POLL: Do you use Bitcoin?

[AkikoKumagara]

Then there are the fees. A $17 fee on any transaction of any amount means that Bitcoin is completely useless for transferring small amounts of money.

Where are you finding a $17 fee on BTC transactions? That doesn't sound right.

Edit: if you're looking at this, it's the average transaction fee; that is, on average, what most people are paying in fees when transacting Bitcoin (but it's skewed by high volume sellers/buyers). I may be understanding this incorrectly and please correct me if so. My experience only goes as far as mining and selling, never purchasing.

 

[Taleweaver]

I'll concede that bitcoin already lasts longer (and has spiked far more than I'd ever anticipate) than I gave it credit for. But still...it is simply unsustainable without use aside speculation (which, let's face it, is how it's currently used), and the fact that EVERY SINGLE TRANSACTION EVER is kept in the blockchain means it's essentially a time bomb. The more bitcoin is traded, the more miners it'll continuously need to keep the blockchain synced. The opposite isn't true, though: if, say, in the next 24 hourse nobody trades anything bitcoiny, the amount of work miners need to do won't drop...It'll just stay constant.
So what happens if the amount of miners diminishes (say...when they realise their net gain in currency is lower than their net loss in electricity usage) ? Then transactions will happen slower, delaying everything, putting more work on the remaining miners, which'll mean they at one point realise they're really losing money as well, so they'll stop, and so on.

Of course it's not an easy calculation when the crash will happen (it depends on how long its users remain believers), but on a long enough timeline, bitcoin will be worth nothing.

Bitcoin has no practical purpose. If it's privacy you want, then Bitcoin is not the answer, as all transactions on the blockchain are public. The moment you turn your Bitcoin into usable money (e.g. USD), any semblance of privacy is destroyed, as you'll have to declare that income to the IRS or risk hefty fines and/or prison time. If you want to use it as a regular currency (in other words, you're not just buying Bitcoin hoping the price will hike), you'll quickly realize that transactions on the blockchain are painfully slow, with a maximum of seven (7) transactions per second at any given time. This is why Bitcoin transactions take an hour to complete on average.
Then there are the fees. A $17 fee on any transaction of any amount means that Bitcoin is completely useless for transferring small amounts of money.
Bitcoin, in its current state, is a burning pile of shit.

Heh...nice reply. With this kind of state, the inevidable crash will happen sooner rather than later.

(though, okay: the devil's advocate in me says that the people wanting privacy don't really care about profits from speculation and those speculating big are at best annoyed by the legal forms to abide by the law. So that argument is kind of moot.)

 

[korbinian]

Bitcoin has no practical purpose. If it's privacy you want, then Bitcoin is not the answer, as all transactions on the blockchain are public. The moment you turn your Bitcoin into usable money (e.g. USD), any semblance of privacy is destroyed, as you'll have to declare that income to the IRS or risk hefty fines and/or prison time. If you want to use it as a regular currency (in other words, you're not just buying Bitcoin hoping the price will hike), you'll quickly realize that transactions on the blockchain are painfully slow, with a maximum of seven (7) transactions per second at any given time. This is why Bitcoin transactions take an hour to complete on average.
Then there are the fees. A $17 fee on any transaction of any amount means that Bitcoin is completely useless for transferring small amounts of money.
Bitcoin, in its current state, is a burning pile of shit.

probably best reply ITT. bitcoin does not resemble any of the properties you'd need it to have in order to be useful in day 2 day usage (and on top it has developed serious issues like congestion, i'm having a tx stuck in the BTC mempool for literally 2 months now, not joking). theres other blockchains for that (which don't even require mining in the first place and solve other problems too, but this isn't a shill and certainly no financial advice). also, as it has been correctly stated bitcoin just wastes a squared metric butt-ton of power and is of no benefit to mother earth but your quick buck.

if you're hearing about bitcoin and think you're into it, just ignore bitcoin for now and learn about the many other blockchains first. blindly investing your money into 'the blockchain' just will make you poor anyways, it's wild west.

bitcoin was invented to provide a counterweight to the worldwide financial system, refer to satoshi's original whitepaper for example. sadly i think by now it's just the "first blockchain", thus very popular and expensive. you can literally find another blockchain project within 5min of googling that solves all the problems BTC has and still is only traded at like 1 USD-cent or something...

one could probably write megabytes of text/plain content about the pros and cons of bitcoin and blockchains in general. a lot of people will agree bitcoin is pretty useless. and on all the crypto money exchanges there's always other people and tons of bot smarter than you.

just be careful. seriously.

 

[The Catboy]

I normally use bitcoin as a middleman for my altcoins to exchange to USD

 

[AncientBoi]

I use the coins in my pocket. Mostly pennies, LoL

 

[tabzer]

The more bitcoin is traded, the more miners it'll continuously need to keep the blockchain synced.

It doesn't work that way. While miners are free to store as much history as they want, most use SPV methods which only verify current history. It doesn't "create more work", nor is that the reason why hashrates (work) increases/decreases. Even if someone does keep a localized copy of the blockchain-the initial download is large, but cross-referencing is not a strain on the network nor the work required.

Then transactions will happen slower...

This is also misleading. The difficulty algorithm adjusts based on mining power available. If miners stop mining, the difficulty is decreased, to keep a 10 minute block . Though the retarget interval is about 2 weeks, something very serious need to happen to disrupt it. Even if that were to happen, there are mitigation options available to pursue if the need were to arise (forking).

The idea that bitcoin is "bad for the environment" is short-sighted and misses a few points. Though it doesn't serve as many people as the banking industry does, yet, it does use far, far less energy. Also, about 60% of miners use hydro-power. This is a supply/demand issue with electricity. If it is affordable to use electricity, electricity will be used. It is literally on the same competitive playing field as anything else that uses electricity. Blaming Bitcoin is a diversion from the issues surrounding the availability, sale, and use of energy itself--not how "morally valuable" bitcoin's use of it is.

Another thing people seem to miss, is that it doesn't matter how many miners are active, bitcoin will still function the same (albeit less secured with lower hashrates).

A rather large thing that seems to be missing from the conversation is the evolution of and the potential of bitcoin. Bitcoin has implemented a second layer protocol that allows hundreds of thousands of transactions to be embedded in a single "1 of 7 transactions per second" via a "settlement" procedure. It is estimated that it will be able to handle upwards to 1 trillion transactions a day, or over 11 million transactions a second --even if I was the only person actively mining bitcoin. Of course the lightning network (the name of the second layer) relies on people taking advantage of it to have their own form of repeaters/forwarders, but they are not at all energy consumptive. 1 raspberry pi could handle several businesses' worth of financial transactions with room to spare.

This is not, at all, trading advice, or encouragement to buy bitcoin. As for privacy concerns, it's about as private as you want to keep it. Selling it for fiat or trading it on some exchange that requires your government ID/compliance is going to expose whatever you are using with them. Privacy is attainable, but moot if you are already willing to dox yourself.

Bitcoin is capable of reaching lows lower than what we now call low, but it will certainly never be worth nothing-even if one person is willing to use it.

 

[LeonTheo02]

While I have used other cryptocurrencies I never used Bitcoin.

 

[SusumuNoDS]

While I have used other cryptocurrencies I never used Bitcoin.

more buy?

 

[tabzer]

 

[AngryCinnabon]

It's awful for the environment, damages markets (GPU shortages especially), spawns horrible ideas (like NFTs) and is effectively gambling. So no, I do not and never will, I won't stop people from using it but I do not think it's the future at all.

 

[Viri]

I wanna get into it, but it's near impossible to find a GPU that's cheap enough. I thought of playing games, and then farm while i sleep.

 

[JasonMay]

All I do is look at the price chart. When I see that prices have reached a certain level, I start buying at that level. And when prices fall, I sell. It works that way because if I don't buy when I see the price getting close to my level, I could lose money. I would like to become a bitcoin trader regularly to bring me a steady income.
Bitcoin - This is one of the most popular cryptocurrencies. I think it will grow over the next few years, and that is why I am investing in it now.

 

[Marc_LFD]

Yes.

I have a hardware wallet with $335, but I won't be investing it in anymore as what I have there is what'll be. I also have BTC on Uphold and that lost practically half of its value (should've transferred when it was high/stable).

Also got CryptoTab for curiosity sake and even though mining BTC works, the value doesn't increase. If anything, it gets lower.

That said, it's good to have money in different types for whatever outcome.

 

[jeffyTheHomebrewer]

No, because unlike some people here I have both a working brain AND a soul.

 

[jeffyTheHomebrewer]

Oh, and I'm not wasting my money on a fleet of GPUs or fake internet money just for the chance of breaking even or making a slight profit. My cash is better spent on other, nicer things, like tiny robots.

 

[zxr750j]

I like the term farming: it sounds like you've got acres of land with money crops growing like weed.
In reality you're nursing 1 bonsai tree @ 4000W a day and ending up with 1 tiny leaf to sell at the end of harvesting season.
If you've got money and time to spend you might actually make money speculating bitcoin and others, like you can with stock. I do own some stock but no crypto... The energy put in bitcoin is imho a total waste and I do care more about the planet then a quick buck..

 

[jeffyTheHomebrewer]

I like the term farming: it sounds like you've got acres of land with money crops growing like weed.
In reality you're nursing 1 bonsai tree @ 4000W a day and ending up with 1 tiny leaf to sell at the and of harvesting season.
If you've got money and time to spend you might actually make money speculating bitcoin and others, like you can with stock. I do own some stock but no crypto... The energy put in bitcoin is imho a total waste and I do care more about the planet then a quick buck..

That, plus even trading that overpriced worthless crap can go badly..
One night it could be worth over $12,949.89, then the next morning it's worth $1.79 because Elongated Muskrat made a tweet about it being bad. (Which it is, but that doesn't make EM a good person in my eyes either)

 

[Joker25]

Tell me how best to get this bitcoin, even part of it.

 

[BORTZ]

Nothing, and I mean nothing I learn about Bitcoin, Blockchain, or NFTs makes me feel any better about my already dubious suspicions about crypto. Boiled down it's a ponzi scheme with a healthy dose of gambling and sunk cost fallacy.

 

[FAST6191]

Tell me how best to get this bitcoin, even part of it.

That you have to decide for yourself.

Four main approaches

Bitcoin is stored in a wallet

You can do software stuff (it is passwords after all)
https://bitcoin.org/en/choose-your-wallet

You can do hardware wallets (some like these are more secure than a potentially hackable PC or phone, though it is also the same problem as storing physical things, in this case electrical physical things).

You can buy it on an exchange. This is much like having money in a bank or paypal or something, which is to say convenient but risk of being hacked (both your account on it and the exchange in general) with a popular phrase being "two types of exchange -- those that have been hacked and those that don't yet know they have been hacked" so play that as you will. Can be hard to get a normal credit or debit card working with these depending upon where you are so many will also trade other crypto currencies (which might be easier to mine). At the same time I did see a machine selling them in a US mall when I was last there and various similar things exist elsewhere.
There are more conventional financial instruments as well that track it these days as well (see bitcoin ETF) that you buy via conventional financial instrument means and spread betting type services have covered it for a lot longer (though pricey).

You can earn it by mining (every round you win you get so many coins for, as individuals are unlikely to win you will probably join a pool and get a cut corresponding to how much work you put in).

Boiled down it's a ponzi scheme with a healthy dose of gambling and sunk cost fallacy.

Is that not just most economies and popular aspects of investment at this point?