.

Small bitcoin exchanges doesn't affect the market , you can just ignore them, as they don't play a big role in determining btc price or volatility



Bitcoin capitalization should not be compared to stock market like this imo.
London stock exchange was created in 1801. Sp500 is also very old and many others. There are thousands of companies there.

Companies that have pretty high profits. Bitcoin will never have profit, because it is not a company.
. Volume and market share of the largest companies of the world will always be higher than any safe haven

Raoul Pal, a well known fund manager, recently released his latest research paper, called 'The Unfolding' (120 pages long). There are quite a few mentions about Bitcoin in it, with the main conclusion that everybody needs to own Bitcoin.

Read the report here: https://www.realvision.com/gmi?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=43943_GMI_BB_TW_W1_LINK

Then what is? What stops BTC from being a real safe haven?

Of course, there are many different factors that are not helping either: small market size, low liquidity, immature regulatory environment, but still, at the end of the day, we will finish at volatility because all mentioned factors only fuel it even more.

In my opinion, very high leverage on such small markets with low liquidity is like asking for disaster, which almost happened on the 12th of March, when Bitfinex has "server problems", which stopped BTC price from falling to 0. Whales, or large individual investors, in such a small market could and for sure are hunting for liquidity, causing all these sharp spikes and selloffs. Of course, such fast price fluctuation is responsible for many liquidations on leveraged trades, as we have witnessed, so many times during the last two years.
https://cryptoslate.com/advanced-botnet-attack-caused-1-2bn-in-longs-liquidation-on-bitmex/
https://bitcoinist.com/bitmex-liquidations-bitcoin-2020/

Of course, all these problems don't help BTC to be a safe haven, but still, I personally think that volatility caused by high leveraged trades on the small BTC market is the key here.

Cryptocurrency market capitalization is actually: $216 billion when global stock market capitalization in 2019 was $90 trillion and in this year only gained 17 Trillion in value, when crypto market lost during the last few years almost 600 Billion. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/24/global-stock-markets-gained-17-trillion-in-value-in-2019.html

We can already say this, it is true. Bitcoin, gold, and stablecoins.

I don't fully agree. Ofc it is bad that there are addresses with high amount of coins, but most of those coins belongs to exchanges. Those coins do not belong to the same person, they are only custodial.

Like GOLD etfs for example, which one custodial, like GLD or IAU, hold billions and billions of USD in Gold.




Gold also has high volatility, not as high as btc ofc

But I think volatility is not the major problem. As long as its volatility is not correlated to stock market, it can be somehow a safe haven.

 it depends

To answer the question: can BTC really be a safe haven? we'll have to find out what is the main problem that keeps it far away from being one?

In my opinion, this is VOLATILITY. So what forces BTC to make such large price movements?

It turns out that the biggest problem is the extreme leverage on cryptocurrency markets, which is offered by unregulated offshore exchanges.

BTC is highly concentrated and data show that almost 95% of BTC resources belong to a relatively small number of addresses. Such conditions give the market a 'kick' and increase greed.
At the same time, many traders who are using highly leveraged trading platforms have a very high-risk appetite and not always the skills needed to play with 100 or 200X leveraged trades.

BTC                ADDRESSES      %                 COINS                 USD              %COINS

https://bithub.pl/wiadomosci/bitcoin-na-lasce-algorytmow-dlaczego-btc-i-safe-haven-to-na-razie-zwykla-mrzonka/

Most exchanges that offer trading with very high leverage were not designed to handle not only the large-scale volumes in times of heavy market congestion but also the network traffic itself.
The problem of overloading exchange servers has become very common in the last two years. It is ironic that such things happen, of course, at times when markets tend to increase their trading volume drastically. This is a big problem, as we have seen lately, because it makes it difficult for traders to reduce their exposure, when such an event occurs, leaving them at the mercy of aggressive liquidation algorithms.

We have to remember that regulated exchanges only offer around 3 times leverage.

Crypto exchange insurance funds act both as an external picture of the exchange's success, but also as a measure of how aggressive and harmful their liquidation algorithms are for the traders.
This is because on almost every crypto exchange the insurance fund is capitalized from the liquidations of traders' positions.

100x leverage and higher 200X is attractive (at least at first glance) for a trader who wants to maximize profits with a minimum contribution of his own capital, but it causes this insane BTC price volatility, which prevents the profitable use of such high leverage. If the plug by Bitmex would not be pulled out on time a few weeks ago, BTC price would fell to 0$.
How could this happen? Isn't this still too early for such high leverage 100 or 200X in the crypto market?
https://hacked.com/bitcoins-price-recovery-stalls-as-bitmex-shuts-down-u-s-accounts/

In my opinion, only because of this Bitmex incident it would be wise to limit the widely available throughout the ecosystem high leverage to stop this absurd volatility and give a chance to BTC to be this safe haven finally!!!

https://bithub.pl/wiadomosci/bitcoin-na-lasce-algorytmow-dlaczego-btc-i-safe-haven-to-na-razie-zwykla-mrzonka/

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Source: https://bithub.pl/wiadomosci/bitcoin-na-lasce-algorytmow-dlaczego-btc-i-safe-haven-to-na-razie-zwykla-mrzonka/