Bitcoin - A tool or an investment?

Communications Center Out Of Pod Experience
1

Hi Everyone,

I just wanted to touch base on this topic again to see what views and opinions are out there.

The Bitcoin value seems to be doing very well at present and is at the highest value it has ever been, I’m still concerned that it is being used in an incorrect way where it is purchased to hold for a long period of time with the hope that the value increases.

Evidently it does seem that many people are only purchasing it for profit purposes only and I am yet to see any major retail advances.

Because of it’s benefis such as the ledger that can’t be changed, and the trusted accounting I believed that many online new/existing businesses would want their customers to pay them in Bitcoin. This doesn’t seem to have materialised yet but I am still confident it will happen.

It does seem to be recognised as a digital token that indicates a value as it seems that all governments worldwide own 569,070 Bitcoins , which amounts to 2.69% of the total supply.

I still believe a digital token where there is an agreed/determmined value is a great tool within the finance world as it lays the foundation for alternative value transfer methods.

If we could keep this discussion cool and informative that would be great, I understand some people think it is a scam, it would be great to discuss what we actually see people using Bitcoin for and perhaps gain an understanding of what governments would need it for.

By all means feel free to type here if you have a negative opinion about Bitcoin, what would be great is if some facts were put forward as well as a negative opinion.

1 Like
2

I will just point that the Bitcoin craze is a sign of uncertainty. People who are late to the precious metals might look for the next big thing but Bitcoin has very vulnerable foundations as it depends on advanced technology and such technology can not be taken for granted.

And I wish I had bothered buying gold when it was 1,400 an ounce…

1 Like
3

How is that the ‘incorrect way’ to use bitcoins?

I mean, they’re useful for speculative purposes due to their high volatility, so it makes sense that people buy it in the hopes of selling it for more.

Using it for other things like retail would be a big risk due to the same volatility. There is nothing to stabilize the price and any moment you have exchanged some of your money to bitcoins for retail purposes that value may drop massively as result of bitcoin panic.

If you ask me, bitcoin is nothing but a speculation gimmick that consumes way too much unnecessary energy.

4

Let’s go a into the future. All economies are based on BC or other eCoin - no cash or regular currencies of today. …And all coins are mined - there is limited quantity that can be mined but you can divide them into infinity ok. Fancy to earn 0.000001 BC/week and pay 0.000000001 BC for your coffee?

Question: where do the coins come from to pay your paycheck? Why the owners of the huge stashes of BC would wanted to buy services or products from you or anybody and pay in BC if they could literary force them into voluntary slavery under the promise of giving away their BC?

5

SOLANA is going to the moon.

:rocket: :last_quarter_moon_with_face:

6

@Aaron I’m not exactly sure, but I do remember this guy and the hundreds of thousands of people who cannot now use it either as a tool nor as an investment
1000001347
If Bitcoin was/is actually viable, that guy convinced me to stay away from it.

4 Likes
7

I don’t think it’s a scam, I think it was invented in good faith, trying to prove that the concept can work.

I simply think the benefits for humankind at a larger scale are not justified by the energy costs and all the negative effects attached to that. From heat generation to pollution, consumption of resources etc… We are currently wasting energy amounts for generating inherently worthless cryptocurrencies at the scale of some contries. And to this point nobody has proven that it benefits the Joe Average citizen in any way, but made some people very very rich and some others poor.

I am pretty certain at some point in the future (future because humans are stupid and lazy and will need some time to realize even most basic things), Governments all around the world will first try to take over some Cryptocurrency and after that failed because the main argument is decentralization and trust (but if you are going to trust the Government anyway, you can simply use any digital currency they give out), they will begin to forbid indpendent Cryptocurrencies for market use. And at this point their value will drop down to pretty much zero.

So, yeah, while it would have been nice to participate on the growth rates of the past as an individual, I don’t think the whole concept has a bright future in the long run and does more harm than good if used on a larger scale than some niche-cases. So it won’t ever get a penny from me.

4 Likes
8

Only for now. The computational power is already increasing to make it less power hungry. Just like electric cars were premature 27-28 years ago.

I have a gut feeling that crypto is going to take off. Just like the internet. Even for the average person.

edit: Also, I watch Daniel Mac’s interviews with luxury car owners on social media(s). Half of the hundreds of the peopel he interviewed are crypto traders/investors. That says something.

9

I still stay away from bitcoin due to the scammy nature atm.

I do think eventually we will have 1 global currency tho. (Who knows!?) I certainly don’t

Changing 1 to 0 - Rick and Morty [season 3] (youtube.com)

Imagine if ISK was worth 1-1 to 1-0 :exploding_head: :exploding_head: EVERYTHING WOULD COLLPASE!!

1 Like
10

But isn’t mining competitive by design?

If the computational costs go down and mining bitcoins becomes more profitable, won’t people just mine more and spend more energy until it breaks even again? There has to be some restricting factor that makes mining profitable and as far as I know that’s the cost of computers and the cost of energy. Energy prices per compute going down means you can afford to mine more.

Bitcoins are designed to let people compete to spend the most energy in order to enable transactions.

It’s a waste of energy by design, consuming more than a country’s worth of energy.

2 Likes
11

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how Bitcoin mining works. It does not matter how better the computers get. Bitcoin always auto-adjusts the difficulty to accomodate the additional hash power.

Essentially there is something called the security budget, which is the block reward (new bitcoins per block) plus the fees. Given that miners can compete from all over the world, the resources all miners together expend (hardware + electricity) will always be close to what the security budget pais for.

Since the block reward is cut in half every four years, the security budget in BTC terms gets constantly smaller. But since the price in $ increases, it gets bigger in terms of resources it can buy.

That depends on the perspective. It may be wasted for you because you have no use for it. People who have use for it may see that differently.

12

Well a Bitcoin is a digital token that represents a monetary value, so it’s main purpose is to transfer value using it’s own infrastrucure. I view Bitcoin like a postal order, one buys however much postal orders they need and then they send it through the post to transfer the value to a business or a friend.

Also the goal of Bitcoin is to provide an alternative to Visa/Mastercard by allowing transactions that don’t need 3rd party approval. This suits people who have privacy concerns.

So generally buying and holding Bitcoin for profit means you are buying digital tokens that represent a monetary value. It’s obviously fine to invest in this but the question is how long can someone wait for profit?

Also, the value of a Bitcoin is partly generated by the scarcity level of the said coin, the more scarce it is the higher the value. The concern is that it only has a value because lots of people (including governments) are holding it. Problems may occur with profit if too many people try to convert Bitcoin back to cash and withdraw.

1 Like
13

I can’t still understand how BTC would be “distributed” from haves/miners to havenots in a pure BTC economy? Would everyone need to mine to stay alive? Or havenots would become slaves for life?

Let’s assume for simplicity everyone owns and runs on solar/wind/biomass/biogas converters to get juice for mining in a self-sufficient way.

1 Like
14

I found some info;

Bitcoin and Visa power usage comparison

So, 1 Bitcoin transaction uses the same amount of energy that 500,000 Visa transactions use. If the goal is saving money then Bitcoin is definitely not the cheapest option.

4 Likes
15

:flushed::face_with_diagonal_mouth::flushed:
And they’re asking us to save energy??:rage:

1 Like
16

I’m not sure if the figure I linked was accurate, I’m unsure if it includes the cost of the communication platform as I’m sure there is an energy cost in maintaining satelites and underwater cable, and wireless.

Supermarkets for example have self service tills where there is a transaction system (windows 10/11 based) built into a small station with room to fill shopping bags and so on, Do we include the electric to run these machines or just the electric for the transaction? Personally I would include the electric used for the entire running of that self service till as it’s ultimate goal is to contribute to processing a monetary transaction.

Every time a barcode is scanned, is this included?

I suppose it could be accurate if we are only talking about the electric to send the money from one cache to another.

1 Like
17

I agree. The costs need to be figured from a to z.
Internet is coming to my house in a few days. I have to figure the costs of the service plus the electricity needed for the modem, the tv box and my pc, not just the service.

1 Like
18

Miners have expenses in the form of hardware and electricity. They have to spend a majority of the coins to stay in business. That is how they get distributed into the economy.

I don’t think a pure Bitcoin economy is even realistic. It’s just a different kind of money with different kinds of properties. The way I think about this things is I just look at money as a market good with the sole purpose of storing value and exchanging it for actual goods and services.

Different kinds of money have different features, so the question just becomes if there is a demand in the market for a money like Bitcoin. Apparently there is, but how high it eventually will be when things settle and we are actuallu sure what it is good for is anyones guess.

I think there is definitely a place for a global neutral money that is not under the control of any central administration. But I think its use case will mainly be as an intermediate asset or bearer asset for international transfer, as well as value store. Kinda like gold, just faster.

2 Likes
19

It’s not, the goal is absolutely always the physical cash (one of the global currencies)

There is most certainly a demand, transaction privacy and the ledger which can never be tampered with. The thing to note here, what is being invested in is a tool for privacy, by holding lots of BTC just means the people who need BTC for privacy reasons will have to buy it from whoever is holding it.

Generally most people in the world accept that in order to have a bank account and the debit/credit card associated with it they must give their name/address and other personal details, I think most people are absolutely fine with this just so long as that data is secure and fits the purpose of why the personal info is required.

Already we can see the user base for BTC is quite small on a global scale, the only real way for BTC to grow that user base is if laws regarding money/transaction changed drasticly where it had serious negative impact of peoples lives.

I wouldn’t say we would even need to guess, the needs of the privacy market isn’t going to suddenly get bigger. If we look at cannabis for example we can see that a few countries in the world are adopting a more relaxed approach to it, so currently anyone selling it may do so online using BTC as a method to transfer cash.

We can go ahead and say cannabis is illegal and I would agree, however, there are proven medical benefits according to patients and there is factually a growing movement where people are deveoping and using cannabis to treat illness where it is 100% legal.

Now, we just need to understand what’s going on. lets say it is factual that cannabis has medical benefits where people can buy it and make a tea from it and gain health benefits then the debate will be very strong regarding it’s legal/illegal status. We must also understand there will be rebellious people who will strongly believe they are helping people by providing it even though they are actually breaking the law.

To conclude this point we must understand that the creator of BTC had this sort of thing in mind when BTC was created and introduced, It is possible to sell cannabis to patients where a qualified doctor has perscribed it online using BTC. The cannabis enthusiast will never quit, they’ll get the factual evidence needed to show it has health benefit which they believe will justify them selling it regardless of prison or any other legal ramification, BTC will forever be their tool now and in the future as it provides a means for them to securely transfer value.

Perhaps the goal here might be to understand how society is or how it works and then see how BTC fits in?

1 Like
20

The tamper part is true, but Bitcoin has very poor privacy. I mean it’s a public ledger and all transactions are visible for everyone. As soon as there is any interaction with a known entity, the whole chain of transactions can be traced back. Sadly I don’t think that will ever change.

There are other crypto currencies like Monero that can’t be traced. It’s what is mainly used on dark net markets. They are banned from a lot of exchanges. It’s not something that will go away just because gouvernments make it illegal, all it does is make privacy a priviledge for criminals, which is just insanely stupid.

1 Like