Topic: Probability of cryptocurrency apocalypse (Read 567 times)

Choosing a place to store your money, you choose the type of criminals who will try to steal your money. Bitcoin will enable small fraudsters to steal huge amounts of money both in physical world and on internet.



if you have lost money as a private person, there is no problem. If bitcoin is scaled up to larger organizations, then the problem is already huge. Money and access to it must be protected and controlled by people, for this we invented banks.



If I were an organization, I would be afraid to use Bitcoin. I would be scared like of fire. I would like to sleep well, knowing that I am not responsible for protection of money. This idea is contrary to libertarianism, but Bitcoin is too harsh and cruel for most people.

Bitcoin is good not as a replacement for the fiat system, but as an ADDITIONAL mechanism to resist banks and censorship.

Considering human error, there is a possibility of losing your private keys but I don't think that the system in place is not going to easily collapse just because of one human factor, maybe if multiple vulnerabilities are spotted and all exploited then there is a possibility of a collapse but I think an apocalypse will be possible because there are people that knows what they do are going to protect it and try to raise it back up.

In fact, I find your thoughts strange to me, how do you say "you cannot just lose a large amount of fiat money - bank will not let this happen"? There are a lot of banks that have declared bankruptcy and people have lost a lot of money there without being able to do anything. You must remember the mortgage crisis in the United States in 2008. Many banks declared bankruptcy and the global economy was on the verge of collapse. The banks were closed and defaulted on their debts until the US government intervened to save the situation.
You can view the mortgage crisis here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_crisis

The virus cannot steal large sums of money from the bank, you cannot just lose a large amount of fiat money - bank will not let this happen. All cash flows are easily tracked and blocked. With the help of a bank, you can dispute fraudulent transactions. Credit cards have additional fraud protection that bitcoin does not. Storing a large amount of bitcoin is like keeping a bag of money at home that weighs nothing and can be sent over the internet. If criminals find out that you have a lot of bitcoins, they will force you to give all the money without any consequences for yourself - Bitcoin is a crime haven. For these reasons, Bitcoin is not scalable to the majority of the population or businesses. Most people will not want or will not be able to ensure the safety of their money.

These accidents can happen, whether for paper money or bitcoin, Bitcoin like any other currency can be lost, stolen or damaged for many reasons, paper money also can be damaged, lost or stolen, so what is the difference?
Banks also can be exposed to viruses or hackers via the Internet, and all money in bank accounts or credit cards can be stolen.
In the end, whether it is paper money, bank cards, or cryptocurrencies, you are the first responsible for protecting your money, at least you can protect bitcoin and cryptocurrencies yourself, but banks or bank cards cannot protect them yourself!

We should not encourage investment in bitcoin, bitcoin should remain a platform for speculative traders and a payment tool for people who need it. No more.

I don't think Bitcoin will become a reserve currency, unless its controlled only by a few people, making it more centralized, and something to represent value rather than having value simply by acting as a currency should. The only way we can really stop this is via adoption, and encouraging investment into Bitcoin, which is something the news outlets, and various organizations are campaigning against.

Not to mention the amount of times I've heard Bitcoin is a bubble, and its going to burst soon. Like traditional currencies, and any technology for that matter doesn't have some sort of events resembling a "bubble". They ignore that bubbles can actually be beneficial for traders, and that other currencies also have bubbles as that's the natural pattern of currencies. However, Bitcoin is more volatile in the amount that it can rise, and drop which is also part of the reason it appeals to speculative traders.

My current fears are related to the fact that the pumping of the media may lead to the fact that the population will carry their money in organizations like Bitwage/Gemini and Bitcoin may become a reserve asset under pressure from the population for natural reasons.
The idea of a deflationary asset is very contagious to people, although I myself have nothing against deflation.
Crypto-extremists are gaining strength. I can only hope that this is just another wave of fraud and bubble pumping.
We must not let this happen.

I believe that there is logic in your words and I am not going to refute your words. If we talk about Bitcoin as the new world money, then you need to understand that in addition to security, there is another very important factor. And this is the adoption of BTC as, say, the reserve currency in the world. That is, it is not we who decide this, but the heads of state. At the moment, I have not yet heard official statements about Bitcoin from world leaders, which means that at the official level, hardly anyone considers BTC as money. As a new asset for saving money, perhaps yes, but as the world's money is unlikely. And there is also a logical explanation for this. The fact is that in the future we are likely to return to currency zones and there is a possibility that there will no longer be a global reserve currency.

We can't blame them, the money that you can get out of bitcoin is pretty promising to the point that we ignore the other benefit that comes with it. Good thing that in this forum, I learned how to take care of the things that is important when it comes to my bitcoin and wallet. Probably other reasons include being an arrogant person that brags about their bitcoin to the point that they unconsciously reveal the important details.

I look at BTC price and the events that are taking place and I have only two options in mind: either a crypto-apocalypse or another bubble burst, but already with the collapse of the world economy.

You must remember that people are greedy idiots.

What you have stated as your arguments is not unique, I have been reading it for 7 years since I became interested in cryptocurrencies - no one can even count how many times someone called Bitcoin a Ponzi scheme, multi level marketing, rat poison squared or in the end say that Bitcoin is dead. I have already stated my arguments, the fact that you refuse to accept anything other than the idea of a crypto apocalypse that you have in your head is a completely different problem.

I can't predict the future, but I'm pretty sure that Bitcoin isn't something that can in any way jeopardize the system you're talking about - it will sooner or later collapse on its own.

We lost the main idea that I wanted to develop about the prospects for cryptocurrencies in general.
This is my fault, I should have explained everything in the first post, and not in the further discussion.

What a bunch of FOD bs.  lol.

The problem is that cryptocurrency is still difficult for its safe operation by ordinary citizens who do not have special knowledge in this area. Because of mistakes, hacker attacks and scams, many will suffer losses and be afraid to work with her.
The OP is right after all that bitcoin will not constantly rise in price. In this regard, it is not difficult to predict what will happen to the price of bitcoin in this case. At the same time, an increase in its price is likely to be negatively assessed over time by most of the leading states, and an increase in its influence is most likely to meet with opposition from states. Therefore, it is better for cryptocurrency to remain in the shadow of conventional currencies simply as an alternative means of payment.

And what about bank servers? They can also be damaged, destroyed in a fire, flooded, hacked, virused.
 
Long ago most documentation was stored in paper form. My father had some job documents held in a government archive and they lost them in a flood and as a result lost a proof that he had a pension fund.

How about that? You think you're safe because a government institution holds your money?

I agreed with what you said except there's no chance of getting the fund stolen back because there's a chance of getting the fund if the fund back in some case when the attackers make some mistakes that link is anonymity online but it requires multiple steps though.

If Bitcoin is easy, anonymous and safe as you believe, why would people with large balance experience paranoia as you said if the mistake is not from Bitcoin but from their end?
Aside from that, Bitcoin cant destroy banks or the economy but to compliment it. It some government and banks that see it as a threat just like they first did when Google was introduced.


This is the reason why people are advised to always check the review and community opinion about Bitcoin client before using it but if the Bitcoin client is recommended and verify when downloading there no cause for alarm. The only left is not to visit the untrusted site or download or open a link from an untrusted source.

Check the hash is the thing some people ignore but every APP integrated on Github has it source code included for community review.


Yes, if avoid the human error which may make the hardware vulnerable to attack.

Yes but those vulnerabilities will only entice the newbies and the last time I check the crypto community also develop an innovative wallet at some point to ensure crypto funds are safe.

Everything you said is the same if you were holding fiat currency as well. Let me tell you how.


This is the same with fiat since the top billionaires also hold large amount of money. But that doesn't change anything because money gets printed almost every year.


People get tortured for fiat money as well. People get kidnapped, robbed, blackmailed etc... for money and there's no stopping to that.


There have been many cases where the banks have gone bankrupt eating up people's money.
In such cases your money is gone anyway. There have been many cases of online fraud leading to money getting debited from their bank accounts.

Moral of the story : There's no full proof method to stay safe. All you can do is try your best to keep away from such attacks and prevent it from happening by adopting good security measures. Bitcoin makes it easier since YOU are the one holding your money. If you don't leave any hole from your end then there's very little chance of your money getting vanished.

Every investment has risks and so thus Bitcoin. It can go to zero if all holders dump their holdings, its like imagining on how a person will die but the question is how? There are many factors that could lead Bitcoin to its death , its not invincible after all its either a machine or human could be the catalyst to its downfall.

I have not read anything, everything I write is exclusively my speculation from my fevered imagination. What is your argument?

Op is right that Bitcoin is not risk-free. But nothing is. Fiat has tons of risks, for instance. Since fiat is not backed up by anything but authority, it can be overprinted and that leads to hyperinflation. Even without hyperinflation there's steady devaluation of fiat which is sometimes referred to as a hidden tax. Apart from this, keeping your money in a bank means basically letting the bank do whatever they please with the actual money and hope that they'd allow you to use what you gave them when you need it (which is usually true if everything is fine, but if a crisis is underway or if you're a subject of a criminal investigation, you can suddenly and painfully be reminded that you're not in control of this money). If you're keeping money in cash, you might be robbed or the money might be destroyed by water or fire, for instance.
Bitcoin might keep going up, or it might eventually stabilize. These options don't prevent it from being used as money, I believe.
As for the concerns about the safety of BTC, I'm pretty sure that if there were any backdoors or something like that, the money would have already been stolen.

You talk about Bitcoin as some kind of infection that will infect people who are scared or greedy, but you completely ignore that the average Joe has no idea what Bitcoin really is or how to buy it. What you read in crypto related news or on this forum is only a small part of human reality, and I really don't see the point in comparing it to a financial pandemic that will infect the whole world.

I think you’re too influenced by some apocalyptic movies, and maybe you could write a screenplay for one such movie - instead of a virus let the main culprit be Bitcoin

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As I already wrote, you are obviously under the influence of garbage served by some obscure sites - what you are writing here now is already so worn out that it no longer makes sense. Stop reading garbage like this -> Bitcoin mining rigs now LOSING money daily as the Bitcoin Ponzi scheme continues to unravel

If you are right, then you must remember that the cost of supporting the work of bitcoin is already about 50 million dollars per day, plus a lot of people who take money from the coin. Bitcoin turns out to live only at the expense of new arrivals. This is more suitable for a ponzi scheme, and not just some kind of anonymous payment system. There must be a logical end.

No I don't think you're right about assumptions here. I agree infinitely up and down are two equal possibilities, but to me the more likely case is something in between.

Firstly, either probability even if it does happen, won't be in this life. We'll all be dead then.

Secondly, a virus killing all bitcoin? Even if possible, Bitcoin will resurrect. And as you said, even worse risk for banks etc.

Finally on security? 100% confidence, and much less so in any other alternative.

Human fear and greed can force all the last savings to be carried in bitcoin, enough for one large country to become infected, all the rest will fall after it.
Printing new dollars can be a catalyst. Bitcoin could start to amplify the inflationary process on its own.

In some of the most optimistic calculations, Bitcoin is used by perhaps about 2% of the world's population, which would amount to just under 160 million people in the world - slightly more than the total population of Germany and France. What you imagine will probably never happen, because Bitcoin is just an alternative, and it's too complicated for the average person today, as it will be in 10 years in the future.


The example of Germany and Japan shows that it should not be integrated into a system to the extent that it threatens it, peaceful coexistence is completely normal and possible. Fiat will not disappear, and it is foolish to even think in the direction of replacing it with BTC - most countries will issue their CBDCs anyway.

Everyone takes a risk, and if you think Bitcoin has no future just don't have anything to do with it - your government is forcing you to use the national currency, it's not a matter of choice - on the other hand no one is forcing you to use Bitcoin or any other altcoin.

If Bitcoin continues to integrate into society, then the collapse of governments and the fiat system is inevitable, because there will be no economic incentive to keep money outside of Bitcoin.

Every government functions differently. It should be sufficient for them to engage someone to audit it regularly. If anything, SolarWinds just proves how easy it is to do something like this, if it gets to Bitcoin.

Having government adopting Bitcoin is an unrealistic expectation, defeats the purpose of fiat in an economy and probably isn't desirable given that capital flows can't be controlled any longer. Technological barrier and security is honestly not their main concern. Bitcoin can survive in its current stage, you can't create vulnerabilities out of thin air; if you can sufficiently minimize the attack vectors, then there wouldn't be a big issue.

Having written this, I probably want to explain not the technical, but the political and economic problem of bitcoin.
Bitcoin cannot be integrated into the existing centralized government system because governments cannot rely on third-party hardware and software, and people in government cannot trust each other.
Bitcoin can only survive in an anarchic environment or die.
Bitcoin can create a society in which no centralized structures can emerge, because no one can trust anyone.

I'm almost certain that most people would be answering no for the most parts. Reading the source codes line by line is not feasible; Windows is not open source and reading the codes of any Linux distribution is tedious to say the least. If you are that paranoid, then it would be difficult for you to feel safe.

That is unfortunately how Bitcoin actually works and the truth is that you can probably never be fully secure. The only thing that most people can do is to try to reduce the attack vectors and its possible surfaces; cold wallets isolates itself and preventing communication to the outside world. Generating sufficient entropy yourself puts RNG problems out of the equation, though you'll have to trust that the process to convert it to a private key isn't compromised.

If you are actually that paranoid, then you can probably take some time trying to learn and read it. Not going to comment on how many people would actually do this, but it is a way to eliminate most doubts.

Taking into accounts some recent events a think another possible apocalypse could be caused by poisoing the blockchain with
dirty addresses that would lead to over ligitation that would spiral price to 2010 levels.

Altcoins are only a development of technology, but they cannot be used to store funds, because there is a high probability that they are economically compromised

Bitcoin is been introduce on that way that's why many people think about bitcoin is investment if they join it and I'm not surprise about people threating it since imagine how volatile the market is so other people cannot see the true potential since its been covered by thinking that they might earn if bitcoin pumps crazily. On other hand the clumsiness is a not surprisingly mistake since all of us encounter that issues so if your friend doesn't know how to secure their assets well best to educate them so that they know what are the important things to do and how to avoid possible losses for having bad security on their accounts.

No my friend... Alt coins are a natural extension of this technology. You should know all other technologies gets ripped off ...after the patent expire or when it is Open source like this. We (Bitcoin supporters) should embrace Alt coins that might experiment with new ideas and new concepts that might be added to Bitcoin to strengthen it. 

I see Alt coins as the breeding ground for new innovation that might some day improve Bitcoin's code. Let them copy the code and change it all they want, we can use that to our advantage.    (Loads of them fail and some are pump n dump coins... but they never survive long, before they are exposed.) 

My paranoid fears come from the fact that bitcoin has already conquered the whole world and has become the main unit of value. It is necessary to consider what I am writing from this angle.

At the moment, I do not understand how bitcoin can be forever in an intermediate state as it is now. He will either win everyone or lose completely.

You need to understand that bitcoin is not just the first cryptocurrency, it is a history of the redistribution of money between people for more than 10 years. You cannot be sure of the economic security of any cryptocurrency created after Bitcoin. I would consider any other cryptocurrency as a scam.

Let's look at this from another angle to give this discussion a new perspective :

Do you trust Banks? (Given their history and how they are still manipulated by governments and still used for money laundering and clients pc's and phones hacked and syndicate infiltration in Banks... is this really more secure than Bitcoin?)

Satoshi Nakamoto has developed this to give people a second alternative to Banks (traditional system) .... So you have the choice if you want to take more control and if you want an alternative when the Banks eventually fail.

I have lost money with Credit card fraud and when a Bank was closed years back, due to Bankruptcy and lots of corruption inside the Banking group.  

What do you do when the Banks close and block the ATM's? (Examples : Greece / Zimbabwe .....) 

The arguement is weak when it comes to security so there is no need to elaborate how secure BTC is. And about the apocalypse of crypto is not likely to happen after 10 years of its success, it even beats the Visa and Mastercard's cap combined so there is no question that cryptocurrency is winning the game already. And to add up for its success the institutions right now are up to hedge using BTC too which you could conclude right now that the probability of cryptocurrency collapse is close to zero.

I agree. Bitcoin is definitely progressive these past few years. The problem is that the people always look on th side of earning it and not on the side of having a good security. I also have some friends who are so clumsy and careless to their belongingness like the seed phrase or wallet code. I told them to stick and be vigilant to their wallet. But they oftenly hand it to anyone just like a piece of paper. And I told them not to bring it and just put it in the safe place in their house. I don't know what happen to their account but I'm sure that is it now not in good place.

Why blame bitcoin's security, it is already safe, the real problem is the people, putting your personal info and your wallets on websites you don't even trust is a failing on the person, no matter how secure a thing is if the person handling it is incompetent or careless, a breach is going to happen. The solution is to make people learn the idea of responsibility and being safe online.

OP, the good script for yet another disaster movie. But you forget that bitcoin carries with it the idea of ​​freedom. And accordingly, those who invest their capital in it are not subjected to any kind of violence to do so. Investing is a voluntary affair of every person who has believed in bitcoin.
All those moments, how we relate to our finances, apply only to those who and how owns them. We are responsible, and we are our banks. Naturally, someone who trusts large amounts of bitcoins should have good knowledge to keep everything without prejudice to themselves, as well as have a good mental state so as not to be constantly distracted by paranoid questions like your questions.

I don't think fiat can completely be wiped out, but this is all illusional discussions, setting up examples of possible scenarios that could happen with the fast growing sector.  Bitcoin theft just like every other currencies happens and will continue to happen. It is all left for the user who wishes to save Bitcoin as stock for a long time to learn tactics on how to outsmart the potential fraudster by using custodian wallets maybe. Security is a very important aspect of Bitcoin that doesn't need to be taken lightly, exposing your private keys to a non trusted exchange already puts you in risk of hack as the OP has suggested.

Not at all. Nothing is infinite and there are a lot of directions bitcoin can go but the most possible one is stability of its value (not the price). For example at some point you will be able to pay something like 1000 satoshi for a cup of coffee and that won't change even if 1000 satoshi continues rising in price against failing fiat currencies.

Not all the money is kept in one place, specially when we are talking about bitcoin when speaking of "money". Not to mention that with bitcoin there is no need for banks anymore and your "money" is stored in your own pocket. If you lose it you lose it as an individual not affecting anybody else.

Everything is open source and verifiable, and also reproducible meaning everyone anywhere in the world that builds the same code comes up with the same hash.

Again everything is open source from the code to the compiler. And if your hardware has any backdoors you have more serious things to worry about than just your bitcoins. It will affect the current banking system too.

The only way that I can think of that will cause a cryptocurrency apocalypse is when we are dependent solely on technology for our transactions, fiat will be a thing of the past and every payment is all digital, and when that happens, the only apocalypse that will happen is when there is a global EMP that will wipeout all the electronics in the world, with no computers for back ups, digital money will become useless but that too will not likely happen because electronics protection is definitely going to be innovated along with other things.

the security risk depends on the user unlike with bank system right now which everyone's funds lie in their hands. restoring with private keys solves everything.
the apocalypse of cryptocurrency should have happened a long time ago if it's really meant to but look at how far crypto had gone right now. the moment BTC goes down, there will hundreds if not thousands of people and institutions going to buy it all up again.  whether it becomes a currency reserve or not Bitcoin will be used. there will be corrections which we got used to it, the countries adopting BTC got used to it.

Approval of bitcoin as a commodity is the same as recognizing a reserve currency, everyone will run to buy bitcoin and fiat will depreciate in a matter of years. I see salvation from hackers only in offline use, offline generation of a wallet is required, an offline terminal to generate a signed transaction for online transfer. I see another problem, in addition to the human factor: the more backups of the private key in different places you make, the lower the likelihood of loss, but the higher the likelihood of theft.

To become a reserve currency will need a long time because I do not think that the government will easily approve bitcoin to be their currency. The government may approve bitcoin as a commodity like stock and else, but they need to research more or discuss with other instancies of using bitcoin as their currency.

As a regular user who uses bitcoin now, I only use bitcoin to trade, which is buy and sell, make a profit, and send the profit to my bank account. That is more complex if we think about the whole thing that might happen to bitcoin because that is out of our expectations, and even if that is happening in the future, I am not sure we still alive.

What you are saying can happen in the future, but we as a user need to take care and responsibility to our bitcoin, including what we used. It is like we save the money in the bank, and the bank will guard the money and responsible for the money. But this time, because bitcoin is a self-manage thing, that will be our responsibility to guarding, take care of, and know how to use it properly, so we do not give a chance for the thief or other bad people who want to steal our bitcoin. Even if the hacker tries to hack our wallet or our OS or anything we use, we do not have to worry as long as we can take care of what we have.

It is enough if we can use the benefit of bitcoin without thinking about the thing that maybe happen if we use it in the wrong way. Let the expert solve that, and we as a user only need to use it carefully. That is what I think of a regular user.

One bad guy with one open hole somewhere is enough to lose all money 

What is idea of Bitcoin? A huge number of people will lose unimaginable amount of money there if it will not go up infinitely. I would stay away from Bitcoin if it has no serious goals to take over the world.

Yes, I understand how. But this will only help me, and does not protect against the human factor if an organization uses bitcoin.


In some cases, it is possible if the money was stolen by a complete idiot.

Those are valid questions, or so they appear to me. By simply raising those questions, you must already be provoking reasonable doubt among a lot of people. At the end of the day, the question is yours to answer, will you, then, get into Bitcoin or not? If you say you will, then welcome and be aware that there are existing risks in the world of Bitcoin, as there are in fiat. If you say you don't, then you are completely free to do so, which you simply cannot do with fiat.

Yes, there must be a hole, or even holes, somewhere, but if the bad guy can find it, the good guy also can. In terms of security, it is always a race between the good guy and the bad guy.


I simply don't subscribe to this.


"then this world would be a gasser."- Louis Armstrong to you.


Whatever hackers use doesn't matter. The point is that stealing applies to both of them.


You can if you really want to.


To a certain extent, it is a myth that Bitcoin cannot be seized or confiscated or recovered.

This is true, as long as I work with bitcoin as an individual, there is no problem. I'm talking about what will happen if Bitcoin continues to grow and gain official status and truly becomes reserve currency.

I think you are confusing two different realities, people will lose their coins? Yes this has happened many times already and the price keeps going up, you are your own bank so bitcoin requires people to learn to keep backups, this is just good practice and it has been taught as long as computers have existed, equipment fails, people forget their passwords, it happens, get a backup, the chances of getting hacked are way smaller than the chances of losing your coins by yourself or giving your coins willingly to scammer.

The bank is a guarantee of the safety of funds under the responsibility of the bank in any case. This is especially true if the money is very large, there will always be a responsible party to which claims can be made. Money from the banking system cannot leak into the void and can easily be returned and moved, no matter what kind of protection system there is. We're not talking about collapsed banks or fraud.

I agree that the bank is censorship, I do not like censorship too, I just state the facts.

But accidental theft or loss of bitcoins will turn into a complete apocalypse for people or organizations. People will be afraid of each other and not trust each other. How will it work if the slightest mistake or hack leads to financial death?

Bitcoin theft or any theft is indeed punishable under law. Due to the nature of Bitcoin, it can sometimes be difficult to prove that there's been a theft in the first place, and I'll admit that there's definitely complexity involved when reporting Bitcoin theft.

As for banks blocking transactions, this is somewhat true. They do indeed have fraud protection, and therefore are actively looking for suspicious activity. However, if missed, and they do indeed get missed once the transaction has been sent, and the money has been removed you'll find it rather hard to get that money back. There's been evidence of banks missing transactions, and being fooled multiple times in history. In fact, its quite a common saying within the IT industry that large organizations, and banking systems generally have poor security protocols. There's several books that have gone into detail of various high profile companies having absolutely shocking security practices. However, yeah I can acknowledge that having a safety net in terms of fraud prevention is something that people rely on these days, and will see as a benefit. However, there's clear downsides to this too, mainly convenience or "censorship". For example, your bank has the right to deny a transaction if they deem it against their policies. They can also, suspend your banking account for the same reasons. There's been various reports over the years of banks closing peoples accounts for purchasing Bitcoin as an example.

You can't send offline, this is true. However, there is ways around this if you want to have the upmost security. Its advisable to have "cold storage" which you intend to hold for a long time, secured in a offline environment. While, also having a hot wallet which houses significantly smaller amounts of Bitcoin, but Bitcoin that you intend on accessing regularly. There is ways to mitigate some of the issues you might face though, using a hardware wallet, or securing your system. If you are using cold storage for larger amounts, and another "hot wallet" for smaller amounts then you might argue that this is better practice than having a bank account which stores all of your money, which you access through a online portal.

Github or any website for that matter can be falsified as you put it. Government websites have previously been hacked, and have been falsified. I have no doubt that banks are targeted too,

I do understand your concerns, there are clear downsides to being responsible for your money, mainly being related to the lack of a safety net if something goes wrong. However, there are clear upsides to it, and if you approach Bitcoin the right way, you can argue that its more secure than any banking system in the world. You can make Bitcoin as secure as you want. From a code point of view, its been tried, and tested, and is in active development. However, for someone who doesn't particularly like to rely on third parties, controlling your money right down to the very way its stored appeals to me. Also, the freedom to move your money when you want without having to deal with additional third party policies.

Satoshi Nakamoto created money that does not require trust in each other, but requires trust in tens of thousands of software, hardware and online sources and added HUGE motivation to hackers and governments to infect everything.

I don't say about vulnerabilities in Bitcoin, I mean other software.

Banks control centralized money, they can very easy find and return them! They can block transactions and do very much things to keep your money safe and find thefts. Hacker cannot steal 10millions dollars from your bank account using a virus, but 10millions bitcoins - easy.

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But you cannot send it offline.


Github can be hacked or falsified by the government in theory.

Bitcoin transactions are irrevocable, you cannot complain to the bank or the police. They can steal absolutely any amount of money without consequences, this will greatly motivate hackers

Are you 100% confident in the security of your banking system? Theoretically, the principles are the same. Bitcoin is in active development, and is open source meaning that if a vulnerability is detected, then it should hopefully be patched quickly. Bitcoin has in the past had several vulnerabilities of various degrees, all of which it has recovered from. There was basically a vulnerability in the early days which allowed creating new coins,


To a degree, yes. There's various vulnerabilities found in all operating systems somewhat regularly, just like any other piece of software. Your phone has been vulnerable , and so has the software you are using on this very forum. The point is, and this is an extension to your first question; there is no avoiding vulnerabilities in software, and therefore not only is Bitcoin under threat from that, but also the operating system you use to login to all your accounts, including your banking account if you use online banking. Also, even if you don't use online banking personally, your bank likely uses the same operating systems that we can get our hands on, probably some distribution of Linux. Even if its a custom coded operating system, it can likely be attacked the very same way as any operating system available to consumers.

its also worth mentioning that, you can actually make a Bitcoin wallet via various different methods, some of which don't require being online which significantly reduces the chances of malicious attacks, unless the attacker has physical access to your device.

Depends on binaries you are specifically talking about. However, generally if the code is open source then you can verify it, or get someone else to verify it for you.

Yes, this is including, but not limited to the operating system I use.

No, it guarantees nothing, Although, the chances of a malicious program being open source, is significantly less so than it being closed source. Basically, the code can be verified, but lets be honest not all of us understand that specific language or we don't have the time since programs can literally be hundreds of thousands lines of code, and therefore to an extent you are relying on a collective effort to verify that the code is clean, and safe. Generally, you can vet the code in specific areas, for example what happens when you enter the private key, is it logged anywhere or sent to someone's email address etc.

Not to mention, there are dedicated organizations out there in verifying open source content. Yeah, you are again relying on another third party, but without actually having the time, and knowledge yourself you are pretty much limited to giving some sort of trust to the collective. However, banks don't have this option, and you must entirely put your trust in them to manage your money, invest your money, and to keep patching any vulnerabilities that they find.

There is one exception to this, and that is generally the more developed countries tend to have a protection limit, that if the bank goes bust for example, they will reimburse a set amount. I think in the UK its 85k. You of course, don't have this in Bitcoin, but other than that in every other sense, traditional currencies are just as susceptible to attacks than Bitcoin. You could even argue more so, since there's physical location that can be attacked not just a digital one.

This is literally true for everything.  The majority of the people in the world are already using a system which relies on computers, and are therefore have the same concerns. The majority of people now use online banking, not only that they are using it on phones, that they install apps on which have access to varying amounts of information, and they browse on that same phone, they do everything on that phone. When you own Bitcoin, you are basically removing the third party element, so you are more inclined to protect your assets. Therefore, you generally aren't going to be storing your main wallet, on a live machine. At least, it isn't recommended.

Hackers will always be here no matter what. Trying to screw people using sophisticated softwares. Not only in crypto but even in fiat systems. We have had a lot of hacks already, and recently, DeFi hacks or exchange hacks. And yet, bitcoin is still standing and keep on growing each day. So right now, I don't see that crypto will see its end despite of these attacks.

Bitcoin price can only move in one direction, infinitely up or infinitely down. Most people keep him because they believe in his future and there are more and more people like him, so it goes up. I'm talking about what will happen if their faith becomes reality.
Bitcoin can remain for a long time purely as a speculative instrument without serious use, then many people will eventually lose faith and the price will fall to zero.

Bitcoin's price has already been high enough to attract hackers, because of potential of stealing millions of dollars and anonymously converting them to fiat. MTGox happened 7 years ago. The fact that Bitcoin didn't die because of this and continues to become stronger just disproves your argument that Bitcoin will disappear because of hackers.

Confident users will keep storing Bitcoin by themselves, others will use trusted custodians.

I suspect I have an argument for why bitcoin will die. Please challenge my suspicions.  

I think many here understand that bitcoin can only have two directions: infinitely up or infinitely down.
If infinitely up, then Bitcoin will become a reserve currency and will be used in banks and at the state level. Some people will keep large amounts of bitcoin in their wallets.

Do people understand that when working with bitcoin there is every chance of losing ALL money through negligence or because of a virus. Losing all your money is INCREDIBLY simple! There will be absolutely NO chance to get them back!
It can kill peoples, destroy banks or economy of entire states.
I don’t even want to say that people with large balances will experience the wildest paranoia. They may be physically tortured to gain access, because it's easy, anonymous and safe


Are you absolutely confident in the security of bitcoin client that you use? Are you absolutely sure in the security of OS that you use for the bitcoin client?
Are you always confident that the binaries you download do not contain a backdoor?
Are you absolutely confident that when you download a repository from a github, you download the original code? Do you check the hash every time?
Are you absolutely confident that open source guarantees no backdoors inside? You probably read it all after downloading from github?
Are you absolutely confident re that your compiler does not have a backdoor built in to embed a backdoor? Are you confident that the compiler that built your compiler does not have a built-in backdoor?
Are you absolutely confident in your hardware?

One hole anywhere is enough to lose all your money. You cannot check everything. Organizations that will use cryptocurrencies will not be able to verify everything. Bitcoins are very easy to steal due to the human factor.

If bitcoin becomes widespread there will be a great interest in finding and creating such vulnerabilities