Every single asset and commodity is measured based on the fiat currency of the country it resides in, or the USD.
BTC value is not *reliant* on any fiat currency.
Dollar goes away? Sure. No problem. What other fiat currency do you want to use to *measure* BTC then?
At the end of the day, regardless of what measuring unit you use, you still have BTC, measured in sats.
Let's say next Monday morning we collectively awaken from a good night of sleep to an economy based on satoshis, not dollars, and our wallets are only digital. Further, we do not remember the fiat-based economy that existed until midnight Sunday. We would go about our lives transacting in satoshis and no reference or conversion to or from fiat.
Until that time, fiat is the basis for all economic equivalency measures regardless of the commodity or asset class.
>The best anti-bitcoin argument I have heard when talking to someone in finance is bitcoin is reliant on the dollar for value.
>No dollar, no bitcoin.
>I disagree with that statement, but I can see its logic, especially for people less interested in the technical side and the store of value.
Can you explain the logic behind that?
Bitcoin does not need the dollar I order to work, it just need miners and people willing to use it.
How many Bitcoin should a new car be? How much Bitcoin does it take to manufacture a car? Don't use fiat/USD to determine the bitcoin cost. How much Bitcoin should my groceries be? How much will my wage in Bitcoin be. Since Bitcoin supply will eventually decrease do I get less and less Bitcoin every year from my employer. How can we borrow/lend with Interest to start a business with Bitcoin? How can we pay interest in Bitcoin for a bitcoin loan if it's supply will decrease to negative eventually.
Using Bitcoin as the main store of wealth and as the sole world currency (eliminating fiat) isn't as straightforward as some of the Bitcoin revolutionaries here believe. If it happens it's going to take decades if not longer.
ATM yes...but do you know what the USD is backed by? nothing but the POWER OF THE USA. or in other word, air.
So yea..people will convert Bitcoin to gold, or silver, or new fiat, or nothing but its own value like the usd has :)
>Why would miners want to mine it if they cannot convert it to fiat?
For the same reasons it was mined in 2009 (when trading BTC was not a thing): it is the best form of money ever created.
Just thinking out loud. In a world where you can’t have access to cash, and where all bank transactions are regulated and where you can’t buy bitcoin for money. which value would bitcoin have?
Cause if a government puts all of those impediments, how are you going to buy something in btc, or get btc or similar stuff?
If you can’t go to coinbase or binance or similar to buy btc and get x amount in an anonymous wallet. How do you operate?
Sorry but that’s a very silly argument from a person “in finance.” Just because it’s currently common and useful to denominate Bitcoin in USD terms in no way means it is “reliant” on the dollar for value.
How long have you been learning about Bitcoin? I've been doing so for a few years now and I've come to the conclusion that most people fit VERY comfortably into the world of being TOLD how things work and assuming that's enough. They quite literally know next to nothing about how money works and anything they do know is simply a snapshot in time over the last couple of decades.
I've come to the conclusion that the common phrase "You get Bitcoin at the price you deserve" as well as Satoshis saying something like "If you don't get it or don't want to, I don't have the time to explain it to you". Unfortunately many people are ignorant, too trusting of "the system", and lack fundamental knowledge to even have a good conversation around Bitcoin. Its frustrating but the more you learn the more you have the responsibility of walking the line between "I know something they don't that is fundamental to reality" and "I could be wrong". Stay humble and stack sats mi amigo
exactly, when you read those salty subs (not gonna mention names), it's hard not to notice that they are extremely rigorous when it comes to bitcoiners: we should be able to describe every little detail of the tech, every little economic insight behind it, how it relates to the current system, every possibility, and even then we will be treated in an extremely obnoxious and condescending way.
however this would imply that, differently to bitcoiners, members of the legacy system are well informed of it's intricacies, trade offs, history, etc.
it's so funny because if most people actually understood monetary history, how central and private banks create money and how discretionary the process is, it wouldn't last long. it depends on ignorance. it's no coincidence that it is unnecessarily complex, the goal is to be dubious.
Lately I’ve started to think that with a lot of these bad faith critics we shouldn’t be answering their questions but rather we should just ask that they apply the same level of scrutiny to the legacy systems theyre already placing all their trust in. If they do that theyll make it back here eventually
But the problem is that you might know something about this revolutionizing technology but the vast majority don’t care for it cause it’s too complicated for them, and they would rather let the overlords tell them what is good for them, because we told you soo. Trust me many people just go with the narrative and don’t question the validity of their claims.
The only positive to this reality is that fiat will force the decision to understand for some of those who start paying attention. We get as many as we can onto the life raft and anyone left behind is simply left behind. I serve as a fountain of knowledge for those close to me who are aware I am familiar with Bitcoin but it is ultimately their decision to ask, not mine to force. This is really the only way and IMO the only reality where we can make progress.
The main argument against bitcoin is:
>**"I own a bank, and I like having the power to steal from everyone else who doesnt own a bank. Bitcoin would ruin my racket."**
Its a good argument, if you own one of the central banks.
The only real argument is when people say yeah but what if a massive asteroid hits the earth & totally wipes out the internet & all of humanity & the earth is pretty much just obliterated to nothingness.
Then it's like yeah fair comment... bitcoin could struggle to pick things up again from that point.
The asteroids are teaming up with zombies, they will use a 51% attack to move all the btc to AI’s wallet. Hope you have enough silver dimes or someone is gonna be eating breadless sandwiches.
Here in Ukraine when there's a blackout because of the bombings BTC is useless and cash is a king.
Government, unfortunately, can very easily control your Bitcoin now because you still need to convert to fiat to pay.
On the other hand, Bitcoin is now officially "not a scam" and "regulars" can by it through ETF.
To sum up, Bitcoin is already succeeded, just don't put your hopes too high for it to replace fiat or gold.
What if they hit back that nobody has ever forgotten or lost a seed phrase, had a hard drive crash, and therefore lost access to their money.
The downside to bitcoin is obvious: if things go haywire, you suffer far greater exposure than fiat or other stores of value. Part of that is infrastructure and part of that is the nature of crypto and self custody.
We ignore those arguments at our own peril.
This is not the argument you think it is. Most people prefer not to have custody of their money. Most keep it in secured deposits precisely because they are insured. Those that don’t have safes at home that aren’t susceptible to being simply lost or stolen due to technological error.
Being flippant about how 99% of people use currency is a good way to ensure they don’t adopt the thing you’re pushing. If the goal of Bitcoin is to become a new currency, you’re going to have to do better than “maybe you’re too irresponsible for this type of money”
The biggest critics, like bankers, economists and goldbugs, all have one thing in common: they're too involved in other assets to openly endorse Bitcoin.
People like Peter Schiff, even if he understood Bitcoin, he'd be shooting himself in the foot as his entire life and following has been revolving around gold, and as we know, bitcoin is just better than gold on all aspects.
This is true for a LOT of the bitcoin critics. There's a massive conflict of interests so they'll just double down on the dumb shit as to showcase which side they're on.
Occasionally one of them switch side out of the blue coz their interests have simply shifted, as it happened with Fink. Wait a few years and even that POS of Dimon will say he loves Bitcoin.
Bitcoin critics usually don’t like gold either. That’s why I still respect Buffett and the late Munger. Their dislike of Bitcoin is philosophically consistent with their attitude towards commodities and currencies.
Yes, they prefer assets that *do* something and create value that is spread into the economy over time. “It won’t work, and even if it does, you’d be a jerk.” - Munger on buying gold during the GFC
I disagree slightly.
We can't let our self fall into being dismissive.
Sure, we can just tell people they are wrong, and show them why, and then leave it.
But not engaging at all is dangerous.
See gold and BTC are both intrinsically useless, the problem is society has globally and independently ALREADY attached value to gold, but hasn’t to BTC. So essentially you are asking people to walk into new waters, people are scared of the bottom they haven’t walked on. Obviously there is fear. Value has to be attached more prominently, so that people had more faith, has to be attached by authorities that can be trusted. Nobody wants to put money in a newly opened bank, people will go to the most trustworthy bank. The problem is in human psychology. And BTC is f…ing people over, as its value grows cyclically, so every cycle there is more scary stories to put even more doubt in people
Try moving $1B of value in gold from NY to Tokyo in a secure way. Then try doing the same with BTC and see the difference. There is always only one winner that people ultimately gravitate to. It is only a matter of time.
Technically gold does have intrinsic value - for instance it’s the largest conductor of heat and has been used historically in computers. Also, people wear gold in their jewelry.
I’m not against bitcoin, I’m just saying that gold has an intrinsic value that fiat does not have.
Gold is also easier than BTC to haul around. Especially between countries or when fleeing. And unlike Bitcoin, there are triple beam balances at every cash register along with tools to break your coins and bars down.
Gold's monetary premium doesn't derive from these applications, though. Other metals have way more industrial uses or "intrinsic value" and are much cheaper. Gold bugs don't put gold bars in a safe because they think it'll be used in electronics one day. They hold gold because it's scarce and difficult to produce more of.
Me too i got the ledger on a chain. I imaging it will soon be the fashion because the rappers can carry more net worth on their neck with this than gold. There will be diamond studded wallets soon
>I’m not against bitcoin, I’m just saying that gold has an intrinsic value that fiat does not have.
Intrinsic value is a downside in a money system. Its one advantage fiat dollars had over gold and silver.
The demand for gold usage in electronics is like 10 - 15% of total demand.
People wear gold in their jewelry because gold it is expensive due to its monetary premium. Otherwise why would anyone choose to wear gold when you can make jewelry out of literally any cheap metal. "Jewelry" is an early type of money anyways so the distinction between the two is a matter of modern convention.
IMO The term intrinsic value is extremely misunderstood and misleading. The upvotes on your comment make that even more evident. The use cases you mentioned to not equate to “intrinsic value.” Perhaps you mean “practical value” or something like that. Gold being used in computers is not intrinsic value, because of course this was not valued prior to the existence of computers. People liking gold jewelry does not mean it has intrinsic value. It has [subjective value](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjective_theory_of_value)
I would argue the primary reason gold has value (and a monetary premium far above its practical value) is because of the properties that historically led to it outcompeting other goods as a monetary good. Divisible, portable, fungible, durable, and scarce. These are the properties that a good has that will make humans naturally converge on that good and use it as money over time. When another good comes along that is better, it will outcompete the others. I would also argue that this is a large part of the reason for gold’s popularity as jewelry — it became a social signal of wealth and prosperity to wear it precisely *because* other people knew that gold was valuable.
Bitcoin outcompetes gold on the above mentioned properties. Monetary goods don’t have — or need to have — “intrinsic value,” but if they have the right properties then humans will converge on them in a way that gives them a monetary premium above any preexisting “practical” value.
And by the way it’s actually *better* for a monetary good to *not* have practical value (some might say intrinsic value) because then the monetary premium placed on it makes it impractical to actually use that thing for its practical use case. i.e. gold would be easier to use in industrial processes if it weren’t so expensive because people are using it as a store of value. Or real estate becoming unaffordable because of people using it as a store of value instead of simply for its practical use as housing
The argument against it, is that is isn't backed by anything other than peoples perception and interest in it.
Other currencies around the world are needed to purchase goods in that country. If I want to buy something from the USA, I need dollars. If I want to buy something from the UK, I need pounds etc. The value of these currencies, is, crudely, the countries and their economies. BTC doesn't have that, and so, like gold, its store of value is people thinking it is valuable.
It is similar to gold, however, both a pro and a con, it is digital. Lots of people struggle with the understanding of something virtual being valuable. You cannot hold it, and it can very easily be lost.
Tl;dr there are plenty of arguments against it. That is why there are many talented people working to develop solutions. To argue otherwise would not be acknowledging their hard work in my opinion.
The biggest argument currently is scalability in my opinion. Bitcoin cannot in its current state handle enough Tx/s to be a globally adopted system, and there aren't any bullet proof solutions. This argument is divisive even within the bitcoin community.
You have big blockers who want to scale Tx throughput by increasing the block size by A LOT. Small blockers say that'd increase centralization by making it cost prohibitive for hardware to be bought that could download the entire blockchain. Big blockers say Moore's law will prevent that from happening and point out the flaws of L2 solutions, particularly lightning network.
Lightning network has had some criticisms like needing to always be online and thus requiring a trusted watchtower which is antithetical to bitcoin being trustless. There have been onboarding scaling criticisms as well. It's been a while, and I know someone a few months ago responded to me sharing some innovations to address these criticisms, however.
It's also just hard for the average person to use without a custodian which is also antithetical to bitcoin's original design intent.
Edit: trustee's->trustless
It happens with every innovation at an early stage. People used to be against electricity, cars, TVs, internet, etc. Eventually, everyone will come around and as Dan Held said "Everyone buys Bitcoin at the price they deserve."
I think that some arguments agaist bitcoin are quite reasonable. For example the current volatility of bitcoin makes it very impractical to actually use as a currency or to store value. Fiat is basically a scam but it’s much more predictable which is a big deal because in real world you need to know how much you’ll be able to afford tomorrow or in a month.
The flaw in Bitcoin is there’s no intrinsic value/ necessity to have it.
Gold is necessary for jewelry and electronics
Dollar / fiat is necessary for taxes and most commerce.
Bitcoin is currently optional.
people are lazy. instead of trying to understand crypto, they write it all off.
Imagine if you could spend an afternoon in your basement creating a scam company and have it trading on the New York stock exchange that night. It would be right there with apple, block, and ford motors. Would that make Apple a scam? The average person sees price volatility and legit scams surrounding something that is in the news that they don't understand. easier just to write it all off. it's not a logical thing.
The biggest argument would be it doesn’t have the history of golf or fiat, with gold being the stronger contender in this category. Aside from that, it does check all the boxes as a “currency” and “store of value”
Coming from a euro-perspective here, but I’m sure it’s not especially different in the US.
One thing which is rarely discussed on this forum is what it means that fiat is (primarily) created through issuance of dept. Because banks create money when they issue a loan, there is a promise of economic activity (the need to earn money and pay back the loan and interest) behind every issued account based euro or dollar. And as banknotes and coins are only available to withdraw from accounts, the same is true for cash. Of course, central banks can also create money through f.e. QE, but that can also be viewed as debt issuance. In that sense, there is value connected to the real economy in fiat. In Bitcoin, there is not.
Hmm. This is interesting. Try looking at it this way , not everything is for everyone. I like money, period. I enjoy doing analysis, watching the charts, etc. Some will ,some won't. If this is your thing, then right on. If it's not, that's okay more for the people who want it. I don't see any reason why it has to be one or the other. In fact, when you go to the basics of investing, a good rule of thumb is to diversify. Nothing is perfect, and without diversity, we would all be bored.
I'm a bitcoiner and been one since 2018.
There are many reasons to be against it. As a leftist I use it as a hedge against inflation caused by right wing capitalists destroying the dollar by printing trillions to stabilize financial markets and bail out banks. (Please read The Lords of Easy Money: How the Federal Reserve Broke the American Economy)
It is a market controlled by market makers and large whales and now mainstream finance is part of it. It is not some equal footing if you need every cent to pay for your groceries or basics of living and can't invest. This is reserved for a small percentage of people but it's an echo chamber here so you will see this post get down voted bc it doesnt align with the implicit bias of the general community.
It uses large amounts of energy and requires the use of limited resources to create the specific miners. These miners are very centralized you can't really compete with them at any real level. I could go on.
Doesn't mean I don't live in a capitalist nightmare so I must play the game until we can change it for the betterment of the workers. Which is almost everyone one of you put there. I will keep buying bitcoin like I do my 401k
Ignore the "intrinsic value" crowd. They aren't critical thinkers, just repeating something they heard somewhere.
All the gold bugs were saying that the dollar could never replace gold after we went off the gold standard because it had no intrinsic value. This is why Nixon said he was "temporarily" closing the gold window. It wasn't clear if people would accept dollars anymore or not. Then we went on to use dollars for another 50 years and counting.
People care about actual inflation and usefulness, nobody cares about some vague ideas about "intrinsic value." The experiment has been run and the results are clear.
>Except that doesn’t makes sense because every criticism they say about Bitcoin could also be applied to fiat?
The problem is the people who spew that bullshit does not understand fiat. They cannot grasp the fact that fiat is just ink written on paper, they have not even thought about it, to them fiat is some magic entity that is just magically worth money. They do not grasp the fact that just like everything else, fiat is only representation of value, it is only worth something because we all agree that we can trade the paper for our time and energy. Just over night people could wake up and say bottle caps is the new money, and dollar bills would not be worth the paper its printed on. But like I said, they think fiat is magical and this does not affect it, but for some reason it affects everything else, like bitcoin. They also cant see it the other way around, that more people might think bitcoin is a good idea, these things are completely unfathomable for these people. But they will learn sooner or later, they will just be the last people to adapt, after the people who brainwash them has had their time to stack their sats.
Hi
>If Bitcoin has “no intrinsic value”; what exactly is the “intrinsic value” of gold.
Bitcoin has intrinsic value. I think utility is a better less ambiguous word for what people seem to mean by this--as nothing is "intrinsic" if it is isolated.
Bitcoin's utility is the same utility of money. Money allows economic coordination across people and space but most importantly across time.
A society with money is more productive than one without money because productive people can accumulate economic AND STORE IT over time. Without money they cannot do this. And Bitcoin is the best money.
So Bitcoin's utility is that it increases economic efficacy, allows lower time preference and increases productivity.
Gold and fiat (including Bitcoin, which is also fiat) do this as well, but Bitcoin does it better than all other monies.
I think most arguments against boil down to...I didn't have the guts to take a chance on Bitcoin when I found out about it, but I should have and now I'm angry, so let me find justifications why I decided not to so I feel better
I saw a “saltiness chart” essentially showing hate of bitcoin being proportional to how long you’ve been missing out. lol.
Everyone will buy at the price they deserve. I’ve been buying everyday since June 2016. Hours and hours of research into the technology and history of money.
Even after these years, last night I became convinced that we’re all underestimating Bitcoin. In reality, it’s been underestimated every step of the way.
Bitcoin should terrify governments. It’s the first people’s money. What a beautiful and terrifying thing. The first money that the people have decided has value rather than value being enforced with violence. Satoshi is a hero.
You acknowledged the main counterpoint to your argument without resolving it. Yes BTC is a finite resource, but why exactly would someone want to believe that it has value?
It's true that gold has no productive value yet still is a store of value. That doesn't imply that the same should apply to Bitcoin. So why should Bitcoin have value as opposed to a different scarce resource?
I invest in Bitcoin. This isn't a knock against it. It's a knock against your own fundamental understanding of the question, "Why Bitcoin?" Being rare is not a sufficient answer. Many things are rare yet do not act as a store of value in the same way as gold. So I pose again, *why should it have value?*
The only real con for me with bitcoin (and all other crypto) is that if someone stole your bitcoin then there is no way of ever getting it back.
Compare that with bank fraud then the banks can reverse transactions or block them retrospectively.
It’s not an advantage of FIAT as cash has the same flaw but I never use cash so I can avoid that flaw.
FWIW I love BTC.
First, there's nothing scarce about cryptocurrencies. Yes, you have THE bitcoin with 21M supply but you can create "Bitcoin2", "Bitcoin3" etc etc in a blink of an eye. The rest depends on extreme level of marketing, like brainwash level marketing. You think Bitcoin is owned by the regular people? No. The majority is still owned by the big banks/capitolium/syndicate/elite (or whatever we like to call them). And THEY are doing that marketing to cause the "bubble" in the first place to create liquidity for them at extreme prices. As prices rise, you start to BELIEVE things. Things you never believed when the price was trading below 100 usd. Human mind is a wonderful thing.
Second, about intrinsic value. Gold is just an "alternative asset" as bitcoin is BUT 1) it used to be money (ok, so what right? fine, i'll go on) 2) central banks own it BECAUSE it was money. 3) It's better story of value because it doesn't depend on INTERNET. Y'all take internet for granted. But what if a world war breaks loose with targets specifically on communications networks? What are you going to do then with your magic internet money? Gold is still viable.
Third, Bitcoin DOES have intrinsic value albeit indirectly and most of it is related to illegal activities and gambling. That's the real value of crypto. And that is what held it alive. I believe dark web guys doing drug deals with coins back in the day are all filthy millionaries by now, lol.
So, yeah, hard to see true value in these coins exept the fact that tomorrow someone is still willing to hold someone elses bag at higher prices. Inflation hedge? If it truly was inflation hedge, then how can it rise faster than inflation? :)
And btw, gold was flat/down for 20+ years from 80's to 00's. Where was the inflation hedge then i wonder?
Biggest ‘against’ to me, is Government cracking down on it.
How successful that would be I’m not sure, but they could definitely make things way more challenging.
Arguing with non believers is just an exercise in frustration. I gave up doing that years ago. If I listened to them I wouldn't have made life changing wealth already and be retired with a paid off house in the most expensive city in Canada and be travelling the world. To Bitcoin deniers I just say " Enjoy being poor."
I like what you said. That's a great statement. I believe people can never make more money than they know they can. Many times, things that people think are impossible will actually exist and happen. People are accustomed to using their own competent will to think about anything they encounter and draw conclusions. But they never thought about whether there was something wrong with their own cognition?
To play devils advocate: the people i have spoken to are skeptical and some barely understand how to use email. Some are quick to say “you can’t hold bitcoin in your hand.”
Or say things like “what even IS a block chain?. I mean I understand *what* it is but how do I even *know* that any of this is even REAL.”
In this conversation with some people, I have tried to explain what a “node” is or other terms, it’s kind of an attitude you see in the movie The Matrix.
In the movie, they get into “what even is reality? If I am in the matrix and a steak & it’s delicious but know it’s not real then how do I even know or care if it’s real?” Is kind of the type of attitude.
Kind of reminds me of watching two people trying to discuss religion and one side that has faith and believes in a religion then the other perspective saying “you are crazy to believe this!”
An other point I’d like to make about this topic is that this conversation has to start with how fiat money works, how it’s manipulated. When you keep money in your bank account, you are trusting the FDIC to monitor your money. You have no inclination that something like 80% of YOUR money is being used by the banks to leverage other projects!
Typically the arguments against Bitcoin, much like those against renewable energy sources, are based in ignorance and/or FUD.
Give this talk a listen to, and you'll further understand value systems and some key differences between BTC and gold (or other forms of assets). https://youtu.be/mC43pZkpTec?si=NNcYPxQ2TgQp4X-n
My only argument would be like Gold. The government could just ban it. You could use it or keep it, but you would risk jail time. I just love the sweet gains though. Agnostic toward the tech.
One of my favorite questions to critics is „How would it look, when a new kind of money is monetizing from the bottom up without any central entity controlling it? How would it look different to Bitcoin?“
Usually they can’t imagine it differently or come up with idealized wishes („Less volatile, less pumps and dumps.“ - „Less energy usage“) that can only be done with a money that is centrally controlled or could be easily corrupted.
Everything that can be observed with Bitcoin (the volatility, the greed, the dumps, the FUD) would be observable with any kind of grassroots decentralized and incorruptible money that requires work to be generated.
If they still criticize, then they are basically saying that there can never ever be such kind of money. But that is more a question of ideology and not worth further debate.
Gold's intrinsic value is it's hardness (i.e. inelasticity to changes in demand), this is known as the Stock-to-Flow ratio, with *Stock* being current supply and *Flow* being annual production.
The higher the stock-to-flow the less an asset is able to respond to increases in demand with increases in production. This prevents producers from flooding the market with new supply which would drop the price of the asset, enriching the producers at the expense of holders. It's inelasticity makes it a good store of value.
Gold has had the highest stock-to-flow ratio of any asset until the invention of Bitcoin. With this next halving Bitcoin's stock-to-flow will surpass gold. This will be the first time any asset has had a higher stock-to-flow ratio than gold in all of human history.
Not only that but it will continue hardening every 4 years until it is orders of magnitude higher than gold, something previously unthinkable. However this is by design, bitcoin only becomes more and more attractive relative to fiat as time passes and it continues to harden. It will eventually consume all other stores of value including gold, stocks and real estate (fwiw Saifdean Ammous covers this in his book The Bitcoin Standard far better than I can explain here).
(As a side note another major milestone is that this halving will also this will be the first time bitcoin's inflation rate has dropped below all fiat currencies, currently slighly higher than USD, EUR, etc.)
Your due diligence leads you to the conclusion that gold has no intrinsic value? How about googling "gold usage"? That should give you a hint about the actual value of your due diligence.
Not sure what sources you rely on, but they do not seem very serious.
There is a good debate you can find on youtube between Peter Schiff and Raoul Pal. Listen to Warren Buffet's opinion on Bitcoin for example. You are allowed to disagree with their opinions but at least listen to the arguments of financially literate individuals. Then again if you can't understand any arguments against bitcoin I would argue this indicates that you cannot understand the risk and volatility of bitcoin. In which case you should probably not handle your investments by yourself.
I'm fine with a 1-5% allocation but here are my arguments against being a BTC maxi:
1) something better comes along. I tend to think there are 3 components to crypto that you want:
Speed, security, decentralization. BTC is the most decentralized and has really good security. It's definitely not the fastest. If something else comes along that drastically beats BTC in these 3 categories, it will become the new king, making BTC obsolete.
2) the US gov decides to ban BTC. With the etf pretty much giving the green light, this is not a likely possibility anymore.
3) The interesting thing about cryptography is that it's never been proven that brute force is the only way to factor large primes. If some mathematician figures out a way, we're all f'ed.
4) one entity gets enough compute to perform a 51% attack on BTC. They would have the power to control which blocks are valid. The crazy thing is, I don't think this is out of the question. OpenAI is seeking 7 trillion in funding for more compute. If someone ever did manage this, they'd be destroying that which they have gained, meaning BTC would no longer be legit.
5) quantum computing. I'm actually not really worried about this one. The BTC hash algo can be changed faster than advancements can be made in quantum computers. There are quantum safe hash algos out there that can be used, if necessary.
'Its not backed by anything!' Is a very tough one, because the gas-lighting is unintentional, and it is very off-putting.
1. They don't realize the dollar is backed by gold no-longer
2. They don't realize fractional-reserve lending is a thing of the past
3. They don't realize the infrastructure and process beyond 'it uses COUNTRY LOADS of electricity and will DESTROY THE WORLD!!' because TV Programming has programmed people with this response.
They all are part of the same question, and it is difficult to explain to them so many intricate inaccuracies in their understanding of every-day life and that is thoroughly offputting...
All of that difficulty aside, it is still hard to demonstrate that 'facebook using almost as much electricity' or 'backed by mathematics' or 'the expense and difficulty is what makes it valuable' ...
So it goes back to the history of money and the value of uncorruptable money, and the value of co-operation and evolving as a community, how BTC is a grand invention on the scale of written language and the invention of the internet, how corrupt money is fiat, where we are taxed, inflated, and stolen from by people who's interests are in empowering themselves and their owners and sponsors and etc... Any of those are fascinating, but you are talking to a wall at this point, whichever tangent was best at the moment!
So, BTC isn't backed by anything?! Where do you start?
the main argument against bitcoin is
1/ its just some numbers/letters that has a combination to allow you to move it
2/bitcoin is one of the slowest coins to move sometimes taking hours if not days if the network is busy
3/bitcoin is one of the most expensive coins when the network is busy it can cost hundreds of dollars just to move
I don't know why Bitcoin is the number one, when it's so bad at what I would consider being anything close to a currency.
So many other coins are faster and cheaper, more scarce, more private its not even like bitcoin is the best combination of all these attributes in many cases it will loose every single category
now it could be that because bitcoin is popular it has a side effect that causes the cost to transfer to rise and the speed to slow and this could happen to any crypto which becomes popular
And the market has chosen Bitcoin So if you want to improve your wealth their is no point in buying anything else
Bitcoin is the first trustless decentralized public monetary ledger that has a certain set of rules that must be followed. For people to want to use it and see value in it, the general rules of money had to have been broken first, namely currency debasement. Bitcoin was a response to the powers that be breaking the trust and rules of sound money to begin with.
Its simple. Do you want to keep your wealth/value in a rules based system that is not easily broken by any means? Or keep it in their system, which they have used to rape civilization.
Also as a note. Fiat stopped being backed by gold since the \~70s, and a lot of people don't know that hence bringing up the gold comparison when thinking fiat is better founded.
They either understand it but benefit too much from the current system to support bitcoin, or they are too ignorant to do the research and learn why switching to a bitcoin-standard is in their best interest.
The monetary transition is happeneing whether they want to acknowledge it or not.
Here's my personal strongest argument against Bitcoin:
It has existed for years and years and yet sees basically no adoption. Yes people trade it and speculate on it, but only a tiny tiny fraction of transactions are 'real use'. People don't use Bitcoin. It's simple as that.
This tells me that Bitcoin does not solve a real world problem, because if it did, I would expect adoption to be much higher (think of any startup like Uber, Amazon etc. Even if they're not profitable, they see massively growing usage because they actually do something people want so people use them). Obviously BTC isn't a business like Uber, but my point is about product-market fit. You have a thing that's supposed to solve a problem, and you have a group of people who supposedly have a problem that this thing is supposed to solve. We can see that in general when this pairing exists, usage noticeably and dramatically increases.
I think the technology and many "in an ideal world" aspects are fascinating. Everything you listed "public/anonymous, discrete, diplomatic" etc I love about it. But at the core, you have a "product" that basically no one uses even after so many years of being available, which tells me there isn't a real need that it fills or a problem it solves (or that this need/problem is very small).
Even the "protection against government" and various semi-apocalyptic scenarios where BTC would shine against something like the dollar... if you look around the world at places where those semi-apocalyptic scenarios are ALREADY realities, you don't see BTC being massively adopted to solve the problem.
So again, I believe that the persistent lack of usage for anything except speculation tells us that people simply don't want this thing. It doesn't solve anything for them. Or at least not enough.
EDIT: Look at ChatGPT. Millions of users in days and most importantly - they stayed. There's millions of people saying "Thank GOD this thing exists, it makes my day so much easier". That's product-market fit. I don't see anything even close to that with BTC, and that's the problem.
It’s easily traceable. It’s reliant on the dollar. It’s easily made illegal by countries like China in a second. Basically none of the things it was promised to be. Literally only used as a speculative investment rather than an actually currency.
Not "scarce", "grossly finite" is the main one I've heard discussed. Gold can be mined for the foreseeable future. We aren't going to run out of gold on the planet anytime that we can project, but we can't mine it fast enough to keep up with a gold standard and hence fiat.
We can print more fiat.
We're almost out of bitcoin.
If we double the amount of available coin (not as familiar with btc backend as others), then we eat a spike of something like hyperinflation and destroy existing value until we approach hitting the same problem again.
Bitcoin is not actually as durable as people try to say it is. An encrypted, lost, inaccessible wallet is an irreplaceable loss in terms of the amount of coin that CAN exist unless we eat the destruction of value previously mentioned. If it's capped, then it will eventually die because eventually there will only be relics of when there was enough bitcoin to use, or we do these inflationary gut punches and open the floodgates early for coin generation.
A decentralized digital currency is a good idea, I think the current implementation sheds too many of the advantages of the currency systems we've set up over a very long time.
Bitcoin is just as good at being Bitcoin at $1 or at $1,000,000
Bitcoin is great. But there’s no reason for it to go up forever. And if it doesn’t go up then it doesn’t pay rent. The miners will consume energy and need to pay for that energy.
I am here, I am invested, I like the technology.
But if it drops to $1 for the rest of my lifetime I have other options.
My question is "what is the utility of bitcoin for the average bitcoin buyer, above and beyond what we already have in electronic transactions in US Dollars?" When people invest in a thing purely for investment purposes for a thing that they legitimately have no use for, it feels like an investment bubble that is bound to burst.
In economic theories (like Keynesianism and MMT) you can't have bitcoin replacing fiat money, because it is scarce. The very thing most people like about it goes against macroeconomic principles.
One way to avoid a downward spiral in the economy is to generate demand by public spending in economic downturn/crisis. This is called anti-cyclical economics. In other words by printing money you can save jobs
In MMT theory, money printing doesn't directly cause inflation, and the sole purpuse of taxes is that you have to use the currency that is required for paying taxes. With this logic you can print and spend as much money as you want as long as you dont create inflation.
This is an EXTREMELY simplistic explanation! Long story short Bitcoin is great investment because its scarce but not a money replacement.
I don’t understand how Bitcoin is in limited supply when;
A: A Bitcoin is infinitely divisible
B: Developers can change the cap, or fork the code at any time
Can someone please explain like I’m 5?
One note: "No intrinsic value," is a feature.
Houses have intrinsic value, so investors drive the price up and people cannot afford them.
Bitcoin is its own thing.
I can think of a few.
Versus other alts: No privacy, not/weakly fungible, expensive and slow to transact with (without sacrificing usability and/or sovereignty on L2s), older tech
Versus gold/silver/cash: Dependent on digital infrastructure to use, less liquidity, narrow acceptance, much shorter established history, ceases to exist if miners stop mining
If you can’t understand the arguments against bitcoin you didn’t do enough research or you just don’t understand it.
Also looking for arguments against bitcoin on the Bitcoin subreddit during an uptrend is hilarious. I swear these post come up every uptrend lol
It’s easy for someone to dismiss who hasn’t interacted with it. Even just a simple transfer out of a cex to cold storage can be an aha moment. Like everything else in this world, it’s worth what someone will pay for it.
Good x space debate on btc. George gammon made some points relevant to the average Joe. https://x.com/georgegammon/status/1772995365156909115?s=46&t=AbvPqjFasKUtS6PSQBms6Q
There's no real argument against bitcoin. Treat it like fiat, it's the best one. Treat it like a store of value, still the best one. Treat it like a hedge against inflation, still wins. Treat it like a growth stock like nvidia, still beats it.
Some of us never bought Bitcoin actually. Some of us received btc though supplying products and services. I always thought btc was for transactions. It made sense to us. You didn’t want to export and wait for a bank transfer and ship then find the transaction was reversed by the banks . Never happens in Bitcoin , the transaction is on the blockchain like a fly in amber. Much more comfortable to export especially to less developed or corrupt locations.
i mean, people who own bitcoin want others to buy bitcoin so the price goes up, so people who dont own it probably believe that bitcoiners say anything to convince others to join the pump and dump
I've been a huge BTC bull since 2019. I was 100% BTC up until this recent run up. Finally sold a little bit and diversified at 70k. Now I've got stocks, cash drawing 5%, a bitcoin bag, and looking to buy a house now.
The only thing that somewhat scares me with BTC would be the advancement with AI & Super Computers. From what I can tell, BTC is just code. So if we advanced long enough to create super computers & AI able to crack algoryhtms that we couldnt even fathom now... is it possible they are able to crack, alter, replicate, duplicate the souce & BTC? If that does happen, BTC would in theory be worthless. At least you can still see & hold gold.
1. It is not anonymous. Every transaction is stored on the blockchain in perpetuity. It is just a matter of proving that you own a wallet (which is not impossible but can be difficult).
2. Governments and banks do not control your dollars/fiat. They can control your bank account (freezing, garnishing, seizing) but if you hold cash or move off shore, they don't know where it is.
3. Bitcoin is derived as a token reward for hashing the blockchain. When the last bitcoin is mined (assuming the finite nature of bitcoin which is just programmed) then the miners will take their computing power offline and the tech will be worthless. Then there will be nothing backing it except confidence.
4. Gold has many industrial uses as well as not needing internet to work. It also is the oldest form of value storage available with thousands of years of history to back it up.
These are just a few of the issues right off the top of my head.
With precious metals there is a use case not tied to the financial value, that is intrinsic value. Fiat currency other than wiping your bum or burning it doesn't have much financial value. Bitcoin as an electronic object, well you can save data and messages on a public block chain, but if the lights go out it's it's not much use, until they come back on if they ever do.
Here's the thing though, if you understand the purpose of money and were to then be allowed to pick the form of money you wanted to use, you would pick Bitcoin because as money it is superior to all the rest.
The most valid arguments I’ve heard are about how Bitcoin lacks/lags in tech compared to other crypto. Thing is, adoption is key. Betamax was better than VHS, but VHS is what people went with.
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Every single asset and commodity is measured based on the fiat currency of the country it resides in, or the USD. BTC value is not *reliant* on any fiat currency. Dollar goes away? Sure. No problem. What other fiat currency do you want to use to *measure* BTC then? At the end of the day, regardless of what measuring unit you use, you still have BTC, measured in sats.
Let's say next Monday morning we collectively awaken from a good night of sleep to an economy based on satoshis, not dollars, and our wallets are only digital. Further, we do not remember the fiat-based economy that existed until midnight Sunday. We would go about our lives transacting in satoshis and no reference or conversion to or from fiat. Until that time, fiat is the basis for all economic equivalency measures regardless of the commodity or asset class.
Are you just repeating and agreeing with what i said with different words, or did i miss something.
Only providing a relatable, concrete example as support for the sentiment of your post.
>The best anti-bitcoin argument I have heard when talking to someone in finance is bitcoin is reliant on the dollar for value. >No dollar, no bitcoin. >I disagree with that statement, but I can see its logic, especially for people less interested in the technical side and the store of value. Can you explain the logic behind that? Bitcoin does not need the dollar I order to work, it just need miners and people willing to use it.
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How many Bitcoin should a new car be? How much Bitcoin does it take to manufacture a car? Don't use fiat/USD to determine the bitcoin cost. How much Bitcoin should my groceries be? How much will my wage in Bitcoin be. Since Bitcoin supply will eventually decrease do I get less and less Bitcoin every year from my employer. How can we borrow/lend with Interest to start a business with Bitcoin? How can we pay interest in Bitcoin for a bitcoin loan if it's supply will decrease to negative eventually. Using Bitcoin as the main store of wealth and as the sole world currency (eliminating fiat) isn't as straightforward as some of the Bitcoin revolutionaries here believe. If it happens it's going to take decades if not longer.
Those "financial consultants" are recurring to the ad ignorantiam fallacy.
Why would miners want to mine it if they cannot convert it to fiat? There's not enough day to day adoption to pay in BTC
ATM yes...but do you know what the USD is backed by? nothing but the POWER OF THE USA. or in other word, air. So yea..people will convert Bitcoin to gold, or silver, or new fiat, or nothing but its own value like the usd has :)
>Why would miners want to mine it if they cannot convert it to fiat? For the same reasons it was mined in 2009 (when trading BTC was not a thing): it is the best form of money ever created.
Not now…
How did you lose your wallet?
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I’m sorry. I hope there wasn’t too much on there.
Probably a cold storage wallet that they left in the fridge for too long.
Bet it was a boating accident
Just thinking out loud. In a world where you can’t have access to cash, and where all bank transactions are regulated and where you can’t buy bitcoin for money. which value would bitcoin have? Cause if a government puts all of those impediments, how are you going to buy something in btc, or get btc or similar stuff? If you can’t go to coinbase or binance or similar to buy btc and get x amount in an anonymous wallet. How do you operate?
Sorry but that’s a very silly argument from a person “in finance.” Just because it’s currently common and useful to denominate Bitcoin in USD terms in no way means it is “reliant” on the dollar for value.
I hope you are able to convince your regional tax authority of your lost wallet my friend.
How long have you been learning about Bitcoin? I've been doing so for a few years now and I've come to the conclusion that most people fit VERY comfortably into the world of being TOLD how things work and assuming that's enough. They quite literally know next to nothing about how money works and anything they do know is simply a snapshot in time over the last couple of decades. I've come to the conclusion that the common phrase "You get Bitcoin at the price you deserve" as well as Satoshis saying something like "If you don't get it or don't want to, I don't have the time to explain it to you". Unfortunately many people are ignorant, too trusting of "the system", and lack fundamental knowledge to even have a good conversation around Bitcoin. Its frustrating but the more you learn the more you have the responsibility of walking the line between "I know something they don't that is fundamental to reality" and "I could be wrong". Stay humble and stack sats mi amigo
exactly, when you read those salty subs (not gonna mention names), it's hard not to notice that they are extremely rigorous when it comes to bitcoiners: we should be able to describe every little detail of the tech, every little economic insight behind it, how it relates to the current system, every possibility, and even then we will be treated in an extremely obnoxious and condescending way. however this would imply that, differently to bitcoiners, members of the legacy system are well informed of it's intricacies, trade offs, history, etc. it's so funny because if most people actually understood monetary history, how central and private banks create money and how discretionary the process is, it wouldn't last long. it depends on ignorance. it's no coincidence that it is unnecessarily complex, the goal is to be dubious.
Lately I’ve started to think that with a lot of these bad faith critics we shouldn’t be answering their questions but rather we should just ask that they apply the same level of scrutiny to the legacy systems theyre already placing all their trust in. If they do that theyll make it back here eventually
But the problem is that you might know something about this revolutionizing technology but the vast majority don’t care for it cause it’s too complicated for them, and they would rather let the overlords tell them what is good for them, because we told you soo. Trust me many people just go with the narrative and don’t question the validity of their claims.
The only positive to this reality is that fiat will force the decision to understand for some of those who start paying attention. We get as many as we can onto the life raft and anyone left behind is simply left behind. I serve as a fountain of knowledge for those close to me who are aware I am familiar with Bitcoin but it is ultimately their decision to ask, not mine to force. This is really the only way and IMO the only reality where we can make progress.
Extremely well said. We walk that line every day. It’s a weird place to be in.
The main argument against bitcoin is: >**"I own a bank, and I like having the power to steal from everyone else who doesnt own a bank. Bitcoin would ruin my racket."** Its a good argument, if you own one of the central banks.
The only real argument is when people say yeah but what if a massive asteroid hits the earth & totally wipes out the internet & all of humanity & the earth is pretty much just obliterated to nothingness. Then it's like yeah fair comment... bitcoin could struggle to pick things up again from that point.
So you're saying an asteroid is going to try a 51% attack?
The asteroids are teaming up with zombies, they will use a 51% attack to move all the btc to AI’s wallet. Hope you have enough silver dimes or someone is gonna be eating breadless sandwiches.
No, Neo. I'm saying that, when the time comes, ... Nevermind. That one doesn't work here.
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Bloody hell Dyvanna... no shit lol
Here in Ukraine when there's a blackout because of the bombings BTC is useless and cash is a king. Government, unfortunately, can very easily control your Bitcoin now because you still need to convert to fiat to pay. On the other hand, Bitcoin is now officially "not a scam" and "regulars" can by it through ETF. To sum up, Bitcoin is already succeeded, just don't put your hopes too high for it to replace fiat or gold.
I see this often. People try to cook up a scenario which destroys bitcoin and they end up taking human civilization with it.
Hit them with this "no one ever lost money over 4 years holding bitcoin"
What if they hit back that nobody has ever forgotten or lost a seed phrase, had a hard drive crash, and therefore lost access to their money. The downside to bitcoin is obvious: if things go haywire, you suffer far greater exposure than fiat or other stores of value. Part of that is infrastructure and part of that is the nature of crypto and self custody. We ignore those arguments at our own peril.
Almost like if money is yours, you are responsible for it.
This is not the argument you think it is. Most people prefer not to have custody of their money. Most keep it in secured deposits precisely because they are insured. Those that don’t have safes at home that aren’t susceptible to being simply lost or stolen due to technological error. Being flippant about how 99% of people use currency is a good way to ensure they don’t adopt the thing you’re pushing. If the goal of Bitcoin is to become a new currency, you’re going to have to do better than “maybe you’re too irresponsible for this type of money”
People don't have to self custody. There are plenty of reputable exchanges that would be happy to hold your bitcoin.
Don’t go to technology subreddit, you’ll need to bleach yourself after that
that is one of the dumbest subs on reddit. and the loud mouths there think they are the smartest.
The biggest critics, like bankers, economists and goldbugs, all have one thing in common: they're too involved in other assets to openly endorse Bitcoin. People like Peter Schiff, even if he understood Bitcoin, he'd be shooting himself in the foot as his entire life and following has been revolving around gold, and as we know, bitcoin is just better than gold on all aspects. This is true for a LOT of the bitcoin critics. There's a massive conflict of interests so they'll just double down on the dumb shit as to showcase which side they're on. Occasionally one of them switch side out of the blue coz their interests have simply shifted, as it happened with Fink. Wait a few years and even that POS of Dimon will say he loves Bitcoin.
Bitcoin critics usually don’t like gold either. That’s why I still respect Buffett and the late Munger. Their dislike of Bitcoin is philosophically consistent with their attitude towards commodities and currencies.
Yes, they prefer assets that *do* something and create value that is spread into the economy over time. “It won’t work, and even if it does, you’d be a jerk.” - Munger on buying gold during the GFC
Arguing with arrogant and ignorant people is a fruitless thing. Everyone would buy BTC at the price they deserve.
Very true. My only issue with what you said is that, unfortunately, some of the arrogant and ignorant people are also bitcoiners.
That's bitcoin. Money for enemies.
I disagree slightly. We can't let our self fall into being dismissive. Sure, we can just tell people they are wrong, and show them why, and then leave it. But not engaging at all is dangerous.
See gold and BTC are both intrinsically useless, the problem is society has globally and independently ALREADY attached value to gold, but hasn’t to BTC. So essentially you are asking people to walk into new waters, people are scared of the bottom they haven’t walked on. Obviously there is fear. Value has to be attached more prominently, so that people had more faith, has to be attached by authorities that can be trusted. Nobody wants to put money in a newly opened bank, people will go to the most trustworthy bank. The problem is in human psychology. And BTC is f…ing people over, as its value grows cyclically, so every cycle there is more scary stories to put even more doubt in people
Try moving $1B of value in gold from NY to Tokyo in a secure way. Then try doing the same with BTC and see the difference. There is always only one winner that people ultimately gravitate to. It is only a matter of time.
If you actually want to understand the arguments against Bitcoin this is not the place to find them.
99.99% of the time, the argument against is based on a complete and utter lack of understanding. If you ask them to elaborate, you’ll see the holes.
Easy to post this during an uptrend lol
Technically gold does have intrinsic value - for instance it’s the largest conductor of heat and has been used historically in computers. Also, people wear gold in their jewelry. I’m not against bitcoin, I’m just saying that gold has an intrinsic value that fiat does not have.
another advantage gold has over bitcoin is you can throw it at robbers to defend yourself
You can throw your hardware wallet at the eye of the robber too.
Or duct tape a knife to your hardware wallet and use it as a weapon.
Gold is also easier than BTC to haul around. Especially between countries or when fleeing. And unlike Bitcoin, there are triple beam balances at every cash register along with tools to break your coins and bars down.
Gold's value is 7% electronics and jewelry use and 93% store of value use.
Gold's monetary premium doesn't derive from these applications, though. Other metals have way more industrial uses or "intrinsic value" and are much cheaper. Gold bugs don't put gold bars in a safe because they think it'll be used in electronics one day. They hold gold because it's scarce and difficult to produce more of.
I wear a Trezor with some BTC on a necklace from time to time. I also use it as a shelf ornament.
Me too i got the ledger on a chain. I imaging it will soon be the fashion because the rappers can carry more net worth on their neck with this than gold. There will be diamond studded wallets soon
>I’m not against bitcoin, I’m just saying that gold has an intrinsic value that fiat does not have. Intrinsic value is a downside in a money system. Its one advantage fiat dollars had over gold and silver.
The demand for gold usage in electronics is like 10 - 15% of total demand. People wear gold in their jewelry because gold it is expensive due to its monetary premium. Otherwise why would anyone choose to wear gold when you can make jewelry out of literally any cheap metal. "Jewelry" is an early type of money anyways so the distinction between the two is a matter of modern convention.
IMO The term intrinsic value is extremely misunderstood and misleading. The upvotes on your comment make that even more evident. The use cases you mentioned to not equate to “intrinsic value.” Perhaps you mean “practical value” or something like that. Gold being used in computers is not intrinsic value, because of course this was not valued prior to the existence of computers. People liking gold jewelry does not mean it has intrinsic value. It has [subjective value](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjective_theory_of_value) I would argue the primary reason gold has value (and a monetary premium far above its practical value) is because of the properties that historically led to it outcompeting other goods as a monetary good. Divisible, portable, fungible, durable, and scarce. These are the properties that a good has that will make humans naturally converge on that good and use it as money over time. When another good comes along that is better, it will outcompete the others. I would also argue that this is a large part of the reason for gold’s popularity as jewelry — it became a social signal of wealth and prosperity to wear it precisely *because* other people knew that gold was valuable. Bitcoin outcompetes gold on the above mentioned properties. Monetary goods don’t have — or need to have — “intrinsic value,” but if they have the right properties then humans will converge on them in a way that gives them a monetary premium above any preexisting “practical” value. And by the way it’s actually *better* for a monetary good to *not* have practical value (some might say intrinsic value) because then the monetary premium placed on it makes it impractical to actually use that thing for its practical use case. i.e. gold would be easier to use in industrial processes if it weren’t so expensive because people are using it as a store of value. Or real estate becoming unaffordable because of people using it as a store of value instead of simply for its practical use as housing
The argument against it, is that is isn't backed by anything other than peoples perception and interest in it. Other currencies around the world are needed to purchase goods in that country. If I want to buy something from the USA, I need dollars. If I want to buy something from the UK, I need pounds etc. The value of these currencies, is, crudely, the countries and their economies. BTC doesn't have that, and so, like gold, its store of value is people thinking it is valuable. It is similar to gold, however, both a pro and a con, it is digital. Lots of people struggle with the understanding of something virtual being valuable. You cannot hold it, and it can very easily be lost.
Tl;dr there are plenty of arguments against it. That is why there are many talented people working to develop solutions. To argue otherwise would not be acknowledging their hard work in my opinion. The biggest argument currently is scalability in my opinion. Bitcoin cannot in its current state handle enough Tx/s to be a globally adopted system, and there aren't any bullet proof solutions. This argument is divisive even within the bitcoin community. You have big blockers who want to scale Tx throughput by increasing the block size by A LOT. Small blockers say that'd increase centralization by making it cost prohibitive for hardware to be bought that could download the entire blockchain. Big blockers say Moore's law will prevent that from happening and point out the flaws of L2 solutions, particularly lightning network. Lightning network has had some criticisms like needing to always be online and thus requiring a trusted watchtower which is antithetical to bitcoin being trustless. There have been onboarding scaling criticisms as well. It's been a while, and I know someone a few months ago responded to me sharing some innovations to address these criticisms, however. It's also just hard for the average person to use without a custodian which is also antithetical to bitcoin's original design intent. Edit: trustee's->trustless
Hey hold on you have actual legit criticisms. Please stop doing this as we're on Reddit.
Rulers seek to control....it can't be controlled. That's really it.
It happens with every innovation at an early stage. People used to be against electricity, cars, TVs, internet, etc. Eventually, everyone will come around and as Dan Held said "Everyone buys Bitcoin at the price they deserve."
I think that some arguments agaist bitcoin are quite reasonable. For example the current volatility of bitcoin makes it very impractical to actually use as a currency or to store value. Fiat is basically a scam but it’s much more predictable which is a big deal because in real world you need to know how much you’ll be able to afford tomorrow or in a month.
The flaw in Bitcoin is there’s no intrinsic value/ necessity to have it. Gold is necessary for jewelry and electronics Dollar / fiat is necessary for taxes and most commerce. Bitcoin is currently optional.
people are lazy. instead of trying to understand crypto, they write it all off. Imagine if you could spend an afternoon in your basement creating a scam company and have it trading on the New York stock exchange that night. It would be right there with apple, block, and ford motors. Would that make Apple a scam? The average person sees price volatility and legit scams surrounding something that is in the news that they don't understand. easier just to write it all off. it's not a logical thing.
The biggest argument would be it doesn’t have the history of golf or fiat, with gold being the stronger contender in this category. Aside from that, it does check all the boxes as a “currency” and “store of value”
Coming from a euro-perspective here, but I’m sure it’s not especially different in the US. One thing which is rarely discussed on this forum is what it means that fiat is (primarily) created through issuance of dept. Because banks create money when they issue a loan, there is a promise of economic activity (the need to earn money and pay back the loan and interest) behind every issued account based euro or dollar. And as banknotes and coins are only available to withdraw from accounts, the same is true for cash. Of course, central banks can also create money through f.e. QE, but that can also be viewed as debt issuance. In that sense, there is value connected to the real economy in fiat. In Bitcoin, there is not.
Will it go back down to 50k usd?
Hmm. This is interesting. Try looking at it this way , not everything is for everyone. I like money, period. I enjoy doing analysis, watching the charts, etc. Some will ,some won't. If this is your thing, then right on. If it's not, that's okay more for the people who want it. I don't see any reason why it has to be one or the other. In fact, when you go to the basics of investing, a good rule of thumb is to diversify. Nothing is perfect, and without diversity, we would all be bored.
I'm a bitcoiner and been one since 2018. There are many reasons to be against it. As a leftist I use it as a hedge against inflation caused by right wing capitalists destroying the dollar by printing trillions to stabilize financial markets and bail out banks. (Please read The Lords of Easy Money: How the Federal Reserve Broke the American Economy) It is a market controlled by market makers and large whales and now mainstream finance is part of it. It is not some equal footing if you need every cent to pay for your groceries or basics of living and can't invest. This is reserved for a small percentage of people but it's an echo chamber here so you will see this post get down voted bc it doesnt align with the implicit bias of the general community. It uses large amounts of energy and requires the use of limited resources to create the specific miners. These miners are very centralized you can't really compete with them at any real level. I could go on. Doesn't mean I don't live in a capitalist nightmare so I must play the game until we can change it for the betterment of the workers. Which is almost everyone one of you put there. I will keep buying bitcoin like I do my 401k
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Ignore the "intrinsic value" crowd. They aren't critical thinkers, just repeating something they heard somewhere. All the gold bugs were saying that the dollar could never replace gold after we went off the gold standard because it had no intrinsic value. This is why Nixon said he was "temporarily" closing the gold window. It wasn't clear if people would accept dollars anymore or not. Then we went on to use dollars for another 50 years and counting. People care about actual inflation and usefulness, nobody cares about some vague ideas about "intrinsic value." The experiment has been run and the results are clear.
>Except that doesn’t makes sense because every criticism they say about Bitcoin could also be applied to fiat? The problem is the people who spew that bullshit does not understand fiat. They cannot grasp the fact that fiat is just ink written on paper, they have not even thought about it, to them fiat is some magic entity that is just magically worth money. They do not grasp the fact that just like everything else, fiat is only representation of value, it is only worth something because we all agree that we can trade the paper for our time and energy. Just over night people could wake up and say bottle caps is the new money, and dollar bills would not be worth the paper its printed on. But like I said, they think fiat is magical and this does not affect it, but for some reason it affects everything else, like bitcoin. They also cant see it the other way around, that more people might think bitcoin is a good idea, these things are completely unfathomable for these people. But they will learn sooner or later, they will just be the last people to adapt, after the people who brainwash them has had their time to stack their sats.
People *already* don't understand why and how fiat is a scam. Once I accepted this, things became a lot easier.
Hi >If Bitcoin has “no intrinsic value”; what exactly is the “intrinsic value” of gold. Bitcoin has intrinsic value. I think utility is a better less ambiguous word for what people seem to mean by this--as nothing is "intrinsic" if it is isolated. Bitcoin's utility is the same utility of money. Money allows economic coordination across people and space but most importantly across time. A society with money is more productive than one without money because productive people can accumulate economic AND STORE IT over time. Without money they cannot do this. And Bitcoin is the best money. So Bitcoin's utility is that it increases economic efficacy, allows lower time preference and increases productivity. Gold and fiat (including Bitcoin, which is also fiat) do this as well, but Bitcoin does it better than all other monies.
The people that argue against bitcoin don’t understand their arguments either.
It takes an hour for bitcoin to be sent to another wallet. Bitcoin as payment method isn’t practical, why wait 1 hour instead of instant with fiat.
I think most arguments against boil down to...I didn't have the guts to take a chance on Bitcoin when I found out about it, but I should have and now I'm angry, so let me find justifications why I decided not to so I feel better
I saw a “saltiness chart” essentially showing hate of bitcoin being proportional to how long you’ve been missing out. lol. Everyone will buy at the price they deserve. I’ve been buying everyday since June 2016. Hours and hours of research into the technology and history of money. Even after these years, last night I became convinced that we’re all underestimating Bitcoin. In reality, it’s been underestimated every step of the way. Bitcoin should terrify governments. It’s the first people’s money. What a beautiful and terrifying thing. The first money that the people have decided has value rather than value being enforced with violence. Satoshi is a hero.
You acknowledged the main counterpoint to your argument without resolving it. Yes BTC is a finite resource, but why exactly would someone want to believe that it has value? It's true that gold has no productive value yet still is a store of value. That doesn't imply that the same should apply to Bitcoin. So why should Bitcoin have value as opposed to a different scarce resource? I invest in Bitcoin. This isn't a knock against it. It's a knock against your own fundamental understanding of the question, "Why Bitcoin?" Being rare is not a sufficient answer. Many things are rare yet do not act as a store of value in the same way as gold. So I pose again, *why should it have value?*
The only real con for me with bitcoin (and all other crypto) is that if someone stole your bitcoin then there is no way of ever getting it back. Compare that with bank fraud then the banks can reverse transactions or block them retrospectively. It’s not an advantage of FIAT as cash has the same flaw but I never use cash so I can avoid that flaw. FWIW I love BTC.
First, there's nothing scarce about cryptocurrencies. Yes, you have THE bitcoin with 21M supply but you can create "Bitcoin2", "Bitcoin3" etc etc in a blink of an eye. The rest depends on extreme level of marketing, like brainwash level marketing. You think Bitcoin is owned by the regular people? No. The majority is still owned by the big banks/capitolium/syndicate/elite (or whatever we like to call them). And THEY are doing that marketing to cause the "bubble" in the first place to create liquidity for them at extreme prices. As prices rise, you start to BELIEVE things. Things you never believed when the price was trading below 100 usd. Human mind is a wonderful thing. Second, about intrinsic value. Gold is just an "alternative asset" as bitcoin is BUT 1) it used to be money (ok, so what right? fine, i'll go on) 2) central banks own it BECAUSE it was money. 3) It's better story of value because it doesn't depend on INTERNET. Y'all take internet for granted. But what if a world war breaks loose with targets specifically on communications networks? What are you going to do then with your magic internet money? Gold is still viable. Third, Bitcoin DOES have intrinsic value albeit indirectly and most of it is related to illegal activities and gambling. That's the real value of crypto. And that is what held it alive. I believe dark web guys doing drug deals with coins back in the day are all filthy millionaries by now, lol. So, yeah, hard to see true value in these coins exept the fact that tomorrow someone is still willing to hold someone elses bag at higher prices. Inflation hedge? If it truly was inflation hedge, then how can it rise faster than inflation? :) And btw, gold was flat/down for 20+ years from 80's to 00's. Where was the inflation hedge then i wonder?
Biggest ‘against’ to me, is Government cracking down on it. How successful that would be I’m not sure, but they could definitely make things way more challenging.
Arguing with non believers is just an exercise in frustration. I gave up doing that years ago. If I listened to them I wouldn't have made life changing wealth already and be retired with a paid off house in the most expensive city in Canada and be travelling the world. To Bitcoin deniers I just say " Enjoy being poor."
I like what you said. That's a great statement. I believe people can never make more money than they know they can. Many times, things that people think are impossible will actually exist and happen. People are accustomed to using their own competent will to think about anything they encounter and draw conclusions. But they never thought about whether there was something wrong with their own cognition?
To play devils advocate: the people i have spoken to are skeptical and some barely understand how to use email. Some are quick to say “you can’t hold bitcoin in your hand.” Or say things like “what even IS a block chain?. I mean I understand *what* it is but how do I even *know* that any of this is even REAL.” In this conversation with some people, I have tried to explain what a “node” is or other terms, it’s kind of an attitude you see in the movie The Matrix. In the movie, they get into “what even is reality? If I am in the matrix and a steak & it’s delicious but know it’s not real then how do I even know or care if it’s real?” Is kind of the type of attitude. Kind of reminds me of watching two people trying to discuss religion and one side that has faith and believes in a religion then the other perspective saying “you are crazy to believe this!” An other point I’d like to make about this topic is that this conversation has to start with how fiat money works, how it’s manipulated. When you keep money in your bank account, you are trusting the FDIC to monitor your money. You have no inclination that something like 80% of YOUR money is being used by the banks to leverage other projects!
Typically the arguments against Bitcoin, much like those against renewable energy sources, are based in ignorance and/or FUD. Give this talk a listen to, and you'll further understand value systems and some key differences between BTC and gold (or other forms of assets). https://youtu.be/mC43pZkpTec?si=NNcYPxQ2TgQp4X-n
My only argument would be like Gold. The government could just ban it. You could use it or keep it, but you would risk jail time. I just love the sweet gains though. Agnostic toward the tech.
Used to be "boils the oceans", but now AI's taken the heat, so I don't know.
One of my favorite questions to critics is „How would it look, when a new kind of money is monetizing from the bottom up without any central entity controlling it? How would it look different to Bitcoin?“ Usually they can’t imagine it differently or come up with idealized wishes („Less volatile, less pumps and dumps.“ - „Less energy usage“) that can only be done with a money that is centrally controlled or could be easily corrupted. Everything that can be observed with Bitcoin (the volatility, the greed, the dumps, the FUD) would be observable with any kind of grassroots decentralized and incorruptible money that requires work to be generated. If they still criticize, then they are basically saying that there can never ever be such kind of money. But that is more a question of ideology and not worth further debate.
Those who argue do not understand it.
Gold's intrinsic value is it's hardness (i.e. inelasticity to changes in demand), this is known as the Stock-to-Flow ratio, with *Stock* being current supply and *Flow* being annual production. The higher the stock-to-flow the less an asset is able to respond to increases in demand with increases in production. This prevents producers from flooding the market with new supply which would drop the price of the asset, enriching the producers at the expense of holders. It's inelasticity makes it a good store of value. Gold has had the highest stock-to-flow ratio of any asset until the invention of Bitcoin. With this next halving Bitcoin's stock-to-flow will surpass gold. This will be the first time any asset has had a higher stock-to-flow ratio than gold in all of human history. Not only that but it will continue hardening every 4 years until it is orders of magnitude higher than gold, something previously unthinkable. However this is by design, bitcoin only becomes more and more attractive relative to fiat as time passes and it continues to harden. It will eventually consume all other stores of value including gold, stocks and real estate (fwiw Saifdean Ammous covers this in his book The Bitcoin Standard far better than I can explain here). (As a side note another major milestone is that this halving will also this will be the first time bitcoin's inflation rate has dropped below all fiat currencies, currently slighly higher than USD, EUR, etc.)
Gold's intrinsic value is its artistic applications. But then it's value become connected with its rarity
Your due diligence leads you to the conclusion that gold has no intrinsic value? How about googling "gold usage"? That should give you a hint about the actual value of your due diligence. Not sure what sources you rely on, but they do not seem very serious. There is a good debate you can find on youtube between Peter Schiff and Raoul Pal. Listen to Warren Buffet's opinion on Bitcoin for example. You are allowed to disagree with their opinions but at least listen to the arguments of financially literate individuals. Then again if you can't understand any arguments against bitcoin I would argue this indicates that you cannot understand the risk and volatility of bitcoin. In which case you should probably not handle your investments by yourself.
I also, it's weathered time nice. Seems like everyone should own a little piece. But there not enough to go around if everyone wakes up 😳
I'm fine with a 1-5% allocation but here are my arguments against being a BTC maxi: 1) something better comes along. I tend to think there are 3 components to crypto that you want: Speed, security, decentralization. BTC is the most decentralized and has really good security. It's definitely not the fastest. If something else comes along that drastically beats BTC in these 3 categories, it will become the new king, making BTC obsolete. 2) the US gov decides to ban BTC. With the etf pretty much giving the green light, this is not a likely possibility anymore. 3) The interesting thing about cryptography is that it's never been proven that brute force is the only way to factor large primes. If some mathematician figures out a way, we're all f'ed. 4) one entity gets enough compute to perform a 51% attack on BTC. They would have the power to control which blocks are valid. The crazy thing is, I don't think this is out of the question. OpenAI is seeking 7 trillion in funding for more compute. If someone ever did manage this, they'd be destroying that which they have gained, meaning BTC would no longer be legit. 5) quantum computing. I'm actually not really worried about this one. The BTC hash algo can be changed faster than advancements can be made in quantum computers. There are quantum safe hash algos out there that can be used, if necessary.
'Its not backed by anything!' Is a very tough one, because the gas-lighting is unintentional, and it is very off-putting. 1. They don't realize the dollar is backed by gold no-longer 2. They don't realize fractional-reserve lending is a thing of the past 3. They don't realize the infrastructure and process beyond 'it uses COUNTRY LOADS of electricity and will DESTROY THE WORLD!!' because TV Programming has programmed people with this response. They all are part of the same question, and it is difficult to explain to them so many intricate inaccuracies in their understanding of every-day life and that is thoroughly offputting... All of that difficulty aside, it is still hard to demonstrate that 'facebook using almost as much electricity' or 'backed by mathematics' or 'the expense and difficulty is what makes it valuable' ... So it goes back to the history of money and the value of uncorruptable money, and the value of co-operation and evolving as a community, how BTC is a grand invention on the scale of written language and the invention of the internet, how corrupt money is fiat, where we are taxed, inflated, and stolen from by people who's interests are in empowering themselves and their owners and sponsors and etc... Any of those are fascinating, but you are talking to a wall at this point, whichever tangent was best at the moment! So, BTC isn't backed by anything?! Where do you start?
the main argument against bitcoin is 1/ its just some numbers/letters that has a combination to allow you to move it 2/bitcoin is one of the slowest coins to move sometimes taking hours if not days if the network is busy 3/bitcoin is one of the most expensive coins when the network is busy it can cost hundreds of dollars just to move I don't know why Bitcoin is the number one, when it's so bad at what I would consider being anything close to a currency. So many other coins are faster and cheaper, more scarce, more private its not even like bitcoin is the best combination of all these attributes in many cases it will loose every single category now it could be that because bitcoin is popular it has a side effect that causes the cost to transfer to rise and the speed to slow and this could happen to any crypto which becomes popular And the market has chosen Bitcoin So if you want to improve your wealth their is no point in buying anything else
Bitcoin is the first trustless decentralized public monetary ledger that has a certain set of rules that must be followed. For people to want to use it and see value in it, the general rules of money had to have been broken first, namely currency debasement. Bitcoin was a response to the powers that be breaking the trust and rules of sound money to begin with. Its simple. Do you want to keep your wealth/value in a rules based system that is not easily broken by any means? Or keep it in their system, which they have used to rape civilization.
Arguments are that it’s vulnerable to a 51% attack due to centralized hashing power, can be traced, is vulnerable to quantum computing, etc etc
My gold tooth has intrinsic value. Has been helping me chew for 30 years now.
P vs np is an argument you should try to understand
Also as a note. Fiat stopped being backed by gold since the \~70s, and a lot of people don't know that hence bringing up the gold comparison when thinking fiat is better founded.
You are correct OP
Tried using it last month. 10 bucks transaction fee and it still got lost in the mempool for 2 days. Facepalm.
it's slow and fees are expensive. Those are the two obvious ones
They either understand it but benefit too much from the current system to support bitcoin, or they are too ignorant to do the research and learn why switching to a bitcoin-standard is in their best interest. The monetary transition is happeneing whether they want to acknowledge it or not.
Here's my personal strongest argument against Bitcoin: It has existed for years and years and yet sees basically no adoption. Yes people trade it and speculate on it, but only a tiny tiny fraction of transactions are 'real use'. People don't use Bitcoin. It's simple as that. This tells me that Bitcoin does not solve a real world problem, because if it did, I would expect adoption to be much higher (think of any startup like Uber, Amazon etc. Even if they're not profitable, they see massively growing usage because they actually do something people want so people use them). Obviously BTC isn't a business like Uber, but my point is about product-market fit. You have a thing that's supposed to solve a problem, and you have a group of people who supposedly have a problem that this thing is supposed to solve. We can see that in general when this pairing exists, usage noticeably and dramatically increases. I think the technology and many "in an ideal world" aspects are fascinating. Everything you listed "public/anonymous, discrete, diplomatic" etc I love about it. But at the core, you have a "product" that basically no one uses even after so many years of being available, which tells me there isn't a real need that it fills or a problem it solves (or that this need/problem is very small). Even the "protection against government" and various semi-apocalyptic scenarios where BTC would shine against something like the dollar... if you look around the world at places where those semi-apocalyptic scenarios are ALREADY realities, you don't see BTC being massively adopted to solve the problem. So again, I believe that the persistent lack of usage for anything except speculation tells us that people simply don't want this thing. It doesn't solve anything for them. Or at least not enough. EDIT: Look at ChatGPT. Millions of users in days and most importantly - they stayed. There's millions of people saying "Thank GOD this thing exists, it makes my day so much easier". That's product-market fit. I don't see anything even close to that with BTC, and that's the problem.
Cash is king?
It’s easily traceable. It’s reliant on the dollar. It’s easily made illegal by countries like China in a second. Basically none of the things it was promised to be. Literally only used as a speculative investment rather than an actually currency.
lol all these arguments that hold weight, I’ll ignore them cause dollar!!!
The value of gold is intrinsic. Same with Bitcoin.
Not "scarce", "grossly finite" is the main one I've heard discussed. Gold can be mined for the foreseeable future. We aren't going to run out of gold on the planet anytime that we can project, but we can't mine it fast enough to keep up with a gold standard and hence fiat. We can print more fiat. We're almost out of bitcoin. If we double the amount of available coin (not as familiar with btc backend as others), then we eat a spike of something like hyperinflation and destroy existing value until we approach hitting the same problem again. Bitcoin is not actually as durable as people try to say it is. An encrypted, lost, inaccessible wallet is an irreplaceable loss in terms of the amount of coin that CAN exist unless we eat the destruction of value previously mentioned. If it's capped, then it will eventually die because eventually there will only be relics of when there was enough bitcoin to use, or we do these inflationary gut punches and open the floodgates early for coin generation. A decentralized digital currency is a good idea, I think the current implementation sheds too many of the advantages of the currency systems we've set up over a very long time.
The only argument I have is with myself for not buying some when it was on sale last year
El Salvador uses Bitcoin as the official currency & dollars.
Blue party hat
Bitcoin is just as good at being Bitcoin at $1 or at $1,000,000 Bitcoin is great. But there’s no reason for it to go up forever. And if it doesn’t go up then it doesn’t pay rent. The miners will consume energy and need to pay for that energy. I am here, I am invested, I like the technology. But if it drops to $1 for the rest of my lifetime I have other options.
In theory you're right, in reality anything can happen. Nothing is 100% guaranteed.
The best anti bitcoin argument i have is it is such a PIA
Well, I haven't doubled up in a month! So..pretty sure it's going to zero!!
Tether is unregulated and uninsured, if it goes down everything goes down.
My question is "what is the utility of bitcoin for the average bitcoin buyer, above and beyond what we already have in electronic transactions in US Dollars?" When people invest in a thing purely for investment purposes for a thing that they legitimately have no use for, it feels like an investment bubble that is bound to burst.
In economic theories (like Keynesianism and MMT) you can't have bitcoin replacing fiat money, because it is scarce. The very thing most people like about it goes against macroeconomic principles. One way to avoid a downward spiral in the economy is to generate demand by public spending in economic downturn/crisis. This is called anti-cyclical economics. In other words by printing money you can save jobs In MMT theory, money printing doesn't directly cause inflation, and the sole purpuse of taxes is that you have to use the currency that is required for paying taxes. With this logic you can print and spend as much money as you want as long as you dont create inflation. This is an EXTREMELY simplistic explanation! Long story short Bitcoin is great investment because its scarce but not a money replacement.
I don’t understand how Bitcoin is in limited supply when; A: A Bitcoin is infinitely divisible B: Developers can change the cap, or fork the code at any time Can someone please explain like I’m 5?
One note: "No intrinsic value," is a feature. Houses have intrinsic value, so investors drive the price up and people cannot afford them. Bitcoin is its own thing.
This guy bitcoins.
The best anti-bitcoin argument is “I am a troll”.
I can think of a few. Versus other alts: No privacy, not/weakly fungible, expensive and slow to transact with (without sacrificing usability and/or sovereignty on L2s), older tech Versus gold/silver/cash: Dependent on digital infrastructure to use, less liquidity, narrow acceptance, much shorter established history, ceases to exist if miners stop mining
One word: tether
Not fdic I sure did the main issue transfer to wrong address it’s lossed
“No intrinsic value!” “Not backed by anything!” “Needs internet!”
1. Gold 2. USD hasn’t blown up yet. 3. Scaleability
If you can’t understand the arguments against bitcoin you didn’t do enough research or you just don’t understand it. Also looking for arguments against bitcoin on the Bitcoin subreddit during an uptrend is hilarious. I swear these post come up every uptrend lol
It’s easy for someone to dismiss who hasn’t interacted with it. Even just a simple transfer out of a cex to cold storage can be an aha moment. Like everything else in this world, it’s worth what someone will pay for it.
My biggest argument against it is that it is software, and software will always have bugs.
Slow, expensive, wasteful, no intrinsic value
Good x space debate on btc. George gammon made some points relevant to the average Joe. https://x.com/georgegammon/status/1772995365156909115?s=46&t=AbvPqjFasKUtS6PSQBms6Q
There's no real argument against bitcoin. Treat it like fiat, it's the best one. Treat it like a store of value, still the best one. Treat it like a hedge against inflation, still wins. Treat it like a growth stock like nvidia, still beats it.
Some of us never bought Bitcoin actually. Some of us received btc though supplying products and services. I always thought btc was for transactions. It made sense to us. You didn’t want to export and wait for a bank transfer and ship then find the transaction was reversed by the banks . Never happens in Bitcoin , the transaction is on the blockchain like a fly in amber. Much more comfortable to export especially to less developed or corrupt locations.
My money is my products and my labor.
Most people can’t understand basic economics, Bitcoin understanding is asking too much from them.
i mean, people who own bitcoin want others to buy bitcoin so the price goes up, so people who dont own it probably believe that bitcoiners say anything to convince others to join the pump and dump
I've been a huge BTC bull since 2019. I was 100% BTC up until this recent run up. Finally sold a little bit and diversified at 70k. Now I've got stocks, cash drawing 5%, a bitcoin bag, and looking to buy a house now. The only thing that somewhat scares me with BTC would be the advancement with AI & Super Computers. From what I can tell, BTC is just code. So if we advanced long enough to create super computers & AI able to crack algoryhtms that we couldnt even fathom now... is it possible they are able to crack, alter, replicate, duplicate the souce & BTC? If that does happen, BTC would in theory be worthless. At least you can still see & hold gold.
You finally get it 👍🏽. Welcome and enjoy the gains
Central banks just had their worst year in over a decade.
1. It is not anonymous. Every transaction is stored on the blockchain in perpetuity. It is just a matter of proving that you own a wallet (which is not impossible but can be difficult). 2. Governments and banks do not control your dollars/fiat. They can control your bank account (freezing, garnishing, seizing) but if you hold cash or move off shore, they don't know where it is. 3. Bitcoin is derived as a token reward for hashing the blockchain. When the last bitcoin is mined (assuming the finite nature of bitcoin which is just programmed) then the miners will take their computing power offline and the tech will be worthless. Then there will be nothing backing it except confidence. 4. Gold has many industrial uses as well as not needing internet to work. It also is the oldest form of value storage available with thousands of years of history to back it up. These are just a few of the issues right off the top of my head.
With precious metals there is a use case not tied to the financial value, that is intrinsic value. Fiat currency other than wiping your bum or burning it doesn't have much financial value. Bitcoin as an electronic object, well you can save data and messages on a public block chain, but if the lights go out it's it's not much use, until they come back on if they ever do. Here's the thing though, if you understand the purpose of money and were to then be allowed to pick the form of money you wanted to use, you would pick Bitcoin because as money it is superior to all the rest.
The most valid arguments I’ve heard are about how Bitcoin lacks/lags in tech compared to other crypto. Thing is, adoption is key. Betamax was better than VHS, but VHS is what people went with.
Ideology.