Topic: Soon to be college grad in need of advice- what's the deal with Bitcoin? - page 3. (Read 3002 times)

Instead of paying the loans just buy Bitcoins, then when it goes up you just payoff the loan! If you buy Bitcoins you can be your own boss, getting wealthy is the reward for being smart enough to identify this investment opportunity!!

Okay. Dude, you went to college, right? Put some effort into it, don't be lazy and expect good advice from anyone.

Yes.

It's value as an investment is predicated on it being useful in every day life. However, in practice today, there isn't much you can do with it that you can't do at least as easily with a credit card. For me it's interesting for intellectual and philosophical reasons, and I expect/hope it will eventually be more practical.

Success of a rival crypto-currency. If someone like Google or Amazon decided to support Litecoin and not Bitcoin, for example. That seems unlikely today. Bitcoin has all the momentum; for good or ill it has all the visibility and PR, and it's where the venture capital money seems to be going. However, that could change very quickly.

They can regulate it but not stop it, and generally they have no valid reason to stop it.

Read a lot.

Short answer: yes, stay away. Long answer: don't invest more than you can afford to lose. Bitcoin is high risk. There's a real chance it will crash suddenly and in 6 months will be worth a fraction of its current value. It's not a safe and easy route to make enough to pay off your debt.

Perhaps. Today probably not, but if it takes a few years to pay off your debts, the situation hopefully will have changed by then.

It depends on how you manage your private keys. Most thefts have happened because people let websites manage the keys, and the websites got hacked. Some thefts have happened because people stored their keys themselves, and had bad security - not using encrypted wallets, or having a compromised machine with a keylogger that took their password. Good security is possible, but takes knowledge and effort.

Hello and welcome to the Bitcointalk forum.

Yes it is.

Both. By the time this investment matures, there will be no fiat currencies left to "cash out" to, as everyone will be using cryptocurrency. The video I link below will elaborate on this explanation.

Fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Many people invested in Bitcoin hoping that it'd be a "get rich quick" scheme. It didn't work out, as crypto's widespread adoption is going to take at least a couple of years, maybe as long as five to ten. These people bail out by the thousands at the first downturn, They also bail back in by the tens of thousands at the first upturn. This is why Bitcoin's price has been so unstable. Fear and greed.

No, nation-state governments cannot effectively do either. It's decentralized, just like file-sharing over torrents. They are powerless to stop it unless they destroyed the internet itself (won't happen).

Watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaPgfErzeu0

Good luck, be safe, do your homework about smart security practices, and HAVE FUN!

Bitcoin will be $1 million in a very short time

Join the US armed forces, travel the world, and get paid while your student loan debts are forgiven.  Or buy BTC.  Or both...  Congratulations on your achievement.  May your future hold many fulfilling adventures.

What is your college major?
You can work (part-time?) for BTC, and not need to invest much at first.

Read my friend.
Read!

...or it could be $10,000. You do realize that the very uncertainty
you speak of is, is a necessary ingredient of a speculative
Investment, right?  (If the future value was a certainty,
everyone would jump on it and the opportunity would disappear)

Also you doing a disservice to bitcoin and this conversation
by labeling "all currencies a Ponzi scheme".

That is ridiculous.  Is gold a Ponzi scheme too?

You might as well say the entire economy is a Ponzi scheme
because anything that is ever sold has to be paid for by someone
else. 

Lol, you realize all currencies, including bitcoin is a ponzi scheme right?

Guess where the money came from to pay off early bitcoin investors? You guessed it, new investors.

At least with the dollar, you know what it's going to be worth. It has a steady decline of a few % / year in value (due to inflation). Yes, if you hold a dollar for 50 years, it'll lose almost all it's value, but you KNOW that in advance, it's NOT a surprise. And in 5 years, it'll have 80 - 90% of the purchasing power it does today.

With bitcoin, who the fuck knows what it's going to be worth a year from now. Could be 1000, could be 100.

Responses inline.
That is not a helpful answer.
When someone comes to the forum asking for help, we should help them, not just say there's enough information on the forum. If the thread is deemed useless, it'll be closed.

I've been using bitcoin for three years now, and following it before then.

Today I got a check in the mail for $30k from my credit union, the proceeds from selling a fairly large portion of my bitcoin holdings.  It doesn't get more real than that.


Bitcoin was designed with certain properties that make it very similar to gold and other precious metals.  If you understand why gold is valuable (few do) then you will understand why bitcoin is valuable.  Based on its use as an investment we can expect the price per bitcoin to reach somewhere between $10k to $100k.  I believe that this will happen over the next 20 years.  However I think that the price will actually be higher, because of its non-investment uses.

Useful in your everyday life?  Some people are finding it useful in their everyday lives.  I haven't really had that experience yet.  However, as time goes on more and more infrastructure will be built, making bitcoin more and more useful.

If bitcoin starts to become widely used then the price per bitcoin may climb into the millions.  If this happens it won't be for a long time, at least a couple of generations.  Maybe it will happen before I die, maybe it won't.


Government hostility would suppress its value.  A currency is less valuable if you can't use it without risking prison.  Can it be shut down?  That is debatable and kind of a big topic that would be hard to explain to a newbie.  I feel confident enough in bitcoin that I am keeping the majority of my wealth in bitcoin.

Figure out why gold is valuable (hint: fungibility, scarcity, and convenience).  Then imagine that you could send gold over the internet (very convenient!).


I think that bitcoin won't perform well this year, so if you wait a while you'll probably still be able to get coins fairly cheaply, before we start to hit the $2000+ prices.

That said, the easiest way to get out of debt is to buy $1000 worth of bitcoins and wait a couple of years.


That's entirely up to you.  I keep my bitcoins in cold storage using 2 of 4 paper wallets distributed throughout the country.  The only way that I can lose my coins is if the site custodians collude against me.  I used to have much lower security but no one stole my coins then.

  You can buy plane tickets with bitcoin- good prices on destinia.com

  Bitcoin is not an investment- it is a way to get out of the utter corruption of the current financial swamp. Seriously, just using dollars might go down in history as criminal- just because everyne is doing it doesn't make it right. It is our moral responsibility to avoid supportig the power of elite bankers who are using the labor of the oppressed for extravagant and luxurious life styles.

    You have to patronize bitcoin businesses and help the network grow, and the value of bitcoin will grow with it. You can put off paying your loans- every country in the world has done it.

http://www.amazon.com/This-Time-Different-Centuries-Financial/dp/0691152640

Yes it is the real thing
Treat it as both an investment and a gradual change to your everyday life as it gets more adopted
Value would drop if something superior was created
Governments can regulate it at exchanges but not destroy it without destroying the internet itself as it is decentralized
Best way is through Satoshi Nakamotos Whitepaper.
https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

Debt is something you should pay off but at the highest interest rates first
Investing in Bitcoin can speed up the process possibly of removing your debt if you can hold a time horizon of one year
Pending past results, since we cannot predict the future it is hard to tell but it would be a good time to get in as any now.

Very secure the weakest link in the system is you Human Errors

It's the real thing.  Could have a huge return on investment, but nothing is certain and
The timeframe is unknown and depends on many factors.  Many helpful YouTube videos
Are out there to explain the concept.  You definitely will want to do a bit of research
On security before you invest.  IF you know what you are doing, it is very secure.

Don't risk more than you can afford to lose.


As secure as you make, you make it easy for someone to steal then they will steal it. If you make it harder the better depending on the amount also $5 you probably wouldn't care if it is stolen but if it is $1 million you are going to care if it stolen.

there's enough information on this forum for you to answer all your questions and more without having to make a new thread...

Hi all,

A friend introduced me to Bitcoin the other day and it sparked my interest. Is this the real thing? Should I treat it as more of an investment or will it actually be useful to my everyday life? What would cause Bitcoin to lose much of its value? Can governments actually stop it/regulate it? What's the best way for me to understand the concept?

I'm a soon to be college graduate with about 15k in debt that I need to pay off (should be able to do it within a year), should I stay away from Bitcoin for now? Also, I plan on traveling around the world for a while after my debts are paid off, will Bitcoin be used for this?

Also, how secure is it if someone tried to steal my money?

Thanks!