Here is what BitCoin is defined as in Wikipedia:
Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency and a digital payment system[ invented by an unknown programmer, or a group of programmers, under the name Satoshi Nakamoto. It was released as open-source software in 2009.
Fuck banks. The system is peer-to-peer, and transactions take place between users directly, without an intermediary. According to a research produced by Cambridge University in 2017, there are 2.9 to 5.8 million unique users actively using a cryptocurrency wallet, most of them using bitcoin. There is a part about mining which seems essential to BitCoin that I assumed was like mining in MineCraft but was incorrect.
What the Hell is Bitcoin?
Any type of digital currency where 1 unit jumps from $.003 to $2000+ in 7 years has me nervous. I’ve heard of Bitcoin before but never explored the viability in my real life. I’ve read it’s used for underground transactions for people who don’t want to leave any type of currency trace. I know for certain if I owned any BitCoin and it grew to the levels it is at now, I’d head for the hills with any profits. This type of currency feels to unreal to me.
Of course the alternative is to say that dollars are tangible. They exist. I don’t know about you but my dollars are all digitally secured in a bank. At least that’s what I’m told anyway. I’m not sure there is even much difference with what a digital currency is anyway. I’m pretty sure that the system for money is almost exactly the same as the rules of Whose Line Is It Anyway? “Where everything is made up and the points don’t matter anyway.”
BitCoin feels to me like the hot stock I’ve ridden for years and as I wait for it to go higher, it loses 89% in a single day. Not sure if anyone has any experience with it but I’m curious to hear them? I do read that instead of 2–3% typically imposed by credit card processors, merchants accepting bitcoins often pay fees in the range from 0% to less than 2%. So they have that going for them. Also you should know that your cash out of BitCoin should be taxed.
I also get all my info from Reddit so here’s a popular Reddit comment:
Here’s why Bitcoin will fail:
1) The average person is not technical enough to understand how to properly manage and use a wallet. Sure, you can say “but no one understood the internet when it first came out” but the difference is that with bitcoin, you can’t afford to screw-up as you learn. Any minor screw-up can lead to you losing all of your bitcoins.
2) No consumer protections (i.e., charge-backs in retailer dispute cases). Bitcoin, by design, protects the seller, not the buyer.
3) No cashback rewards.
4) If you lose your private key, you’re screwed. Your bitcoins are gone forever and you have absolutely no recourse. Whereas if you lose your bank account’s password, there are many secure ways to recover your funds.
5) If someone somehow steals your private key and takes your bitcoins (say they hack into your phone or find it written in your physical wallet), you have no recourse. With a traditional bank, it’s not that easy to have your funds stolen and even if they were, there are ways to recover it.
6) After 8 years, there’s still virtually no major use of bitcoin in day to day consumer transactions. Sure, some retailers accept it, but how many people transact in it? The only “users” are speculative investors. And if a retailer does “accept” it, they’re not truly accepting it (as in holding to it) because they sell it back to the bitcoin exchanges almost right away, thus creating a wash.
7) No simple and straightforward method for how your bitcoins pass to your next of kin upon your death. And please don’t say you can add it to your will. As if someone would really be stupid enough to publish their private keys in a will and risk anyone with access to the will to take their coins before death.
8) Risk of governments banning the sale/purchase of bitcoin from exchanges as ransomware attacks become more prevalent (which they will) and the public sees bitcoin as a method of facilitating anonymous criminal activity (which is does).
9) No economical value for a consumer. Think about it…you buy bitcoins first (and pay a commission), use it to pay for goods, the retailer sells the bitcoin back to the exchange (and pays a commission PLUS the bitcoin wallet-to-wallet transaction fee) meanwhile you get no consumer protections and no cashback offers. Why would the average consumer opt for this?
10) Unconfirmed transactions are hitting all time highs. Yes, Bitcoin is experiencing delays and serious scale-ability issues.
11) Bitcoin wallet-to-wallet transfer fees keep going up.
My capstone is college was international currency, and one of the discussions we had was why physical currency exists at all anymore. Cash (and presumably Bitcoin as the guy noted) is more or less untraceable and there will always be a black market. You wouldn’t buy cocaine with a credit card, you’d always use cash (or apparently Bitcoin). When you start getting into the “deep web”, cash is harder to transact, so something like Bitcoin is ideal for someone trying to buy a sex slave or illegal weapons from different countries. I don’t know what % of Bitcoin transactions involve illegal goods, but I’d imagine it’s a much much higher % than the number of cash transactions that do.
I guess my point is, I think Bitcoin has its place and will only grow (marginally) in popularity as people become more comfortable / familiar with it, but the average person has absolutely no need for it.
I could be completely wrong about everything I just wrote, but that’s what I’ve gathered.