Topic: How sustainable is bitcoin? (Read 1565 times)

People are slowly accepting Bitcoin and think it's a property so i think it's sustainable enough for us.

It is complicated, one cannot tell whether bitcoin is sustainable or not.I wouldn't call Bitcoin anything an "investment". At best it would be speculation. We have had some questions on lottery tickets; in my mind, Bitcoin would fall into the same general category

There is a growing demand for bitcoin that grows exponentially since 2011 or 2010. Let's look at the inventory, the reserves are already there and the mining activities are not that fast. And this causes a shortfall between demand and supply. The price will go up eventually.

That's true and the currency is very high so everyone is attracted to it. There's no specific answer on how many bitcoins that can still be mined out there. The best thing to do is earn coins here in this forum while it was still growing and work hard. Because bitcoins will make you very rich.

One thing btc has shown us for the past years is it has a good capability to adjust. And as you've said, it won't be the same since btc moves with technology and time and bitcoin would probably make changes to itself to adapt.

I do got your point and things you do said is somehow real and would really possible to happen because there would really be some instances that people would just hold up their bitcoin because they know that the price of it would really be valuable even more on upcoming years to come. Dont worry too much on difficulty to rise up since there would be always new miners would really do the job and also the last supply of bitcoin to be mined would be on year 2120+ as far as i know ( correct me if im wrong)

If the bitcoin's protocol continues like now, i dont believe in the sustainability of that, but the bitcoins protocol its very malleable and i think the nodes can update with the grown of the technology.   

bitcoin will remain as for a long time there is no dobut about

We should also consider that there are numerous other altcoin available in the market which are being traded and being rising quickly. So will btc in future be replaced by some other technology or other coin may be possible or may not be which only time will tell us. For now we can store the btc and save it but for who long will need to be checked.

Indeed, we need to grab as much Bitcoins as possible for us to have a luxurious future. Luckily, Bitcoin is the ever growing investment and I don't find even a single reason to give up on Bitcoin at the present. Obviously when all the bitcoins have been mined out, we will be using those coins that are available in the market and I guess this will further increase the value of Bitcoins.

The legalization of the bitcoins will drastically change the economy of the world. Obviously those countries that are hub of technology like Japan, China etc would become richest countries in no time. But the problem with legalization is that it will loosen the grip of government over public money.

Practically speaking yes it is a good idea to save btc as early as now but the question is how is everything work with that particular rate for it changes from time to time. Normally it fluctuates and pump for some reasons. Well, it is suitable not until everyone here quit promoting, quit investing btc or any relevant coins. If we are going to circulate it first must be change into real cash because we depend on cash. Basically,cash is the prior thing to use for generating something like business or a similar thing therefore it will be more sustainable.

That is why we should keep on gathering bitcoin as much as we can now because that is the only way we can really predict the future. Everything in the future is very uncertainty unsustainable but from what we do today we can really predict and follow the future of bitcoin. Like fiat I do believe that when all bitcoin has been mining we can only be using what is in circulations.

Computing field will advance for sure no matter what happens. We had big vacuum derived computers as large as a building who was able to compute plus and minus and after fifty years later we have small chips with one inch square size able to compute the distance between galaxies in seconds. So you still think that it is slow pace?


No, bitcoin will sustain regardless of its mining technology because the value of bitcoin is defined. The mining will get difficult as mire and more people will come into play but that's for them, the miners to get the rearward with difficulty. Bitcoin is not dependent on miners for its value but depends on the people who invest in it with fiat.  The difference is pretty simple. And about the mining, well it will take a way out soon as we move.

wait what? bitcoin as legal currency? where did you read that?

You realize if BITCOIN becomes a legal currency the countries with massive computing power can quickly become the richest country in the world dumping USD against BTC-
Economics will turn upside down.
As is the issue is fiat can be printed into oblivion -whenever they reach Debt limit they increase it higher. With BTC legal I can see politicians promising -"one btc miner for every household if I get elected or making energy cheaper" lol

to me i think the trend is now increasing. after Japan who has accepted bitcoin as legal currency now the other countries are also following them and they are also thinking about to turn bitcoin as legal currency. i am sure that even my own country will also turn bitcoin as legal currency.

It's for people paying bills- AFAIK government and service providers (most of them) still don't accept BTC

Can you name few? Let's say I want to buy something from Amazon -is it possible? how about Ebay? - paypal provides sort of security (if items not as described it can be returned for full refund-do we have any sort of thing here?)

btw I think US has a lot of options but for here in Canada- nada

For example -I have btc in my Poloniex account- how can I use those to do anything?

The regulatory situation of bitcoin is not to reach a certain reasult since it's located in the gray zone. We can't predict what the country leaders will decide and what will happen to bitcoin in terms of the sustainability of the whole ecosystem.

Aren't regular users already being excluded from mining? I mean you'd need a pretty large initial investment to get started with mining.
If you want to get a decent ROI in a short time at least.

People will always be able to purchase though and with small purchases, you could see some good ROI pretty fast compared to mining.

I only use bitcoin to make online purchases. And I have not sold any bitcoin for other currency. My formula is to buy bitcoin wait for an increase in value then spend bitcoin... then repeat. This way I am not paying fees to switch back to shity fiat. Why do that? in fact I normally deal with sellers who give me an additional 1-3% off for using bitcoin. If you look you will find tens of thousands of retailers who take bitcoin now.

Guys who are paying for bills and what not -how do you do it?

Even to convert BTC into USD i have to jump through hoops.

Put it in Kraken then convert to CAD (since I'm in Canada) but for that level 3 verification is required. (Privacy is finished)

People who are bitcoin millionaire won't ever be in Forbes since value is only in their cold storage right? and once they transfer such an amount to Kraken to convert it into USD -it has limits.

How do you even pay bills and what not? Every spike you convert some left over funds?

For example- I have my mining BTC go straight in Poloniex and if I transfer from there to Kraken there is fees -then conversion fee then again transfer fee. One loses money left and right.

I can keep money straight up in Kraken but Poloniex have features that Kraken doesn't and even my first level verification hasn't been finished (been 2-3 weeks)

It actually adjusts up AND down depending on how much mining power there is on the network. These adjustments seek to keep the supply at about 1 block discovered every 10 min. So mining may get harder, but the supply stays the same. Eventually the coins will be mined and "mining" will switch to routing transactions for profit.
No because fiat is centrally controlled and that leads to unfair practices. The issuers of fiat can just print as much as they want, even though that reduces the value of the fiat you have. It essentially allows the issuer to steal value. In bitcoin no one can stop you from using it, make you use it, set the value, decide who gets it, print more... All this and more can and is done in fiat systems.    
Consider that anyone can buy some amount of BTC and realize the growth in value. When the price rises the rich may get richer, but the poor get richer also. Whether you can afford to buy $1million in BTC or $.01 we all see the same percentage in growth.
It's just money, that's all. It is primarily a convenient store of value to trade for goods, services, etc. A fair money anyone can use but nobody can control. The opposite of fiat.

P.S. You are asking the right questions!

Most member in Bitcointalk are want become to millionaire dollar with Bitcoin. But you need know it's a hard road and not easy for become true, on the road we will get some time loss all and want give up. Important can stand up after that and countinue this road!

Bitcoin sustained the needs of my family.Once you work hard for this all you want you can get it.Because bitcoin is the answer especially in financial thats why many bitcoiners are longing for the benifits of bitcoin as of the testimonies of all bitcoiners become a millionaire and rich inside every one to be a member of bitcointalk.

i have no insight about this but got curious about it
its important to know and i read some article
heres the link

https://securitygladiators.com/bitcoin-sustainable-not-yet/

Yes, that's the miner I'm using now. It's posted here called Nemo which pays back in BTC and that's all I know about other currencies i don't know anything. Another one is Winminer- which is one step ahead lol- it pays out in USD -you can even get a payout in paypal. Never seen anything so simple- it's in alpha stage so it's not optimized for 1080ti at all.

All in all- I'm doing for accumulation. Hopefully one day I can say I got in early lol -btw how do you change your BTC into USD Poloniex doesn't offer that right?

about bitcoin sustainable, the first must about regulation, with regulation bitcoin can guaranteed sustainable
about sustainable income from bitcoin the best way use trading, but you must have skill

That is what the plan is going on with the BIP148. They want to reduce the supply of bitcoin and put it in one place but we should not give the space for that to happen. If we people let happen by selling the coins with the sudden bump what we seeing now. We need to hold it for sometime to recover the issue. Then it will be live long fore more years.

It's not guaranteed that they will rise.  Miners can be speculators too but sooner or later they have to sell a lot of their coins to pay electricity bills.  Those that don't will need a significant initial investment that they're willing to subject to crypto's absolutely insane risks.

Miners are more likely to mine coins that have just spiked upwards, because it takes a while for other miners for the difficulty to catch up with the rise in price (both because difficulty sometimes takes a long time to adjust, and because other miners need to dedicate their mining equipment to that coin).

Actually, some services let you dedicate your hashrate to whatever coin is the most profitable at the time and receive your profits in BTC.
A bit of advice - if you don't know about a cryptocurrency, don't speculate on it.  In a years' time, you won't feel so good about your decision.  The ones that are most hyped are often the ones with the least substance or short-term potential.

In theory isn't it better if a person mines-the currencies that are crashing hard and just accumulates them (getting a bigger reward since less people mining it, however longer to find and solve) and then sell it on a spike up.

For example- I converted all my DGB today into BTC -there was a 50% spike in DGB lol -it may very well keep rising but I got around 5-10% bonus from the spike and since I don't know much about other currencies I'm just concentrating on accumulating stuff in BTC

It applies to ETH.  I don't know about DGB but it applies to most PoW cryptocurrencies as they tend to have similar systems to Bitcoin (IOTA and occasionally others are different).  The DAG stands for Directed Acyclic Graph and it's not something that ETH uses.  It's an alternative to the traditional blockchain which doesn't require transactions to be grouped together into blocks.  Two cryptocurrencies which use it are Byteball and IOTA.

Basically, because the block reward is always the same (in Bitcoin's case it's currently 12.5 coins and it cuts in half every four years), more people start mining when the price of the coins go up because the block reward is worth more in terms of fiat.  In order to make profit from mining, people use hardware that works on the mining algorithms as efficiently as possible.

When people try to mine as efficiently as possible, it means that mining hardware which is not efficient becomes unprofitable because the electricity costs start exceeding your revenue.

In Bitcoin's case this means that machines called ASICs (application specific integrated circuits) get created which are only used for mining with the SHA-256 system that Bitcoin uses.

Ethereum's algorithms attempt to make using ASICs difficult, meaning that instead people buy the highest quality gaming GPUs out there instead.

Yes, i think I do now.

Regarding DGB and ZEC- I was just sharing lol - I wasn't whinning or anything-just simply sharing.

So ok now it makes sense.

btw- does this also apply to other coins like ETH n DGB ? because I am reading that apparently smaller cards won't be able to mine ETH because of DAG or whatever- ergo getting harder to mine- now would it drop back down ?


P.S- thank you for taking the time to lay things out

Not really.  Crypto encourages people to get in early, because the price rises when more people join.  When you need to spend it, you spend it.
You made a bad investment.  This isn't related to difficulty and I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here.
You still haven't grasped how difficulty works.  Let me try to explain it simply.

Satoshi is the first miner on the Bitcoin network.  Approximately every ten minutes, a block is mined.  Satoshi receives a reward of 50 BTC for mining a block.

But then people decide that Bitcoin is useful, and the price increases enough for Satoshi to be making a significant profit.  Bob decides that mining is a profitable thing to do, so he joins in with the same amount of computing power as Satoshi.

Now that Bob and Satoshi are both mining with the same amount of computing power, the network has to make sure that there is still a block every ten minutes, to preserve the supply.  So every 2 weeks it finds how much computing power is being dedicated to it, and it changes the difficulty to make sure that there is still a block every ten minutes.  Bob and Satoshi are both entered into a "lottery" with a 50% chance of mining a block.  So on average, they make a profit of 25 BTC every ten minutes.

Then, the price crashes.  Bob is now spending more money in electricity than he receives from mining, so he stops mining.  Later, the difficulty lowers again so that there is still a block every ten minutes, and Satoshi gets his 50 BTC per block again.

Do you get it?

I will try to comment on the sustainability of bitcoin in terms of supply-demand curve.

There is a demand for bitcoin which is growing exponentially since 2011 or 2010. Let's look at the supply, the reserve is already there and mining activities are not that fast. And this causes a shortage between demand and supply. The price will go up eventually.

So in "theory" if one has money- they should simply accumulate instead of exchanging for USD ?

I have few DGB and ZEC as well but lol -since I got them they kept dropping.

Just feels like since difficulty is getting harder and harder -wouldn't there be a time where it'll take months to solve something. Keeping in mind-it is still measured against USD-once it becomes widely accepted things may turn for better I guess.

Difficulty will only increase when there will be more miners, if supply will be really low than price of bitcoin will grow exponentially to cover all the mining cost + some profit for miners while all bitcoin investors will enjoy price ride.

You can even purchase 1 satoshi because even 1 satoshi is transferable in bitcoin.

Some of the poor early investors are now rich and might be some more people who have invested in bitcoin right now will also become millionaire by next 10 years.

The difficulty adjusts every 2 weeks (2016 blocks) based on the amount of mining power being dedicated to the network.  If it rises, so does the difficulty.  If it falls, so does the difficulty.

The point is to keep each block mined approximately every ten minutes, while the block reward is static and it halves every four years.  If the fiat value of the block reward decreases, so does the amount of computing power dedicated to the network (eventually).
Fiat money is exactly the opposite.  The supply is unlimited and a third party has to oversee the transaction, who can be unreliable, unethical, and also ask for high fees.
I've explained how mining works.  The difficulty isn't something that moves upward for no reason.

Hello,


So if I'm to understand this correctly, difficulty is getting harder right? so what if it gets to a point where its just extremely hard to mine and supply gets so tightened that regular users are out of game altogether from mining.

Now -it can only be purchased and very limited quantity? won't that end up becoming same like fiat money? few control the interests of others?

Rich getting richer ? I understand the concept of sharks eating small fish and what not -I also understand that recession and progression are part of business cycle but computing isn't going ahead at a pace where we can continue to mine -so what's the path? just collect and that's it?


TIA