Topic: What you need to understand about Bitcoin (Read 442 times)

There is so much information out there but I find the best place to start is the Bitcoin Whitepaper & following that read The Bitcoin Standard by Saifedean Ammous. Those two particular sources will give you a great understanding. This forum has a lot of very knowledgable people too.

You can find volatility in all markets, big or small volatility only.

Volatility is key for traders and investors to get profit from their trading or investment. Without volatility, we will have a stable market that can be considered as dead market that won't benefit anyone.

The big difference between Bitcoin and altcoins or traditional assets like stocks is with Bitcoin, you will not have things like depeg or bankruptcy. You might have risk to lose money with altcoins and depegs, bank stocks, bank savings and bankrun, bankruptcy. If you choose Bitcoin to store your money in it, you will be safe. It's not 100% safe because there is always risk so is Bitcoin, but it's safer in my opinion, while you can have good chance to get very good profit.

Volatility is a factor of Bitcoin functionalities, just like an inherent trait that Bitcoin works with, for investment purpose, since Bitcoin is best performed when viewed on a long term perspective, maximizing every price point to buy more of Bitcoin is the best, with DCA strategy of accumulating Bitcoin, one can buy Bitcoin irrespective of the price point either weekly or monthly and by so doing, you average out your losses by buying at different price point, yeah you are very correct that every transactions should be made with all alacrity and carefulness in order not to loss your coin out of carelessness.

What you need to understand about bitcoin is that its value is very volatile and can change quickly. Also, it's important to always be careful when investing in bitcoin and understand the risks well. Don't forget to keep up with the developments and regulations related to bitcoin so you can make the right decisions. 

I was expecting to see something more explanatory, but you didn’t really explain it much. Things that you said are kind of useful, and I will say things like this are what newbies should know before getting started.

Seriously, scammers are always making use of this strategy to scam newbies. After sending a coin to the wrong address and they decide to seek for help on social media, some people will contact them, claiming they are a crypto recovery service and that they can recover the person’s money for them, but before they will be able to do that, some of them will request a private key or sensitive informations, which if they are in possession of it, they will be able to access your wallet, and some of them will request for payment. We should know that they are just scammers, trying to increase the amounts you will be losing.

This is what everyone should know before they even think of putting their money in crypto. I don’t think anyone will be in the crypto space and won’t know this.

People are usually running away from the basics, but they are really important. From the basics, you must grow to become an expert, and from there, you become a professional trader. And invest, you must have patience, it is preferable. Because the moment you don't want to endure you will be the one losing and anyone you are introducing you should. Tell them how important having patience is when you anyone refuse to have that patience them they are endangering their assets because they won't even plan for emergencies, immediately you start investing the same time you make plans incase you need money you just take out of it or just get a job and that way you will not need to touch you capital. Because that is one of the mistakes that people are always making. It is better to plan before investing. So that you don't have any contractions. Investing in Bitcoin you just have to be careful of you won't make anything.

As far as I know, Bitcoin can be transacted online via P2P or within a CEX platform.  Bitcoin is boundless and has the most minimal fee in terms of global transfers if the network is not congested. There may be some companies that integrate Bitcoin to expand their financial services but my knowledge about how the Bitcoin ecosystem allows a person exchange and transact money is limited.  I am very interested to know these other ways,  so care to list these "so many different ways" than normal stuff we normally do?  


It is worth knowing that unconfirmed Bitcoin transactions sent from a wallet that has  RBF(Replace By Fee)[1] enabled can cancel any transaction by double-spending[2] and sending the sent BTC back to the source wallet.  So one must be cautious to wait for the transaction to be confirmed before proceeding with the deal.  Many had fallen victim to this kind of scam ( double spending the sent BTC after the receiving end release their goods without waiting for the Bitcoin transaction to be confirmed).


Bitcoin is not only volatile but highly volatile due to its being a free and speculative market.  It is also due to its decentralized nature and the Bitcoin market transactions being not controlled or censored by any institution.

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[1] https://cointelegraph.com/explained/replace-by-fee-rbf-explained
[2] https://www.bitpanda.com/academy/en/lessons/what-is-double-spending-and-why-is-it-such-a-problem/

I believe the best things newbies can learn about Bitcoin is that how to keep their Bitcoin investment safe for long term, and for that they may have to learn about personal wallets and especially cold wallets.

Those who learn about personal cold wallets can actually be good investors if they can hold their Bitcoin for long term without any fear.

Another important thing one should learn about Bitcoin is that the Bitcoin is a very volatile asset and its price vary from time to time.

Do not think that investing in Bitcoin can make you rich over night that is one thing I tell anyone that wants to invest in Bitcoin. What the OP said is true because if you do not know that Bitcoin transaction are irreversible you will lose your Bitcoin when doing a transaction. Do not send any random individual Bitcoin that promise to double it and send you back because there are alot of scammers that just want to take advantage of your ignorance to scam you. You need to understand that you do not have to invest in Bitcoin with the last money on you or you would lose that money because you can not withstand the volatility of the market when Bitcoin is experiencing a correction. Invest in Bitcoin and be security aware of the things that can make you to lose your Bitcoin.

As you are new to Bitcoin these things may seem very unique. however, these issues have been discussed many times before, so there is nothing new in discussing them.  But as a newbie I appreciate your research and careness

Before these you have to remember that Bitcoin should always be held in non custodial wallet. And another thing is not your key not your bitcoin. Then you think about the other things you mentioned and others like Hazink quoted in the 2nd post.

More to this, you need to understand the risk involve in Bitcoin transactions and investment as a whole.
You also need to know the difference between centralized exchanges, and decentralized exchanges, because you will be holding yor bitcoin and you will send and receive Bitcoin. If you are sending, you need to know the difference in the Bitcoin wallets so that you will know the network you are sending to and you also need to know about the transaction fee.

Learn about keys and address and most basic knowledge about Bitcoin, blockchain technology and transactions here easily before you start investing in Bitcoin.

Those are the basic things to know when coming to invest in bitcoin. And I would advise anyone to invest I'd the person can't endure the volatile aspect of bitcoin because if not the person would regret at the end so the best thing to do is to tell the person avoid bitcoin investment until he or she has acquired the basic knowledge about bitcoin and it security.

I agree. You must understand Bitcoin. Once sent, Bitcoins are gone. Absolutely no returns or refunds. Therefore, understand, consider before you click. This is not like losing your credit card; this is major business. Second, that pricing? Though you could lose it just as quickly, you could make a fortune. This is an investment not for gamblers. Study the market, do your homework, be wise about it. Stay patient.

And at last, safeguarding your Bitcoin. That belongs on you. Its a lesson in responsibility, folks. Like you would your most valuable items, you have to learn to protect your assets. Its about identifying value in a digital environment and about discipline. Therefore, Bitcoin can be a great chance if you're ready to face the challenge, if you're eager to study and change with time. A journey, nevertheless.

All of your points is pretty common and lots of people already know about this information. So what I can suggest to you is to research further more information so that you can contribute new information to people.

I'm sure you can do more better than sharing generic this information. But I still admire your effort made since there maybe few people could find your post helpful to them.

Bitcoin is risky so people should try to gain information then understand every important detail that need to look for so people could avoid any potential issues that can hurt them so bad.

The point is, never stop learning and understanding how bitcoin works because bitcoin is very complicated so it should not be taken lightly, knowing just a little and then immediately investing in bitcoin will make you lose bitcoin. So increasing knowledge to minimize losses is the first pillar in investing.

Everything that the OP said is an outline that we need to study in depth, especially regarding security in terms of storage. Because this is the most important thing in investing in Bitcoin, especially if the goal is long-term investment. So wallet security is the key to success in investing, so choose to keep assets under your own control, do not store assets with third parties such as exchanges. This may seem trivial, but many beginners lose assets because they underestimate this.

I think that everyone knows that on the "Bitcoin" forum. People don't appear here randomly without any knowledge of Bitcoin.

On a normal, going into Bitcoin without having good knowledge above it is like trying to use a device without battery or power supply. Even in reality, asides Bitcoin the first thing one needs to know before going into any project be it Cryptocurrency or Business related is to get vital information about it, know what you're going into and understand it better advancing into it. In the Cryptocurrency space, many people have fallen victim to scammers and most of the victims are those who rush into a project without having any knowledge about what they're doing, understanding Bitcoin is not very difficult just that most people are too eager to benefit from it without understanding the process. It is when one understands the process that they'll understand the concept of Bitcoin volatility and how to protect their Bitcoin from scammers.

These are true about bitcoin but they not comprehensive about Bitcoin, but for beginners and newbies, this is goin to be helpful to a good extent for them. the volatility of Bitcoin price happens to be one of the biggest opportunity bitcoin provides for its users who are willing and ready to make use of the opportunity to getting the best off the bitcoin ecosystem. most of the relevance of bitcoin is mostly attached to the fact that bitcoin has got the price volatility that keep its value in a progressive uptrend which later turns out to be the reason its tradeable and why its an investable asset. Bitcoin protection is usually something that has been kept in the power of the person who owns his units of bitcoin at any point and that's why there's a wallet with which yo always have the keys not been such that is made available to the public but to you alone been the  owner of the wallet.

Wallet security is an aspect of bitcoin that has been left to its users in most cases which have in turn been the most advantageous aspect in the fact that you get to take total control over your asset at all times, with out the interference of other persons within or outside the blockchain or outside the blockchain except for those whom you grant access to your wallet who then get the chance to access your wallet. Above all Bitcoin has got one of the top notch security in the financial and investment ecosystem.

As a beginner in cryptocurrency network especially Bitcoin what you needed to know in Bitcoin investment or bitcoin generally is to make a proper research concerning Bitcoin and also check the transaction limit from blockchain technology depending the kind of currency in cryptocurrency that you are making use of, that is why you cannot go into cryptocurrency most especially bitcoin just like that without having a proper investigation for at least within one month to understand the procedures of Bitcoin because the Investment of Bitcoin divers and the determine the profit making and the loss that you may achieve in your investment.

Bitcoin has many use cases that make up value for bitcoin that is described in The bullish case for Bitcoin. The book is very insightful for newbies and it's worth to mention that the use cases list of Bitcoin goes on with development and adoption in coming years. It won't stop there.

Before purchasing bitcoin, people must deeply think of how to purchase it and how to store their bitcoin safely including choosing wallets, how to make backup and steps to recover wallet, and security of wallet and device too.

https://bitcoin.org/en/choose-your-wallet
Back up a seed phrase
Security checklist

Practice carelessly with one of these steps, potentially cause wallet compromise or self-loss a wallet and bitcoin in future.

Understanding about Bitcoins isn’t a difficult task. It can be considered as an asset, but in digital form. It can also be considered a mode of payment that can be transacted anywhere in the world. Now regarding the purchase of coins and how to store them efficiently, there are tons of articles and videos about it available on the internet. Yes, what will concern you is the sudden price changes of the coin. But according to me as a Bitcoin investor, that’s normal. So if you are not a Bitcoin investor till now, then don’t wait for much and buy the coins ASAP.

Of course, this is very important because without knowing well the investment we are going to make, of course it will be difficult to make a profit from investing in Botcoin and when starting to invest in Bitcoin, of course we have to be able to properly guard the keys to our wallet. save Bitcoin assets well because without understanding this well, we will lose the assets we have saved, of course this will be very detrimental to us when we have collected these assets and cannot enjoy the results of what we have collected.

Using the DCA method in investing of course this will be very good because we will be able to make a profit in investing when the price of Bitcoin has increased and currently the price of Bitcoin is experiencing a decline of course it would be very good if we have sufficient funds and we can hold it for a period of time. old we can take advantage of this moment to collect Bitcoins.

Understand basics about the market like Bitcoin market cycles and psychology of market cycle are very good starts for newbie investors.

Psychology of a market cycle

Bitcoin fear and greed index chart. It shows psychological effects on price.

Dollar Cost Averaging (DCA) is a very good strategy for investors with some conditions for their investment.

Invest with own money.
Have reserve for other things, it means don't use all money for investment.
Have long term investment vision.

With DCA strategy and long holding time, Bitcoin can help investors to get very good ROI.
https://dcabtc.com/
https://casebitcoin.com/

They have a variety of people who are investing in bitcoin; some don't understand the market and will simply invest because others are making money from it; they don't believe you need to understand the market before engaging in bitcoin investments. @Nothingtodo stated something essential since I've noticed someone who just jumps into investments without knowing if they're volatile or not; I believe he just learns how to buy them and keeps them on an exchange while waiting for the coin to climb in value to be profitable. And I am sure he will effect him when he is attempting to sell the coin because they have a lot of scammers that can cheat on exchanges when selling is coin, because some confusing people telling to owner that they have realised the asset and if you are newbies you didn't understand the market you can probably release your coin thinking that your money is already in your account that is why is important to know about something before putting your money on.

That is a good start for investing in bitcoin by utilizing the DCA approach. He will help you reduce your risk, and I am sure they have many people who haven't used the DCA plan for their investment, because some in didn't favour them and they try to used there on method to invest and probably they can be profitable.

People who invest in Bitcoin must be aware of all the things you provide or they wouldn't have invested in Bitcoin. Yes, but sometimes the issue of Bitcoin wallet hacking comes up, so before investing in Bitcoin, one must gain knowledge about wallet security. Yes, but before investing you should not invest at a fixed price because in this case you have to invest by adopting the DCA method.

Obviously, whether it's Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency you hold their security is based on your own actions.

Everyone has to protect their coins and it depends on which exchange or wallet you hold your coins on. Whatever you choose it should be a reliable , and secure platform that keeps your assets safe.

There is no need to start one thread to mention the general things that constitute basic knowledge about bitcoin - this has been discussed in many places and basic knowledge about bitcoin can be learned in many source. I appreciate it more your desire to start a thread if you broke down the basics one by one into something more interesting to discuss than just mentioning few points. But considering that you are a beginner/ newbie - then I understand that some users are not that creative.

Friendly tip for you - don't focus on starting thread only if you want to get attention as if you will be merit - but focus on increasing your knowledge even if you don't post much. It is better to read and learn a lot of things when you are a beginner/ newbie than to write a lot of things that you may not know yourself.

What are the different ways in which you can send money in the BTC network, take note that you can only send BTC in the BTC network, through creating an on-chain tx spending a utxo from your address to another destination address.
Reports have it that there is a rise in 'recovery room' scam, so it is important that people learn that BTC tx's are irreversible and once your funds is lost, you cannot recover it, except you catch the attacker and force them to give it back, or the authorities help you freeze it in a custodial service.

I find it difficult to understand what you wrote here, as it's not entirely clear to me. 
 
But if you are saying Bitcoin is not easy to understand, I will have to disagree with that unless for those who want to learn about the technical part of it, if it's for the basis knowledge, all you need is to stay focused, and you will learn whatever you want to learn about bitcoin, including how to use it, spend and save, and wallet security. Everything is made easy to understand.

There's nothing wrong for someone to share his knowledge, but it's pointless.

He didn't share many or new thing that will make people to learn about it and he didn't ask any question, so... it's like something that shouldn't be discussed at all. This thread usually will be locked by moderators.

Because they're someone who don't care with anything until something finally happened to them, but some of them will give up and avoid to invest in Bitcoin since they have trauma. We only need to wait Binance get hacked and their SAFU can't cover the losses.

Alot of people will say this information is not new to anyone yet many keep falling victim of scam and wrong investment decisions. I believe those who have been victims of bitcoin scam were fully aware that hackers and scammers actually exist but were still taken unaware when it finally happened. If constant reminders on the need to protect our bitcoins and take security tips seriously will help people stay safe, then it should continue so everyone would be at alert.  With the way everyone keeps talking about the safety of our coins, if there's anyone that will see or hear about all this and still lose his/her coins out of greed or carelessness, such a person is not really serious about investing.

But if you pay attention you can see that he is new to the forum and maybe also a newbie to the market . His account was only created within the last 10 days . Indeed , this topic makes no sense to those with many years of experience in the market, and is even boring because those things are too basic when talking about bitcoin and no investor does not know. But maybe for newbies , it's something they just discovered and it makes them see how great bitcoin is and they simply want to share it with everyone . This is the oldest bitcoin forum and home to the most veteran investors in the market, and the OP probably doesn't know that.

What you need to know about breathing is that you need to keep doing it to stay alive. I do not get the purpose of these type of topics that share the most obvious stuff, but if anyone needs to read these and learning these here, then I am sorry but you should wait a bit more before you invest because you are in a situation that is far too newbie about it. Bitcoin has some stuff that people should learn, and even these included, but not here, not on this forum, not on this topic.

There are vastly better stuff, even free educations that explains all the smaller details of bitcoin world, go learn it from there and get good results. We are talking about something that isn't that simple here, like very detailed, unlike this topic.

Bitcoin is not easy to use. You need understand the Bitcoin how to work. If not understand you get more lose. That the reason. We need to understand the bitcoin. If want to profit and hand the bitcoin. First you improve the Bitcoin knowledge it help for understanding the bitcoin.

You are right about everyone in this forum understanding this basic part of Bitcoin knowledge but for me I don’t see anything wrong with what he said, looking at his profile you will see that he is a newbie and a newbie he or she will try to bring a topic that will make him learn more about bitcoin, this post might not be that helpful to you but some people will join the forum newly and will read this post and learn more from it, we can never be the same and we can never be perfect because no one is perfect, you may know some things and you may not know some and that’s how life is all about.

Here in the forum, we should let everyone express their opinion on what they know so that we can correct in some way they have mistakes, I’m not saying what you said is wrong but we should also understand that newbies in the forum are the to correct and teach them some things that they don’t understand, some words we say can discourage them from posting in the forum next time they want to post.

Please don't tell me that other ways are with Wrapped Bitcoin tokens?

Like you deposit your bitcoin and choose Wrapped Bitcoin token as your withdrawal methods to get cheaper withdrawal fee. It is possible to save fee but this has big risk with Wrapped Bitcoin tokens that are not bitcoins.

Bitcoin on chain and off chain like Bitcoin Lightning Network. There are Bitcoin side chains for considerations too.

I am more keen on Bitcoin on chain for transactions because it is a most secured way but I have to plan my fund movement well to avoid unnecessary expensive transaction fee if I have no plan and sudden need to move my fund. As a Bitcoin investor, I don't actually have need to move my Bitcoin fund too often.

Sidechain Observer - Bitcoin L2 Projects & current state of development

Bitcoin is not what anyone could just decided on investing without seeking first on how to achieve having it's knowledge, we have to think about what we are investing and how we can make profit about it, that doesn't end here, we need to know moee about the network itself and how it operates, what we should do and not, the right time for an investment and the appropriate time for selling, all will make it a profitable investment on us if we understand them.

Bitcoin is best once of the savings in your future. We can't easy to understand the bitcoin. Most of the details in the bitcoin. It not easy lear. So Frist know about the bitcoin. Bitcoin give the more knowledge.

Precisely, not new but still very significant most especially for beginners here who are more motivated to get to know bitcoin and how to use it at our highest advantage. So this makes still relevant to the forum itself. However, experience would always be the best teacher. Just buy and hold a small amount, once you gain clear understanding about bitcoin and its transaction. And one thing also, patience matters a lot in bitcoin. If you are not patient, you will never see the essence of bitcoin in the long run.

What do you mean by this?
When using Bitcoin, you can only transfer bitcoin and only in one way (on-chain transactions and by sending coins to one or more destination addresses by spending one or more inputs). Any other methods (eg. using altcoins) is not a Bitcoin related way.

There is risk of 51% attack on Bitcoin network but fortunately, with very high network hash rate and its good decentralization, risk of 51% attack can be considered as very low or can say impossible.

How many Bitcoin confirmations is enough

Tools show that with more confirmations, more than 1 confirmation, risk becomes smaller and smaller.
https://jlopp.github.io/bitcoin-confirmation-risk-calculator/
https://web.archive.org/web/20181231045818/https://people.xiph.org/~greg/attack_success.html

Bitcoin network is stronger and more secured than altcoin networks, only saying about Proof of Work altcoin networks.
https://howmanyconfs.com/

Bitcoin transactions are not reversible once the transaction is confirmed in the blockchain, but while your transaction isn't confirmed, you can spend those coins again with a bigger fee to give more priority to the new transaction, and that way you avoid or reverse the first transaction. Is not a common practice nowadays but it is still possible to do, and even you can find some papers that talk about double spend.

And a 51% attack could revert a transaction too, but for that, you need more than half of the bitcoin mining.

Maybe tweeting this post will be better. Most of the users here have sufficient/complete knowledge about Bitcoin. It might be better to add some YouTube links or create a high-quality video on YouTube. Anyway, I recommend YouTube to newbies because the information will be better understood in the audience's mind and they will have a complete understanding of Bitcoin, transactions, security, and transfers.

Confirmed transactions are irreversible.  Nevertheless, transactions that have not been confirmed can be Replaced by Fee or Double-Spent. This is why you need to ensure there is at least one confirmation before releasing your funds or goods in any Bitcoin transaction.


Bitcoin price is the most stable in the crypto space. You cannot compare its volatility with the prices of altcoins. Even some country's fiat currency is more unstable than Bitcoin. Anyway, it is important to tell newbies that the price is highly unstable.


The security of your coin depends more on you than any other party. This is why it is not recommended to keep your Bitcoin in centralized platforms such as exchanges or other custodian services.

Sometimes you just have to point people to the right way...

Of course I prefer this post to most of the post I see on different boards this days, but op still have to do more works on himself and the knowledge which he already has.

He's more of sharing his knowledge and I cannot see anything wrong with that. Maybe these are the things that made him understand Bitcoin more, we cannot take the credit out of him if that's the case simply because this topic is subjective. Of course majority if not all, are aware of these things but why do people still are having negative impressions towards this industry in general? Because they lacking the emphasis on simple things like its concept.
Definifely, and this supports the idea I mentioned above. Many of us are aware of what Bitcoin is, and where will it be used but there are still people who are doing things in a wrong way. Sharing is caring as many of us are saying.

This is not exactly new information to us here on the forum but it could be helpful in your real life when talking about Bitcoin with friends. You asked a question in your previous topic and I think this is a good way to introduce Bitcoin to your client.

Not your keys, not your coins, as simple as that. If you let the third party manage your coins, you are giving them the permission to own your coins later on, so as much as possible keep your coins in your own wallet, and be cautious and extra careful in making transactions so that its safety and security will never be at risk. Bitcoin is a highly valuable asset, so you need to hold it tightly and give its best protection so that hacking and scamming will always be prevented.

lol - not going to fault a new guy for attempting to make a quality post unless he says something wrong or damaging - and he didn't.  👍

while rudimentary, well known, and covered ad nauseum, what he stated was fundamentally sound. I'll take that over another scam or gambling post any day. 😉

I think keeping our own money with our own security is better than giving our money to a third party. Maybe you can get a little benefit from a third party, but it won't be greater than what the third party gets from managing the money you put with them.
By owning Bitcoin, you have complete control over the money you own, there is no interference from any party. Never be fooled by banking systems that are made to look easy and online.

Bitcoin transactions are irreversible and because of that, you need to be more careful when copy and paste address to broadcast a Bitcoin transaction by yourself or to submit a withdrawal request on a centralized exchange.

Irreversible transactions
How to lose your Bitcoins with CTRL-C CTRL-V

I guess this your own way of teaching yourself! because basically almost every one in this forum understand this basic part of bitcoin knowledge.

I suggest that you should learn more than teach.

Regards.

I will also recommend this useful links:



Bitcoin is volatile and will continue to be volatile. Saying it’s “still” makes it sound as if it will come to a point where the price will remain stable.
 

Before getting started with Bitcoin, there are few things you actually need to understand. First you need to know that the Bitcoin ecosystem allows you to exchange and transact money in so many different ways than you normally do. so before using Bitcoin for any serious transaction, you should be well knowledgeable about how the Bitcoin system works and be fully aware of the problems associated with the fiat system.

Also note the following
1. Note that Bitcoin transaction are irreversible. Therefore one need to be extra careful while doing transaction.
2. The price of Bitcoin is still volatile i.e it does not have a fix price for it market price.
3. It requires your own effort to protect your Bitcoin.