Topic: Popular myths about Bitcoin (Read 2517 times)

The most popular obe is among new people "bitcoin will make you rich quickly".

I am thinking about adding another widespread myth about the Blockchain wallet, namely, that it is the safest wallet between the web-wallets such as Coinbase and Xapo (as far as it can be called that), but I'm still sitting on the fence, so to speak, and haven't yet made up my mind whether this myth is worth adding to the list...

What do guys/gals think?

4. Blockchain.info is the offical wallet of Bitcoins

Many people believe it just because the wallet's name is Blockchain.

About the BTC illegality. Where I live it's not illegal or legal, the law just doesn't know what to say about it. But some banks here block the transaction when you try to convert BTC into local money on exchange and send the money to it, when they distrust about crypto-currencies money.

Lol, i always found this they mentioned that blockchain is official wallet, well if there such an official wallet it must Bitcoin Core which is created by Satoshi Nakamoto honestly i've never heard satoshi declare that Bitcoin Core is official wallet.

About #1 i believe every country in this world using bitcoin either as a payment method or investment tool, however used bitcoin for transaction is illegal here but police won't arrest you if you hold or trade them like stock.

4. Blockchain.info is the offical wallet of Bitcoins

Many people believe it just because the wallet's name is Blockchain.

About the BTC illegality. Where I live it's not illegal or legal, the law just doesn't know what to say about it. But some banks here block the transaction when you try to convert BTC into local money on exchange and send the money to it, when they distrust about crypto-currencies money.

About #1 "Bitcoin is not recognized in the world, its use is illegal in most countries"

Actually it's a mess, every country have their own rules and most are just shallow words because it's something new. Let's wait for the future to see what will happen.

And we should compare a exchange hack to a bank robbery.
Media say "bitcoin hack", "bitcoin unsafe" like robbing a bank make the USD unsafe...

I think that's a good myth about safety.

Very few countries officially allow the local use of other fiat currencies alongside the ones they issue. You would not find any developed countries in that list for sure. What's peculiar about Bitcoin is that even the most protective governments tend to at least give bitcoin some leeway as they want to fully explore it before committing to any official stance on it. Surely, it may be the case as bitcoin is still too small to make a difference globally and that can change should they start viewing it as a threat

Personally I'd rather accept coin which provably required energy to generate than one which provably required.. no energy.  We'll see what the market says won' t we  

FYI:
Wonder if you will feel the same way , if your electricity rates increases because of Miners.

Reason Proof of Stake will Defeat Proof of Work in the long run.
Proof of Stake is energy efficient, where as Proof of Work is just energy wasteful.

It's actually kind of entertaining when some of these things are brought up, if anything it is more entertaining watching users try to perform the mental gymnastics to somehow justify Bitcoin being worse for the environment compared to a majority of other forms of currency manufacturing or generation. I see nothing wrong with the amount of power consumed by Bitcoin.

Bitcoin miners in Chelan County, Washington will now have to shell out more for the electricity following Public Utility District‘s decision to increase energy tariff from next year.

The increased energy rates are not just applicable to Bitcoin mining centers but to other energy intensive operations including regular data centers and server farms. According to reports, the public discussion and negotiations regarding the new electricity rates extended for over 18 months before reaching this point. Bitcoin business owners in the region took part in these negotiations as any increase in the energy costs may significantly affect their profitability. The effects will be further compounded by the recent halving of Bitcoin rewards and stagnant Bitcoin price.

Bitcoin mining farms are classified as High-Density Load consumers under the ‘Schedule 35‘ provided they consume over 250-kilowatt hours of electricity per square foot of operational floor space in a year, with the requirement not exceeding 5 megawatts at any point in time.

However, reports suggest that none of the representatives of the Bitcoin mining operations in the region were present during the voting process. The results of the voting are said to be unanimous in the favor of new increased tariff which will come into effect on January 1, 2017.

Starting next year, High-Density Load operators will have to pay a monthly charge ranging from $130 to $860 per meter along with additional $5.50 per kilowatt and $0.027 per kilowatt hour as monthly demand charges and energy charges respectively. They will also have to make an upfront payment to cover all the costs incurred by the department to distribute power to the facilities.

According to the Public Utility District commissioners, the new rates were introduced after they noticed a sudden surge in demand for electricity. Upon study, it was discovered that the surge was driven by increased Bitcoin mining activity in the county, which was otherwise known for cheaper energy prices compared to other places in the United States.

According to my calculation, a single Bitcoin transaction uses roughly enough electricity to power 1.57 American households for a day.

Still no one has answered my question: how would you find out the value of 1 Bitcoin if there were no Bitcoin exchanges?

Bitcoin is more like a commodity right now than actual, useful money. Bitcoin is like crude oil. People waste energy and resources to gain crude oil for example, that crude oil has a price attached to it depending on the market. The market speculators regulate the price. 1 barrel of crude oil costs $44.65 at present.
Now, I can go to Amazon and shop around bringing my shopping cart to $44.65 with the shipping included. Can I send them 1 barrel of crude oil because it is the same value just because the market says so and it's 'money'? I guess no.

Now we have Bitcoin. What are people doing to get Bitcoin? They sit at home digitally extracting that commodity racking up electricity bills and breaking down expensive electronics in the process trying to extract Bitcoin from the Blockchain. 1 Bitcoin is valued at $708.8. This is what the market thinks 1 Bitcoin is valued at - or the speculators.

Now, I challenge you to delete all bookmarks to any online Bitcoin exchanges, BTC debit cards, Circle, Coinbase all the other fancy-schmancy websites and tell me what 1 BTC is valued at this Christmas based on your calculations.

Because I know that 1 bottle of water or 1 Subway sandwich will be x amount of fiat at the end of the day but there is no way you would know how much that would cost in BTC if BTC weren't pegged to fiat. Or I could pay for my sandwich with x amount of gold, Facebook credits, CS Go skins, World of Tanks points or any other token but this doesn't make it money just because it has a value. Anything can have a value so what? Just because Satoshi said that Bitcoin will be free digital currency for the people worldwide that doesn't mean that everyone will become rich out of the blue. You still have to buy equipment and 'mine' for it in the virtual world like you would mine for ores or extract petrol in the real world. And no, Bitcoin at the moment is not money.

You can compare consumption of energy of bitcoin network to process of printing FIAT banknotes/minting coins.
Do you think that printing new money is cheap, effortless (compared to Bitcoin) and requires no/less energy or manpower?
Quite the contrary. Additional argument: mining of precious metals - this process is more destructive/harmful to our environment than mining bitcoin will ever be.

Bitcoin Mining Wastes Electricity
A recent report found that Bitcoin’s network hashrate could consume as much power as Denmark by 2020. Other reporters dispute this characterization, pointing out that Bitcoin uses the same electricity as the yearly consumption of 674.5 average American homes, two Amtrak locomotives or a California hydroelectric plant. Do these things waste electricity? It depends on your point of view. The reality is that the use of computing power serves a purpose in Bitcoin, which is securing all of the transactions on the network. If you don’t think Bitcoin is valuable, maybe that’s a waste. If you don’t think fiat currencies are valuable, maybe keeping the lights on at the Federal Reserve is a waste.

Electricity-intensive Bitcoin mining is essentially a way to prove that someone has expended resources in hopes of getting a block reward and transaction fees in return for their efforts. Proof-of-work, as it’s called, acts as a prevention mechanism against Sybil attacks (forged identities) on the Bitcoin network. Waste? You decide.

I guess nowhere on Earth foreign currencies are considered as a legal tender domestically, but this doesn't turn them into fake currencies of sorts. I know that Bitcoin is not a legal tender anywhere across the world and most likely won't become one for the next 50 years (though who knows)...

But this alone is apparently not enough to claim that Bitcoin is not real money, even purely on formal basis

the worst thing that I have heard was about mining bitcoin and it was in the early days that I did not know what bitcoin is and how it works. what I heard was that someone said "mining bitcoin is solving an equation" which was really confusing to me because I kept thinking about how do these equations work!