Topic: The reason that keeps me from investing in bitcoin - page 14. (Read 15436 times)

Once upon a time there was a company called Napster...and Yahoo...Friendster...Myspace...etc.

Everyone thought these companies were godly.  I wonder how many on this forum were even teenagers during the heyday of these former unstoppable untouchables...

The only investment with any kind of assurance of long-term value is probably land.  After all, other than reclamation and volcanic activity, no one is making more land.  Banks are not safe at all and any student of history knows this.  But BTC is definitely not something that someone can trust with respect to getting their money back someday.  It could literally go from its current value to nothing in a matter of hours or even minutes.  Like I said above, the higher it climbs and the faster it does so drives me further away from it, even if it still is fascinating.  Normal investments have a REASON for their rise or fall.  As it stands right now, BTC is the epitome of irrational exuberance.

I'd like to see one person give me one good reason BTC climbed so much in the past 24 hours.  If they cannot, all those who cannot should ask themselves whether or not they are falling into a trap where their getting burned is part of a plan to make an "example" out of those who think that they can break free from the fiat paradigm.  Don't doubt for one second that central banks don't have the ability to pump and dump BTC to bring the pain to those that do not know their history.

Well, investing in bitcoin is one of the option if you want to much income and if you invest in cryptocurrency you can assure that your money will come back. In addition to that,  many people already invest in bitcoin or in cryptocurrency because they also see the great potential to become world currency.

I don't buy bitcoin, but I earn bitcoin for signature campaign that I joined in then when the bounty gave as payment to my job to their campaign of course I will trade the coin then automatically converted to bitcoin balance. So its a good opportunity for me as well.

As was discussed immediately above, fees will determine long-term viability and ultimately longevity of BTC as an asset, in and of itself.  For BTC to maintain its position as leader and otherwise "market maker", especially as a currency, it needs to be considered as a practical means of exchange by the masses.  If it does not do this, other cryptos could find a way to bridge this gap and render BTC worthless in a matter of days, if not hours, of a major announcement or deal with an intermediary like a credit card company.  If speculation is all that fuels this price rise in BTC, it will come to a screeching halt sooner rather than later.  If the masses adopt it due to negligible or "invisible" fees, the sky is the limit.  Right now this is not happening and anyone speculating (probably 99% of this forum) might want to rethink this "minor" concern as something that is probably the biggest concern both now and until the point in time that BTC or an altcoin bridges the gap that truly takes it mainstream.

Why are you concerned about the fees if you are investing in bitcoin just to get some profit out of it? You are saying that you don't need the money for next 2 to 3 years, and i wonder why would you do any transactions with your bitcoins. You should just keep it idle in your wallet and let the price grow, and after 2-3 years, you may have double from what you have today.
By the way, the fees you have mentioned are not mandatory, but if you want your transaction to get in a block quite earlier then you have to pay more fees, but if you are not in hurry, you can send it with even 0.0001 which is not more than $0.4 approximately.

Totally agree with you. Before when bitcoin was this big and had this much of a price, people would use bitcoin to pay for anything they could, since it was so fast, safe and had like transaction fees of 10 cents.

The issue we are facing here is, we all want bitcoin to rise in price, so we can be rich, but if it does rise in price, who would be able to pay a 10 dollar transaction fee for a 200 dollar transaction, except us, who are rich. We have to lose something in order to grow.

That is a good point, I can imagine a world with Visa bitcoin debit cards. Good thinking!

In my experience it has been transaction fees that keep those with the means/cash on hand to not even want to speculate on it...myself included (unless the price falls really soon and enough to justify a long position).  They cannot, as I cannot, wrap their minds around it being of any use to the average person, especially in the majority of the non-Western world where a $2-3 transaction fee can represent anywhere between a day to 1/4 of a days wages.  Imagine the hundreds of millions of Chinese that make about $12-15 per day when faced with even a $1 transaction fee.  It's just not practical.  Even most people in the West would opt for other means of payment rather than being assessed with a fee on top of the taxes that they are already paying (and are probably not happy about, especially with the 12-20% VATs out there).  The ONLY way I see BTC becoming competitive on a masses scale is if the merchant absorbs the fee.  Merchants will do this if only if they believe that it will increase their sales.  But the problem is that margins are so razor thin in some industries, like restaurants, that adding an additional 1-2% on top of 3-4% Visa/Mastercard fees will be a deal breaker.  The crypto that wins this race will get a company like Visa to absorb the cost so that neither the customer nor the merchant feels the pain of the additional fee.  So you're right...this is a huge hurdle...probably the biggest of all....and a major deal between a cryto and a credit card company will make or break pretty much everyone currently in this sphere IMO.

This is fairly basic question when talking about Bitcoin. Being anonymous is always useful, especially if you like to participate in illegal activities, but you forgot about something. Cash is still super anonymous since it can't be caught online, unless that cash has an online presence.

Say I wanted to buy something, I would arrange a chat with someone with the instructions: Meet me here and this time. I would then drop off my money and then receive my goods.

Other cryptos also have anonymity, and some even better than bitcoin.

I totally agree with what you just said there and will add some points of my own.
If bitcoin does drop to say 500-600, firstly I have lost a bunch of money, but there will be good in it. Right not transaction fees are the biggest reason that prevents Bitcoin from going mainstream, would you agree? If bitcoin did drop that low I wouldn't mind paying 10 cents in fees for a 10 dollar meal.

Maybe if Bitcoin forks again or the price drops again, we will be able to make Bitcoin mainstream.

Even if the price of BTC crashes back down to $500-600 (regardless of it remaining the most valuable crypto per coin) I think that this will put a chilling effect on its specific place in the market where it trades in that range for a long period of time, just like the first time it was above $1000.  The fanatics will insist that it will come back...but I think the party will be over should this come to pass.  I believe that the smart money will cash out should it fall below what I said in my first post above and look for alternatives.  I believe that everyone here is correct on most of what they are saying...just that I think that the tortoise that wins this race will be not be the hare on which most are placing their bets.

I think those fees are high because not a lot of people knew about bitcoin also, those fees will help them build up and support bitcoin for the future. If bitcoin will be mainstream surely the fees will go down especially if they don't do that many people will not use bitcoin but as for now bitcoin is in the process of improving and upgrading. Its easy to say that bitcoin will not be the future and has still many flows, Yes this is true but those fees are the purpose to improve them for the better future. I keep investing in bitcoin also because I can see the potential of bitcoin in the future and you can still earn bitcoin without investing real money if you did your research you know that you can earn bitcoin in different ways.

How is being anonymous unique to BTC?  There are other cryptos out there that are arguably superior when it comes to anonymity...I'll assume that someone that understands cryptos knows their specific names so I won't say them here, at least the ones I know for the sake of neutrality.

Also what makes BTC a "strong currency"?  BTC is definitely a fascinating instrument for (mostly) upside speculation but probably less than 5% of those who own BTC actually use it as a currency.  This is definitely not a good thing.

Finally, what makes BTC a digital asset that is any different in its value relative to Dollars?  Most Dollars exist in digital form and even BTC bases its value on the Dollar...with the aside that it can be converted to a local currency of choice.  As it stands, if all fiat currencies become worthless BTC becomes equally worthless since it is not backed by anything tangible (real).

All I'm saying here is that there are many flaws in BTC that I would love to see fixed.  It is not the panacea that you describe here...or at least your arguments feel incomplete.

Yes, that is a very nice breakdown of what I said and I do agree with you. Tulip-mania (For people who don't know, he is referring to the first major financial bubble) seems to be present with Bitcoin and will only keep on being present unless Bitcoin establishes itself as a mainstream currency, useable in real life and digital situations. There are already project, for example cryptopay, which makes this a reality, but to we need to make Bitcoin itself, with no other outliers, useable in real life situations. Right now it is just too hard.

Don't you think that the Bitcoin core or external Bitcoin companies are willing to solve the issue of high fees? They use Bitcoin too and since they are early adopters, they have much more holdings than us, so have faith. The high fees issue will be resolved soon and even after the fork, I am experiencing less fees for my transactions (not all the time but still in almost 40%-60% cases). In next few years, we will have faster confirmation time and lesser fees. If you don't have trust in Bitcoin then don't invest but if you believe that it will change the financial world but there is a little problem and thus if you are not investing then it is your mistake.

Definitely bitcoin has come to a very strong currency as of this time and it has it's own independent value in terms of it's price value. One of the best reason why we invest for this currency,  because you remain anonymous to the real world of physical money; you now have the digital assets which you can use for your future financial growth.

I can agree with this phrase for the most part.  Everything else, specific to BTC lost me.  What makes you so certain that all of these people will take the "Pepsi challenge" and it will go as you predict?  What is it about Bitcoin that makes it impossible or improbable for other altcoins, especially those currently in development by governments, to not do the same thing (or better) than is currently done by Bitcoin and become the dominant cryptocurrency or currencies?

Yep bitcoins will be adopted by all of peoples around the world, corporations, comunities, the Banks and the government
at least they will adopt technology behind of blockchain, bitcoins will protect our whealty from inflation.
Bitcoins will be new digital gold, new currency, new asset can be controled by the owner without third party
so we must invest in bitcoins.

This is where I believe that there is a window of time of 2-3 years (but probably less than 2 years) where BTC must establish itself as a mainstream currency of the masses that can be traded on FOREX and justify the loftiest of predictions on its future price.  If this doesn't happen in this timeframe, another altcoin (probably government backed...maybe initially backed by gold?) will emerge that will be accepted by the mainstream and FOREX markets.  That's actually another point of debate that people miss...just because BTC was around for years already doesn't necessarily mean that it will last for the same amount of time in the future going forward.  Of the 1000 or altcoins out there I predict that the majority will disappear much like companies in the dot-bomb era.  As of now it will be a race forward to see which currencies do the right things at the right times that makes them survive and go to the next level.  As much as people want to believe the contrary, BTC is not Coca-Cola when it comes to brand recognition.  Relatively speaking they are not even in the same Universe.

From where I'm sitting, this is where the idea of Tulip-mania creeps in.  In the case of cryptos, things happen so fast and due to their completely virtual valuation, things could be uglier than when Tulip bulbs went from a value worth an estate...to whatever tulip bulbs have sold for over time.  This idea of "buy and hold for years" echoed on this forum like gospel shows how little so many understand about investing and valuation of their investment.  And I'd bet that most of these people claim to be experts in BTC and other altcoins.  Those are the first people who will panic in a very bad way.

I guess so, even though segwit lowered cost quite a lot, I don't think that bitcoin is at a point where it can become mainstream. With electricity costs being super high where I live, mining is not efficient at all.

I think that the mining industry in bitcoin will soon be monopolised by China and other places where  electricity is super cheap. The vision of bitcoin was meant to be what you stated, for sure, but bitcoin has been transformed into something else.