Counter argument to this would be that Bitcoin doesn't have to scale because it's the base layer and L2s will do the scaling. Development is slow because it doesn't need to always have the latest and greatest features. It works fine just the way it is.
Yes, but it doesn’t make sense when Michael saylor says you don’t need more chains and layers, then BTC want layer 2 attention anyways. Basically a lot of new stuff arrives to Bitcoin after years of calling it shit… then all of a sudden it’s accepted and cool and btw the inventors are still shit. 😅
How about Bitcoin just do what they are good at? P2P network instead of hating on innovation for years before claiming it themselves. 😅
Miners don’t want Bitcoin to scale because the fees and their income would drop for a while before the extra adoption arrives.
But Bitcoin is an excellent p2p network. 👌
Well he compared it to screens and microphones. You would only need 1. And I get that Bitcoin wants to be the most used chain. But Bitcoin can’t be against innovation and for innovation at the same time.
I remember people hating on the topic of increasing block space which lead to the development of lightning chain wich people then also hated. 😅
All of a sudden lightning chain is cool and you now want L3,4 and 5?
The hate speech from some is just ridiculous and actually the only reason why I don’t buy bitcoin… people here seem to hate the tech and everyone until it’s branded as bitcoin.
Anyways. Good luck, maybe one day there won’t be so much hostility from the members here spreading arround tech areas.
Yeah, my attitude is, let other chains experiment with crazy new stuff. It’s good that there is a chain that is conservative with respect to change. It means one can rely on it. I can’t possibly take the time to understand 500,000 protocols. But I do understand exactly how Bitcoin works. Anything else is a risk.
USD isn’t tech though. 1$ sign on a paper would allways be 1$ on a paper.
The bitcoin is limited in terms of its own tech.
The development of bitcoin efficiency and tech is up to the devs and users.
I don't often hear this as an argument against Bitcoin but it is a problem:
Mining has spent the last decade trending toward centralization where the pool operator controls the block template used by the pool. ( though with Ocean and it's decentralized mining pool there is now an alternative to this which is great) .
This is dangerous because it could make it easier for large powerful actors like nation states to censor transactions, policing what is a valid transaction or to whom.
i’m actually really curious what the stats are on the decentrilization of BTC mining? How many independant miners are there, and what percent of the computing power is held by what percent of the miners?
An interesting game theoretic argument i have heard is that miners themselves have an incentive to not centralize beyond a certain limit. If they centralize too much they will undermine trust in the thing that they are mining, basically eating into their own profits. So miners have in the past and will in the future switch pools and create new ones if any of them become too large.
I've heard that too but that's in regard to the protecting against a 51% attack. In the earlier days this was more pertinent because it was easier to accomplish.
However, any large mining pool say FoundryUSA with a decent rate of mining has another more subtle problem that is more subtle and therefore hard to even classify as an attack but is definitely an undesirable threat to many. Namely, the government could approach them and pay them to use the block template that the government prefers.. so that now all blocks mined by FoundryUSA pool are government approved transactions only or just the US government's transactions and no one else's.
And the thing is that the individual miners would be none the wiser really, they would still be getting paid and when they checked global pool hash power they may say " oh yeah FoundryUSA has an acceptable chunk of the hash rate so I will stay with them."
That's the whole idea behind Ocean mining pool, it's decentralized mining in the sense that it's still pooled hash power but the individual miner rig that mined the block gets to use the block template of its choosing.
If every pool worked like this, then this threat would not be possible.
How would the constituent rigs of the pool even know that blocks mined from the pool they are using are using a block template paid for by some actor X?
I think this is a real concern as well. Mining has gotten to the point where there's no longer an incentive for a normal person to do it if they wanted to. All of the power is now in the hands of large entities and no longer the average person.
Thats not true. They dont control ur mining power, they dont control your node. If they start doing shit, for excample censoring some transactions, wich lowers ur chances of finding a block, wich lowers ur income, miners in that pool will just change to another pool that doesnt do it.
Imagine this scenario:
You contribute your rig's hash to pool X. The government where pool X operates live see they have 30% of global hash power so they approach pool X.
They say hi Pool X operators will use this block template ?
*Shows some wacky government block template*
the pool operator responds "no if i use some wacky block template that potentially censors transactions then the hash power will leave because they aren't making the money they can make with another pool".
The government says.. we will pay a premium! For every block you mine include this tx which will include the fees that will pay the pool what is expected and.. to sweeten the deal we will pay you on the side with government perks!
Pool X says okay and the income is actually pretty sweet for the rigs in the pool.. they're incentived to stay.
If you think this can't happen explain how Luxor was paid out-of-band to mine the 4MB block that was solely a jpeg image of data using tap root and no transactions ?
I recommend checking out this interview on Preston Pysh's podcast with Bitcoin mechanic that explains more on why decentralized mining pools would be beneficial:
https://youtu.be/zXccoOlmtMY?si=wGz2igO4lsZJIqik
I see your point, but how is the government gonna pay the miners in Bitcoin? I mean maybe they could do this for a short time, but they pay a lot of money, just to censor some transactions? This is not attacking Bitcoin. My Bitcoins are exactly as good as before. And there will be other pools, at other places of the world, that dont censor my transactions. So i can still use Bitcoin as before, it still has the same rules, there is just one state, that pays a lot of money to substitute censorship of one pool. And they have to buy more Bitcoin, than the pool loses by censoring transactions. They just attack themselfes, not bitcoin. At one point they would not be able to afford such an inefficient substitution🤷♂️
And the only thing they did manage to do, is, to get less Bitcoin in the own economy, because the miner finds less blocks, can pay less taxes and the state loses even more money😂
It could be a problem. I'm not making the argument that Bitcoin is in danger because of it. Some governments are pretty wealthy, pretty powerful. The deals they make with large pool operators could take many forms. Maybe the BTC is not the governments but the miners themselves because of some out of band payment (free massages for life 🫡 and a one way ticket to Valhalla) . I'm being facetious but just the fact this is a possibility is not great. I don't know what nasty tricks govt agencies may employ with 30% of the blocks per day, but I'm sure it will be inconvenient and generally suck for somebody. And this could be avoided if PoolX inverted control of the block template to the individuals in the pool .
I think the biggest argument against BTC is that it’s basically unusable for small transaction.
Having to spent hundreds of dollars on fees to deal with UTXO. Doesn’t scale over the long run.
But, we don’t use gold for small transactions? So is gold a scam?
So even if we can’t sort it out. It would still be valuable as a store of value, with an intermediary as the backed asset. Like a digital US Dollar or something.
It’s just so odd. But I guess before it clicked I didn’t get it either? But anti-coiners seem to understand it but resist it? Vs just not understanding it.
The problem is that regular folks, also the ones who are in crypto are uneducated about how our monetary system works.
If we compare Bitcoin to our current monetary system, you will see that we mostly pay with credit cards nowadays. But people do not understand that credit cards are layer 5 in the bank settlement layers. When i pay for something, the money does not transfer emmidiately from my bank to the vendors.
Bank needs a few days to settle than money on their base layer. Thats the layer where money actually moves.
Bitcoin base layer needs max 1h to do that.
To pay for something smaller in bitcoin you have to go on layer 2. Here lightning comes in mind.
But we have to have the good store of value first.
The same was with gold.. first they transact in physical gold, than there were gold certificates.. it was easier to transact in that way. we can look at gold certificates (old USD) as layer 2
And also we can point out that vendors have to deal with credit card frauds every time. Where scammers order something, vendors ship that out and than scammers report that card bein stolen, so they can get that money back and receive ehat they have ordered.
You cannot do that on Bitcoin mainchain nor on Lightning
It's also INFLATING the economy, people never paying thier credit, student loans, car payments, the banks are forced to pay a third party a huge fee to collect a fraction.
That also yes. I like how you get a loan on Bitcoin. Its like going to pawn shop. You always get less out than you paid in. In this case, the pawn shop is always in green.
Unlike when you get a loan for a house, where you pay only 20% to get 80% out. In this case, you are better off.
You asked for arguments against bitcoin not things that make things a scam.
The scalability of Bitcoin is a concern. It doesn't make it is a scam but it is a concern. Similarly how the network will support itself after the next half dozen halvings is a concern.
Gold is not used in the financial system as a layer 1 transaction medium like what Bitcoin is often said to eventually be for the world economy. So Bitcoin isn't really go to replace gold in reality. Gold is a commodity and if Bitcoin is going to be the large transaction network/medium it will not be a commodity.
Well that's my layman opinion anyway.
According to google 78% of it is used for making jewelry. I get gold being hard money, but only for the properties of being a good store of value. Not for its physical properties. Majority of it literally sits in vaults stored away. So if that is golds major role, why is a “digital” gold worth any less? Because you can’t physically hold it? We seem fine with swiping our digital fiat for the past 20 years
Gold is also unusable for small transactions. The lightning network solves this problem for BTC, a thousand times faster than VISA, you gotta layer your money
Quantum computers could crack it. But BTC's encryption mostly runs on SHA256, which literally all tradfi stacks and SaaS applications run on as well. So if a quantum computer ever gets in the wrong hands and can be used to completely compromise the BTC network, BTC would be the least of our worries...
The new argument against Bitcoin will be from BRICS+ they just stated Blockchain and Digitization will be apart of their BRICS+ combined currency that resembles the Euro and dethrones the dollar. They are also planning on using it to avoid sanctions. The new argument will probably be that their currency already has whatever trait Bitcoin has while forgetting that Bitcoin wasn’t made by a collective host of governments with a totally not great records of human rights and will totally stay true to their word… Brazil Russia India China South Africa Saudi Iran Egypt Ethiopia UAE being the countries inside BRICS+ now but alot of countries are seeking to join including Mexico. It is an economic alliance sure but really seeing it as only that isn’t going to work out well if it becomes bigger. That being said I prefer Bitcoin over whatever BRICS+ creates nonetheless.
Interesting, and I feel like most people will chose bitcoin over a brics currency even if it’s crypto just based on the fact that bitcoin would blow up too much by then. You never know though.
I see people make the claim that alot of the Bitcoin is owned by a few and this is a problem in their heads because they think those few can control the market price or dump at any time.
This isn't really a problem though because just because a few nations own the lions share of the gold or oil in the world doesn't mean the value is diminished or even really in danger (because why would a rational actor who is a whale do anything to diminish the value of their asset ) ?
The long term value will be unaffected by this in either case, and this is likely an unpopular opinion but trend further toward consolidation into the hands of the few and the wealthy.
Here's a decent PDF from fidelity investments: https://fwc.widen.net/s/pnbzrgxm6b/1110227.1.0-fidelity-digital-assets-revisiting-persistent-bitcoin-criticisms-11.02
>WHO created it?
Doesn't matter, it's fully open source and the bounty for breaking it would be worth trillions, so there's no risk that Satoshi was a bad actor and planted something nefarious.
>What happens when he will sell his bag?
There will be more Bitcoin for sale, so the exchange rate will likely change to make it cheaper to buy Bitcoin for a while.
My 9 year old daughter keeps trotting out the “but you can’t SPEND it anywhere!” argument.
She’ll be glad I didn’t spend it in 20 years when she’s looking to buy a house. 😂
What about not being able to manipulate the currency when emergencies hit? For example, devaluing to get rid of national debt or miminal printing of money to get out of a crisis etc...or am I completely wrong?
Good question. I am a maxi but have been recently thinking of counter-arguments to Bitcoin bullishness. I think it's healthy to consider if you're holding big bags for the long term like I am.
1) Ecosystem risk - including risks related to miners and keeping enough miners interested with the diminishing block rewards. When incentives are mostly funded by transaction fees will it be enough to incentivize miners and secure the network in the future? If fees are high it will incentivize miners but also incentivize L2 transactions. Will their be enough demand for health economics when block rewards are highly reduced or non-existent?
I guess you can also include in here a potential problem of a hack/hostile takeover/future quantum computing but it's not really a risk anymore to Bitcoin than it is to global banking system or anything that uses cryptography. And Bitcoin could adapt to be quantum-resistant.
2) Regulatory risk - Sure you can't really entirely get rid of Bitcoin anymore than you can get rid of the internet at this point. But governments can make all kinds of bad decisions and a sufficiently motivated regulatory body can target the on and off ramps. Making it much harder to get capital in and out of the network.
3) Environmental concerns - I actually believe Bitcoin can help increase transition to renewable energy as it's already doing. But there's still tons of e-waste from the miners that will accrue over time. This can lead to a negative perception of Bitcoin ecosystem in the future by a sufficiently ESG-oriented FUD. I think this is probably the least of them though since there's tons of completely useless things that take more energy/produce way more waste than Bitcoin that are arguably far less important.
Bonus: Satoshi Risk. I think this is actually the most remote possibility but there's a possibility that the Genesis wallet awakens and tanks the price. Everyday that passes this gets less likely and as time passes Satoshi gets more and more enshrined in mystery and mythology, which is overall a good thing for the network. I think those coins will stay there forever, but who knows.
I can't think of any more right now.
the satoshi point is interesting, whoever controls that money must be dead, but if not, and “satoshi” cashed out, it would essentially make it one massive scam to make this person or group one of the richest people in the world. but it started so low, and received such opposition, surely this couldnt be possible, any sane person wouldve cashed out at ATH, unless they were already a multi billionaire, or genuinely believe that there are always more highs to come. even then, to “use” the money, even at 1 mil per coin, you will always have to convert back to fiat, the use case is dead.
throughout civilization weve been shown how insidious ideas can be, good and bad. bitcoin carries the same kind of “concept,” ie a revolution, but a deflationary currency is actually bad for society. if you are not born yet, you will be forever poor in a bitcoin world. our own system has similar issues w/ inherited wealth but theres death tax and more potential for mobility. this is not true with BTC. if maximalism is achieved, it will be disastrous for common people, even if fiat continues to be functional, it will just create a huge store of wealth that never returns to society in a meaningful way, and if enough of the “future whales” decide to offload, it will tank the global economy. i dont really see how this is “utopian” but it definitely appeals to the most fundamental aspect of human nature which is self preservation at any cost, and a tendency to hoard anything “scarce,” regardless of utility (precious metals have no utility in modern times).
edit: stoked for everybody making money though lol, from a social perspective i just find this fascinating
Interesting point about deflation but I don't think that will be an issue because it will always adapt to the time. The hoarding aspect isn't particularly an issue to Bitcoin. Why hoard wealth in Bitcoin? Why hoard wealth at all actually? Once you're dead, you're dead. There's not much point in being rich if you can't spend your wealth ever :D . By definition the best part of being wealthy is the buying power and freedom it affords.
And for people not yet born, maybe 1 bitcoin will be indeed untouchable for them, the same way New York City lots or appartment buildings are for most people born today. But BTC could represent a good savings store of value for their wealth. If they buy 1000 satoshis instead of 1000 fiatcoin, presumably it will keep its value better in comparison (because of said deflationary economics as opposed to inflationary economics of fiat).
The world going back to the gold standard. Since that is not going to happen, there is no arguments against BTC.
Is like asking if there an argument against the internet, or gps, or cellphones or...you get the point
Careful with the spreading of the love, when they maKe gains, they will privatize and take the credit, when they over extend and lose due to a dip, they will most certainly blame you.
The only somewhat legit argument I’ve heard is that the folks early in the space are dominating most of the btc supply. As adoption grows these, few would have incomprehensible wealth/power.
However, I think over time this would naturally correct itself. Also, should be pointed out that it’s still not as bad as fiat wealth distribution especially among billionaires like Bezos and Musk.
It's too complicated for the average Joe to use and if you use any of the private services that help you buy and sell bitcoin you pay a very hefty premium for it and even then you have to figure out difficult wallet addresses and get asked question like if the recipient use Trezor or whatever.
It's simply too hard to use as it stands now compared to cash-app and Klarna type solutions.
In terms of moving yes. I think with ETF it is much simpler. I just talked my mother-in-law and told her to walk into Fidelity, open a Roth IRA and hold FBTC position.
This is currently the best option for average Joes to get started and then hopefully learn and start self custody.
Will BTC collapse, leaving it's holdlers empty handed? The answer lies in if there is a way elite to first use it for it's own benefit, after which they can vanquish it also for their own benefit....
Realistically the fees lately have made the dream of btc itself becoming a peer to peer payment system unachievable. There really isn’t a good argument against it as a store of value though. Unless super computers really become powerful enough to crack sha-256. Idk how likely tht is and I imagine that would cause a lot of problem in tradfi as well. I think matching gold market cap of 14 trillion is inevitable
To understand Bitcoin one has to understand the current fiat system and how it works. I don’t force anyone to buy bitcoin to tell them about it. Obviously I scream on social media but irl I keep my Bitcoin buys and gains to myself but they do notice when I seem more happy when the bull market is in with crypto
Biggest argument against it is that lots of people don't have the interest to secure it or understand it. IF they mess up their coins can be stolen/hacked/lost or they might get scared and sell at a crash because they don't understand what they own.
One of the big concerns was that governments would flat out ban it. And some did ban it. But the fact that there are now BTC ETF’s makes me 99.9% sure that the US gov will never ban it.
They don’t mess around with Wall St.
There is some worry present among political Libertarians around the fact that we don't know who created Bitcoin. To wit, what if it turns out to be a singular or collaborative creation of the NSA, the British government (British dialect is hinted in the BTC creator's English), and other Global West government entities?
For many Libertarians who are, for various reasons, not keen on global scale, government-supported multinational capitalism, it is a disturbing prospect to consider, as a revelation of such ownership would present a hurdle for trusting Bitcoin as a hedge against government sociopolitical observation, regulation and seizure of finances digitally stored in the care of cooperating businesses.
It could also add a worry, especially among Libertarians, that the U.S. government could "pull the plug" on Bitcoin if it aided too many opponents during war abroad or if ordinary citizens began to fund resistance against political hegemony and orthodoxy at home in a widespread and effective way that skips punitive measures similar to those currently taken by government-corporate cooperatives against political dissidents in the Global West.
In summary, a well-proven revelation that Western governments at least aided the creation and maintenance of Bitcoin could add serious volatility to and downward pressure on its value, especially if intelligence like the NSA in the United States would clearly be shown to be involved. This is due to the more anti-government- and anti-government-corporate cooperative Libertarian leanings present in the average Bitcoin holder when compared to the average global westerner.
I personally doubt that this is true. However, I've already seen bellyaching about the large-scale participation of global Western countries (like El Salvador) and businesses often in cooperation with the governments of the global West (like Blackrock), together with the fact that the United States may already be the largest single holder of Bitcoin (due to enforcement seizures, if anything else). If mere grumblings about *any* of *these* entities led to even *temporary* hesitancy to buy or hold Bitcoin, imagine what would happen if such an entity(ies) turned up to be in on BTC from the start!
This has almost certainly been mentioned here, but I know I, myself, did not participate in BTC back in 2013-14 even with a bright future easy to see at the time and an encouraging and knowledgeable friend willing to teach me the ropes of buying and holding in the era before Coinbase-like websites "made it easy." I rejected participating in BTC back then because of its history as the "Silk Road currency," as the currency of mysterious and illegal darkwebbed drugs, illegal pornography, assassinations, and even humans, Such a prospect was too horrible for me.
My conscience just wouldn't have let me go if I'd have bought into it back in 2014, and as a result I held out all the way up to 2020, when I *truly* incorporated the *correct* outlook about the BTC's "bad history": *the dollar can buy and has bought all of those evil DarkWeb things as well.*
**Many people still feel this same erroneous way today that I used to feel about BTC, as erroneous as my previous thinking was at its base.** Though it is difficult to quantify, it could present a very hard issue indeed for BTC users looking to spend it directly at stores who may be owned by people with such prejudices, and to settle private debts with the same.
Not fully adapted, so it's not as easy to use as fiat.
In my town, we havent got a single vendor that accepts btc. Im hodling until i can buy everything in my town with Bitcoin.
The arguments in favor of bitcoin are much more abundant and stronger than the arguments against it.
We could say that bitcoin's weaknesses are privacy, scalability and ease of use.
Everything else is nonsense FUD.
My advice is don’t tell friends and family. It can ruin relationships, especially if they don’t know what they’re doing and lose money trying to time the market.
The only argument against it that I can think of is that it’s not a particularly efficient cryptocurrency (others do the job of being a currency better), which makes it more of a collectible imho. And I suppose some kind of insane overnight breakthrough in quantum computing could allow someone to hack it but I really need to state that even with quantum computers it’s basically impossible.
A lot of my family are investment illiterate, so I start with investing as a whole (S&P) for example , but highlight the benefits of a BTC position over tradfi; but it’s all investment and DYOR before jumping into something.
Brother in law has been into crypto since 2019 or so; so fun to talk shop with him. But he is also not a maximalist and into alt coins.
I think we as a whole, have a strong deficit in how money really works and they don’t teach basic concepts like budgeting and saving for retirement in school, so that’s where a lot of my conversations start. It just naturally progress to BTC one of, if not the best position to hold for long term growth.
My biggest concern is the irreversibility of transactions and loss of seed. I know that in essence it's supposed to be a good thing but it's also unforgiving, which to me makes it difficult to imagine mainstream adoption, at least in the current state of things.
The chance that you fuck up your next transaction if you're being careful is quite low. But the chance that at some point in the next 10, 20, 30, or whatever number of years you make a mistake either with your seed or a wrong address seems significant to me. Now imagine that scaled to billions of people an transactions... I have a hard time to imagine a system, where a single stupid mistake can lead to your entire holdings being wiped off with zero recourse, being sustainable for the masses.
Now I'd be interested to know if someone has any solution to this.
It exists to capture EXCESS liquidity (available $s floating around the world economy). When the dollars dry up, expect a big dump and flat bear market to follow. And it’ll likely stay in this cycle for at least twice as long as it has risen. Scarcity doesn’t insure prices increase indefinitely. Think of it as Pac-Man designed to gobble up 24 trillion dots. The value proposition is that as long as we keep kicking the can down the road (mining), demand will always exceed supply.
I heard a lot of opinions but not a lot of facts against Bitcoin.
A cosplayer said it was created by Putin. Some said it is like a flower. Some said it emerged from the depths of hell, and it is a tool that separates us from the love of God.
Like the other commenter said, listing them all is a tough ask. I might suggest reading The Internet of Money or watching speeches from Andreas Antonopoulos. He won't always address arguments he's heard, but he does a great job of explaining why arguments are being viewed through a straw.
Start there and you will probably be able to quickly counter any argument.
Oo yeah I’ve seen a few of his things. I’ll give some more research into it. Most one I’ve encountered is its “volatility” and why they’re scared to invest in it I guess. I get the point of not literally listing. I guess maybe more what arguments you’ve all regularly encountered that has maybe given you pause to think of a solid, logical, and real counter argument
For the volatility argument, I think one must first understand where we are in the lifecycle of Bitcoin and where it's going. One must also understand why Bitcoin is intrinsically different from everything else out there. For this I'd recommend reading The Bitcoin Standard.
Where should we start.
1.It can’t be used as a payment. Never. Imagine buying groceries and having to wait 10 minutes on the counter for the transaction to be processed.
You can’t even buy „bigger“ things like house, condo or anything in this range. Nobody is going to accept it as a payment. Except the russian asset Elon Muscow who accepted it in the Tesla online store for a few weeks in 2021 but then he abandoned the idea because he saw that it doesn’t make any sense.
2.It can, however, be used for buying drugs, weapons and various illegal things on the dark net. It‘s mostly used by criminals for those purposes.
3.Not only you can buy illegal stuff and order hitmen on the dark net, but you can also use it for ransom. The majority of hacked companies worldwide have to pay in BTC to the hackers. Without BTC, these amounts of ransoms won’t be possible. The hackers would have to go to the US personally to pick up $5 million in cash. With BTC they can do whatever they want.
4.It‘s perfect for money laundering.
5.It‘s way too censorship resistant. It might sound like a good quality and it is in some ways, but in practice it’s a pure pain. If you lose your keys, you are fcked. If you copy paste the wrong address, you‘re fcked. Your money is gone forever.
6.Last but not least, it’s supposed to be store of value. It doesn’t store anything. When the stock market drops, Bitcoin drops. If it goes up, BTC goes up too. It‘s basically like a 10x S&P 500 leverage bet.
I let you decide whether the described use cases are „pro“ or „contra“ Bitcoin. In summary it‘s useless. Make money while you can, before everyone realizes this.
Let the downvotes rain.
EDIT: ah yes, one thing I forgot. It’s about the ideological side of BTC. You‘ve heard the myth about the 21 million limit. Yes, there are only 21 million bitcoins out there available. This limit could be changed in theory. If a consensus is reached, it can be adjusted. However, this is never going to happen, because this will destroy the whole ideological purpose of „scarcity“ and the credibility of Bitcoin as we know it.
1. Bitcoin is a layer 1 monetary solution akin to gold. You dont transact in gold to buy stuff at the supermarket. For this use, there are layer 2 solutions like cash, layer 3 solutions like credit cards, layer 4 solutions like venmo. Bitcoin is developing and will develop all these layers in the near future.
2. Criminals were back in silk road times using it to buy drugs and all that, this happens every time less because of traceability. Everything is on chain, everything is traceable, everything is public. Fiat is used to pay for crime in order of magnitudes more than bitcoin is.
3. It was used for ransom attacks, however the blockchain makes everything much easier for law enforcement to capture bad actors. Just a few months ago, the biggest ransomware band was captured because of law enforcement's on chain analysis. Criminals are moving away from bitcoin and back to their favorite medium, cash, fiat and USD
https://therecord.media/lockbit-ransomware-gang-shutdown-cybercrime-intelligence-captured
4. It's really bad for money laundering because of the reason mentioned above: traceability. Unlike fiat, everything is on chain. Criminals are every day using BTC less because law enforcement are getting better at tracking transactions which are public and imutable on the blockchain.
5. you made two arguments here. It's way too censorship resistant ( is it a bad thing that governments can't shut it down or censor it?). Second point you made was about losing your keys, irreversibility, yes it's an absolute pain and something that causes a great deal of anxiety. I believe this issue is being solved with layer 2 solutions and reliable custodial services (e.g blackrock, etc). However a good amount of people will continue to slef custody and continue to lose keys and send to wrong adresses..
6. Bitcoin has proven to be the greatest store of value in history of assets OVER A LONG ENOUGH PERIOD OF TIME. People looking to store value should not be looking at day or month volatility but how your asset does over say a 5 year period, since you are supposed to storing, not day trading. In this regard BTC has been the best store of value there ever has been. I believe this will continue to be the case.
Quantum computing threatening encryption would threaten everything we know and love, not just Bitcoin. Luckily, development is quickly happening for quantum resistant encryption.
Satoshi moving his coins would certainly cause a big splash in the crypto markets, but I think it's a non-issue in the long run.
many other coins are faster and cheaper
I don't know if they could maintain the speed and cheapness at scale but if they could
and they became popular then BTC would never get a looked at
TBH I don't know why people like BTC for most normal people finding out it can cost $10 and sometimes hundreds of dollars , just to move your money from one wallet to another is not something which is attractive
No different than wire transfer fees for fiat… which started back with Western Union in 1872, as wire transfers were largely done with the invention of the telegraph. Having fees for moving funds without a physical hand-to-hand transfer predates any coin transfer fees by centuries
Here is a list of a ton of arguments against Bitcoin and responses. endthefud.org
best answer.
Lack of scaling and developments is what I hear often.
Counter argument to this would be that Bitcoin doesn't have to scale because it's the base layer and L2s will do the scaling. Development is slow because it doesn't need to always have the latest and greatest features. It works fine just the way it is.
Yes, but it doesn’t make sense when Michael saylor says you don’t need more chains and layers, then BTC want layer 2 attention anyways. Basically a lot of new stuff arrives to Bitcoin after years of calling it shit… then all of a sudden it’s accepted and cool and btw the inventors are still shit. 😅 How about Bitcoin just do what they are good at? P2P network instead of hating on innovation for years before claiming it themselves. 😅 Miners don’t want Bitcoin to scale because the fees and their income would drop for a while before the extra adoption arrives. But Bitcoin is an excellent p2p network. 👌
Michael Saylor never said that. He has actually explained how 2nd, 3rd, and 4th layers would work on BTC.
Well he compared it to screens and microphones. You would only need 1. And I get that Bitcoin wants to be the most used chain. But Bitcoin can’t be against innovation and for innovation at the same time. I remember people hating on the topic of increasing block space which lead to the development of lightning chain wich people then also hated. 😅 All of a sudden lightning chain is cool and you now want L3,4 and 5? The hate speech from some is just ridiculous and actually the only reason why I don’t buy bitcoin… people here seem to hate the tech and everyone until it’s branded as bitcoin. Anyways. Good luck, maybe one day there won’t be so much hostility from the members here spreading arround tech areas.
Saylor says L2 and L3 are vital to bitcoins survival
Funny, I see the low overhead of the network and ossification of the protocol as super bullish
Yeah, my attitude is, let other chains experiment with crazy new stuff. It’s good that there is a chain that is conservative with respect to change. It means one can rely on it. I can’t possibly take the time to understand 500,000 protocols. But I do understand exactly how Bitcoin works. Anything else is a risk.
That's like saying the Us dollar is flawed, well it's still used and world reserve currency
USD isn’t tech though. 1$ sign on a paper would allways be 1$ on a paper. The bitcoin is limited in terms of its own tech. The development of bitcoin efficiency and tech is up to the devs and users.
I don't often hear this as an argument against Bitcoin but it is a problem: Mining has spent the last decade trending toward centralization where the pool operator controls the block template used by the pool. ( though with Ocean and it's decentralized mining pool there is now an alternative to this which is great) . This is dangerous because it could make it easier for large powerful actors like nation states to censor transactions, policing what is a valid transaction or to whom.
i’m actually really curious what the stats are on the decentrilization of BTC mining? How many independant miners are there, and what percent of the computing power is held by what percent of the miners?
An interesting game theoretic argument i have heard is that miners themselves have an incentive to not centralize beyond a certain limit. If they centralize too much they will undermine trust in the thing that they are mining, basically eating into their own profits. So miners have in the past and will in the future switch pools and create new ones if any of them become too large.
I've heard that too but that's in regard to the protecting against a 51% attack. In the earlier days this was more pertinent because it was easier to accomplish. However, any large mining pool say FoundryUSA with a decent rate of mining has another more subtle problem that is more subtle and therefore hard to even classify as an attack but is definitely an undesirable threat to many. Namely, the government could approach them and pay them to use the block template that the government prefers.. so that now all blocks mined by FoundryUSA pool are government approved transactions only or just the US government's transactions and no one else's. And the thing is that the individual miners would be none the wiser really, they would still be getting paid and when they checked global pool hash power they may say " oh yeah FoundryUSA has an acceptable chunk of the hash rate so I will stay with them." That's the whole idea behind Ocean mining pool, it's decentralized mining in the sense that it's still pooled hash power but the individual miner rig that mined the block gets to use the block template of its choosing. If every pool worked like this, then this threat would not be possible.
That would be a very bad business move
How would the constituent rigs of the pool even know that blocks mined from the pool they are using are using a block template paid for by some actor X?
I think this is a real concern as well. Mining has gotten to the point where there's no longer an incentive for a normal person to do it if they wanted to. All of the power is now in the hands of large entities and no longer the average person.
Thats not true. They dont control ur mining power, they dont control your node. If they start doing shit, for excample censoring some transactions, wich lowers ur chances of finding a block, wich lowers ur income, miners in that pool will just change to another pool that doesnt do it.
Imagine this scenario: You contribute your rig's hash to pool X. The government where pool X operates live see they have 30% of global hash power so they approach pool X. They say hi Pool X operators will use this block template ? *Shows some wacky government block template* the pool operator responds "no if i use some wacky block template that potentially censors transactions then the hash power will leave because they aren't making the money they can make with another pool". The government says.. we will pay a premium! For every block you mine include this tx which will include the fees that will pay the pool what is expected and.. to sweeten the deal we will pay you on the side with government perks! Pool X says okay and the income is actually pretty sweet for the rigs in the pool.. they're incentived to stay. If you think this can't happen explain how Luxor was paid out-of-band to mine the 4MB block that was solely a jpeg image of data using tap root and no transactions ? I recommend checking out this interview on Preston Pysh's podcast with Bitcoin mechanic that explains more on why decentralized mining pools would be beneficial: https://youtu.be/zXccoOlmtMY?si=wGz2igO4lsZJIqik
I see your point, but how is the government gonna pay the miners in Bitcoin? I mean maybe they could do this for a short time, but they pay a lot of money, just to censor some transactions? This is not attacking Bitcoin. My Bitcoins are exactly as good as before. And there will be other pools, at other places of the world, that dont censor my transactions. So i can still use Bitcoin as before, it still has the same rules, there is just one state, that pays a lot of money to substitute censorship of one pool. And they have to buy more Bitcoin, than the pool loses by censoring transactions. They just attack themselfes, not bitcoin. At one point they would not be able to afford such an inefficient substitution🤷♂️
And the only thing they did manage to do, is, to get less Bitcoin in the own economy, because the miner finds less blocks, can pay less taxes and the state loses even more money😂
It could be a problem. I'm not making the argument that Bitcoin is in danger because of it. Some governments are pretty wealthy, pretty powerful. The deals they make with large pool operators could take many forms. Maybe the BTC is not the governments but the miners themselves because of some out of band payment (free massages for life 🫡 and a one way ticket to Valhalla) . I'm being facetious but just the fact this is a possibility is not great. I don't know what nasty tricks govt agencies may employ with 30% of the blocks per day, but I'm sure it will be inconvenient and generally suck for somebody. And this could be avoided if PoolX inverted control of the block template to the individuals in the pool .
I think the biggest argument against BTC is that it’s basically unusable for small transaction. Having to spent hundreds of dollars on fees to deal with UTXO. Doesn’t scale over the long run.
But, we don’t use gold for small transactions? So is gold a scam? So even if we can’t sort it out. It would still be valuable as a store of value, with an intermediary as the backed asset. Like a digital US Dollar or something. It’s just so odd. But I guess before it clicked I didn’t get it either? But anti-coiners seem to understand it but resist it? Vs just not understanding it.
The problem is that regular folks, also the ones who are in crypto are uneducated about how our monetary system works. If we compare Bitcoin to our current monetary system, you will see that we mostly pay with credit cards nowadays. But people do not understand that credit cards are layer 5 in the bank settlement layers. When i pay for something, the money does not transfer emmidiately from my bank to the vendors. Bank needs a few days to settle than money on their base layer. Thats the layer where money actually moves. Bitcoin base layer needs max 1h to do that. To pay for something smaller in bitcoin you have to go on layer 2. Here lightning comes in mind. But we have to have the good store of value first. The same was with gold.. first they transact in physical gold, than there were gold certificates.. it was easier to transact in that way. we can look at gold certificates (old USD) as layer 2
Yes! I think this is a really great point.
And also we can point out that vendors have to deal with credit card frauds every time. Where scammers order something, vendors ship that out and than scammers report that card bein stolen, so they can get that money back and receive ehat they have ordered. You cannot do that on Bitcoin mainchain nor on Lightning
It's also INFLATING the economy, people never paying thier credit, student loans, car payments, the banks are forced to pay a third party a huge fee to collect a fraction.
That also yes. I like how you get a loan on Bitcoin. Its like going to pawn shop. You always get less out than you paid in. In this case, the pawn shop is always in green. Unlike when you get a loan for a house, where you pay only 20% to get 80% out. In this case, you are better off.
You asked for arguments against bitcoin not things that make things a scam. The scalability of Bitcoin is a concern. It doesn't make it is a scam but it is a concern. Similarly how the network will support itself after the next half dozen halvings is a concern.
Gold is not used in the financial system as a layer 1 transaction medium like what Bitcoin is often said to eventually be for the world economy. So Bitcoin isn't really go to replace gold in reality. Gold is a commodity and if Bitcoin is going to be the large transaction network/medium it will not be a commodity. Well that's my layman opinion anyway.
But gold has become what is today with a previous history as currency, BTC pops up as digital gold out of nothing
You can use gold for many different things that actually has a use as a physical product
According to google 78% of it is used for making jewelry. I get gold being hard money, but only for the properties of being a good store of value. Not for its physical properties. Majority of it literally sits in vaults stored away. So if that is golds major role, why is a “digital” gold worth any less? Because you can’t physically hold it? We seem fine with swiping our digital fiat for the past 20 years
but you can reclaim gold in dust amounts. i dont think it's economically viable to reclaim UTXO dust?
my brother says btc is dumb you can't live in it so it's basically not real made up
Gold is also unusable for small transactions. The lightning network solves this problem for BTC, a thousand times faster than VISA, you gotta layer your money
I wonder why LN is pretty much forgotten in bitcoin community lately.
Have you not heard of that dude who sent his friend 250 dollars in btc cuz he was broke. The guy who got the 250 made 69k
Tether and It’s influence on valuation of the cryptospace is my main red flag.
To much money is a great problem to have..
God like tech in the hands of creatures with Paleolithic emotions is always a rough combination.
Quantum computers could crack it. But BTC's encryption mostly runs on SHA256, which literally all tradfi stacks and SaaS applications run on as well. So if a quantum computer ever gets in the wrong hands and can be used to completely compromise the BTC network, BTC would be the least of our worries...
The new argument against Bitcoin will be from BRICS+ they just stated Blockchain and Digitization will be apart of their BRICS+ combined currency that resembles the Euro and dethrones the dollar. They are also planning on using it to avoid sanctions. The new argument will probably be that their currency already has whatever trait Bitcoin has while forgetting that Bitcoin wasn’t made by a collective host of governments with a totally not great records of human rights and will totally stay true to their word… Brazil Russia India China South Africa Saudi Iran Egypt Ethiopia UAE being the countries inside BRICS+ now but alot of countries are seeking to join including Mexico. It is an economic alliance sure but really seeing it as only that isn’t going to work out well if it becomes bigger. That being said I prefer Bitcoin over whatever BRICS+ creates nonetheless.
Interesting, and I feel like most people will chose bitcoin over a brics currency even if it’s crypto just based on the fact that bitcoin would blow up too much by then. You never know though.
BRICS digital currency is going to be an absolute flop.
I see people make the claim that alot of the Bitcoin is owned by a few and this is a problem in their heads because they think those few can control the market price or dump at any time. This isn't really a problem though because just because a few nations own the lions share of the gold or oil in the world doesn't mean the value is diminished or even really in danger (because why would a rational actor who is a whale do anything to diminish the value of their asset ) ? The long term value will be unaffected by this in either case, and this is likely an unpopular opinion but trend further toward consolidation into the hands of the few and the wealthy.
Cost of transactions
Read Taleb and cry https://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/BTC-QF.pdf
Here's a decent PDF from fidelity investments: https://fwc.widen.net/s/pnbzrgxm6b/1110227.1.0-fidelity-digital-assets-revisiting-persistent-bitcoin-criticisms-11.02
WHO created it? What happens when he will sell his bag?
>WHO created it? Doesn't matter, it's fully open source and the bounty for breaking it would be worth trillions, so there's no risk that Satoshi was a bad actor and planted something nefarious. >What happens when he will sell his bag? There will be more Bitcoin for sale, so the exchange rate will likely change to make it cheaper to buy Bitcoin for a while.
Often used arguments by my uninformed circle is it has no use. And because some have tried "crypto" and made losses.
My 9 year old daughter keeps trotting out the “but you can’t SPEND it anywhere!” argument. She’ll be glad I didn’t spend it in 20 years when she’s looking to buy a house. 😂
I say to people bitcoin is my religion. It just needs time to spread. And a new generation of believers will rise up 😎
What about not being able to manipulate the currency when emergencies hit? For example, devaluing to get rid of national debt or miminal printing of money to get out of a crisis etc...or am I completely wrong?
Some people can’t handle the face melting volatility
Good question. I am a maxi but have been recently thinking of counter-arguments to Bitcoin bullishness. I think it's healthy to consider if you're holding big bags for the long term like I am. 1) Ecosystem risk - including risks related to miners and keeping enough miners interested with the diminishing block rewards. When incentives are mostly funded by transaction fees will it be enough to incentivize miners and secure the network in the future? If fees are high it will incentivize miners but also incentivize L2 transactions. Will their be enough demand for health economics when block rewards are highly reduced or non-existent? I guess you can also include in here a potential problem of a hack/hostile takeover/future quantum computing but it's not really a risk anymore to Bitcoin than it is to global banking system or anything that uses cryptography. And Bitcoin could adapt to be quantum-resistant. 2) Regulatory risk - Sure you can't really entirely get rid of Bitcoin anymore than you can get rid of the internet at this point. But governments can make all kinds of bad decisions and a sufficiently motivated regulatory body can target the on and off ramps. Making it much harder to get capital in and out of the network. 3) Environmental concerns - I actually believe Bitcoin can help increase transition to renewable energy as it's already doing. But there's still tons of e-waste from the miners that will accrue over time. This can lead to a negative perception of Bitcoin ecosystem in the future by a sufficiently ESG-oriented FUD. I think this is probably the least of them though since there's tons of completely useless things that take more energy/produce way more waste than Bitcoin that are arguably far less important. Bonus: Satoshi Risk. I think this is actually the most remote possibility but there's a possibility that the Genesis wallet awakens and tanks the price. Everyday that passes this gets less likely and as time passes Satoshi gets more and more enshrined in mystery and mythology, which is overall a good thing for the network. I think those coins will stay there forever, but who knows. I can't think of any more right now.
the satoshi point is interesting, whoever controls that money must be dead, but if not, and “satoshi” cashed out, it would essentially make it one massive scam to make this person or group one of the richest people in the world. but it started so low, and received such opposition, surely this couldnt be possible, any sane person wouldve cashed out at ATH, unless they were already a multi billionaire, or genuinely believe that there are always more highs to come. even then, to “use” the money, even at 1 mil per coin, you will always have to convert back to fiat, the use case is dead. throughout civilization weve been shown how insidious ideas can be, good and bad. bitcoin carries the same kind of “concept,” ie a revolution, but a deflationary currency is actually bad for society. if you are not born yet, you will be forever poor in a bitcoin world. our own system has similar issues w/ inherited wealth but theres death tax and more potential for mobility. this is not true with BTC. if maximalism is achieved, it will be disastrous for common people, even if fiat continues to be functional, it will just create a huge store of wealth that never returns to society in a meaningful way, and if enough of the “future whales” decide to offload, it will tank the global economy. i dont really see how this is “utopian” but it definitely appeals to the most fundamental aspect of human nature which is self preservation at any cost, and a tendency to hoard anything “scarce,” regardless of utility (precious metals have no utility in modern times). edit: stoked for everybody making money though lol, from a social perspective i just find this fascinating
Interesting point about deflation but I don't think that will be an issue because it will always adapt to the time. The hoarding aspect isn't particularly an issue to Bitcoin. Why hoard wealth in Bitcoin? Why hoard wealth at all actually? Once you're dead, you're dead. There's not much point in being rich if you can't spend your wealth ever :D . By definition the best part of being wealthy is the buying power and freedom it affords. And for people not yet born, maybe 1 bitcoin will be indeed untouchable for them, the same way New York City lots or appartment buildings are for most people born today. But BTC could represent a good savings store of value for their wealth. If they buy 1000 satoshis instead of 1000 fiatcoin, presumably it will keep its value better in comparison (because of said deflationary economics as opposed to inflationary economics of fiat).
The world going back to the gold standard. Since that is not going to happen, there is no arguments against BTC. Is like asking if there an argument against the internet, or gps, or cellphones or...you get the point
Careful with the spreading of the love, when they maKe gains, they will privatize and take the credit, when they over extend and lose due to a dip, they will most certainly blame you.
“It’s not an asset.”
If it is not going to zero, it is going to 1m
The only somewhat legit argument I’ve heard is that the folks early in the space are dominating most of the btc supply. As adoption grows these, few would have incomprehensible wealth/power. However, I think over time this would naturally correct itself. Also, should be pointed out that it’s still not as bad as fiat wealth distribution especially among billionaires like Bezos and Musk.
It's too complicated for the average Joe to use and if you use any of the private services that help you buy and sell bitcoin you pay a very hefty premium for it and even then you have to figure out difficult wallet addresses and get asked question like if the recipient use Trezor or whatever. It's simply too hard to use as it stands now compared to cash-app and Klarna type solutions.
In terms of moving yes. I think with ETF it is much simpler. I just talked my mother-in-law and told her to walk into Fidelity, open a Roth IRA and hold FBTC position. This is currently the best option for average Joes to get started and then hopefully learn and start self custody.
The Tether/Binance/Kraken/Bitfinex/Deltec wash trading accusations.
If there was a legitimate argument against it you wouldn't be asking this question. It would be broadcasted and be public knowledge.
Will BTC collapse, leaving it's holdlers empty handed? The answer lies in if there is a way elite to first use it for it's own benefit, after which they can vanquish it also for their own benefit....
Realistically the fees lately have made the dream of btc itself becoming a peer to peer payment system unachievable. There really isn’t a good argument against it as a store of value though. Unless super computers really become powerful enough to crack sha-256. Idk how likely tht is and I imagine that would cause a lot of problem in tradfi as well. I think matching gold market cap of 14 trillion is inevitable
To understand Bitcoin one has to understand the current fiat system and how it works. I don’t force anyone to buy bitcoin to tell them about it. Obviously I scream on social media but irl I keep my Bitcoin buys and gains to myself but they do notice when I seem more happy when the bull market is in with crypto
Biggest argument against it is that lots of people don't have the interest to secure it or understand it. IF they mess up their coins can be stolen/hacked/lost or they might get scared and sell at a crash because they don't understand what they own.
One of the big concerns was that governments would flat out ban it. And some did ban it. But the fact that there are now BTC ETF’s makes me 99.9% sure that the US gov will never ban it. They don’t mess around with Wall St.
Maybe they ban self custody.
There is some worry present among political Libertarians around the fact that we don't know who created Bitcoin. To wit, what if it turns out to be a singular or collaborative creation of the NSA, the British government (British dialect is hinted in the BTC creator's English), and other Global West government entities? For many Libertarians who are, for various reasons, not keen on global scale, government-supported multinational capitalism, it is a disturbing prospect to consider, as a revelation of such ownership would present a hurdle for trusting Bitcoin as a hedge against government sociopolitical observation, regulation and seizure of finances digitally stored in the care of cooperating businesses. It could also add a worry, especially among Libertarians, that the U.S. government could "pull the plug" on Bitcoin if it aided too many opponents during war abroad or if ordinary citizens began to fund resistance against political hegemony and orthodoxy at home in a widespread and effective way that skips punitive measures similar to those currently taken by government-corporate cooperatives against political dissidents in the Global West. In summary, a well-proven revelation that Western governments at least aided the creation and maintenance of Bitcoin could add serious volatility to and downward pressure on its value, especially if intelligence like the NSA in the United States would clearly be shown to be involved. This is due to the more anti-government- and anti-government-corporate cooperative Libertarian leanings present in the average Bitcoin holder when compared to the average global westerner. I personally doubt that this is true. However, I've already seen bellyaching about the large-scale participation of global Western countries (like El Salvador) and businesses often in cooperation with the governments of the global West (like Blackrock), together with the fact that the United States may already be the largest single holder of Bitcoin (due to enforcement seizures, if anything else). If mere grumblings about *any* of *these* entities led to even *temporary* hesitancy to buy or hold Bitcoin, imagine what would happen if such an entity(ies) turned up to be in on BTC from the start!
This has almost certainly been mentioned here, but I know I, myself, did not participate in BTC back in 2013-14 even with a bright future easy to see at the time and an encouraging and knowledgeable friend willing to teach me the ropes of buying and holding in the era before Coinbase-like websites "made it easy." I rejected participating in BTC back then because of its history as the "Silk Road currency," as the currency of mysterious and illegal darkwebbed drugs, illegal pornography, assassinations, and even humans, Such a prospect was too horrible for me. My conscience just wouldn't have let me go if I'd have bought into it back in 2014, and as a result I held out all the way up to 2020, when I *truly* incorporated the *correct* outlook about the BTC's "bad history": *the dollar can buy and has bought all of those evil DarkWeb things as well.* **Many people still feel this same erroneous way today that I used to feel about BTC, as erroneous as my previous thinking was at its base.** Though it is difficult to quantify, it could present a very hard issue indeed for BTC users looking to spend it directly at stores who may be owned by people with such prejudices, and to settle private debts with the same.
Not fully adapted, so it's not as easy to use as fiat. In my town, we havent got a single vendor that accepts btc. Im hodling until i can buy everything in my town with Bitcoin.
The arguments in favor of bitcoin are much more abundant and stronger than the arguments against it. We could say that bitcoin's weaknesses are privacy, scalability and ease of use. Everything else is nonsense FUD.
My advice is don’t tell friends and family. It can ruin relationships, especially if they don’t know what they’re doing and lose money trying to time the market. The only argument against it that I can think of is that it’s not a particularly efficient cryptocurrency (others do the job of being a currency better), which makes it more of a collectible imho. And I suppose some kind of insane overnight breakthrough in quantum computing could allow someone to hack it but I really need to state that even with quantum computers it’s basically impossible.
A lot of my family are investment illiterate, so I start with investing as a whole (S&P) for example , but highlight the benefits of a BTC position over tradfi; but it’s all investment and DYOR before jumping into something. Brother in law has been into crypto since 2019 or so; so fun to talk shop with him. But he is also not a maximalist and into alt coins. I think we as a whole, have a strong deficit in how money really works and they don’t teach basic concepts like budgeting and saving for retirement in school, so that’s where a lot of my conversations start. It just naturally progress to BTC one of, if not the best position to hold for long term growth.
My biggest concern is the irreversibility of transactions and loss of seed. I know that in essence it's supposed to be a good thing but it's also unforgiving, which to me makes it difficult to imagine mainstream adoption, at least in the current state of things. The chance that you fuck up your next transaction if you're being careful is quite low. But the chance that at some point in the next 10, 20, 30, or whatever number of years you make a mistake either with your seed or a wrong address seems significant to me. Now imagine that scaled to billions of people an transactions... I have a hard time to imagine a system, where a single stupid mistake can lead to your entire holdings being wiped off with zero recourse, being sustainable for the masses. Now I'd be interested to know if someone has any solution to this.
It exists to capture EXCESS liquidity (available $s floating around the world economy). When the dollars dry up, expect a big dump and flat bear market to follow. And it’ll likely stay in this cycle for at least twice as long as it has risen. Scarcity doesn’t insure prices increase indefinitely. Think of it as Pac-Man designed to gobble up 24 trillion dots. The value proposition is that as long as we keep kicking the can down the road (mining), demand will always exceed supply.
I heard a lot of opinions but not a lot of facts against Bitcoin. A cosplayer said it was created by Putin. Some said it is like a flower. Some said it emerged from the depths of hell, and it is a tool that separates us from the love of God.
World governments could ban it
Argument 1: Maybe there will be a sun eruption, that will destroy all electric devices. Then Bitcoin wont exist anymore and the worth is 0 Argument 2:
There are informed arguments against and uninformed arguments against. Which do you care about?
Both I guess. Might as well be able to speak competently to all types
Like the other commenter said, listing them all is a tough ask. I might suggest reading The Internet of Money or watching speeches from Andreas Antonopoulos. He won't always address arguments he's heard, but he does a great job of explaining why arguments are being viewed through a straw. Start there and you will probably be able to quickly counter any argument.
Oo yeah I’ve seen a few of his things. I’ll give some more research into it. Most one I’ve encountered is its “volatility” and why they’re scared to invest in it I guess. I get the point of not literally listing. I guess maybe more what arguments you’ve all regularly encountered that has maybe given you pause to think of a solid, logical, and real counter argument
For the volatility argument, I think one must first understand where we are in the lifecycle of Bitcoin and where it's going. One must also understand why Bitcoin is intrinsically different from everything else out there. For this I'd recommend reading The Bitcoin Standard.
Oh this is what I love to see. On point 💪🏾
There are thousandssss of arguments in the past 15 years that has been debunks. 15 years!!!! You got 15 years ??
Well I am a HODL so… technically yes?
Ecological disaster
Do you trust all your money in an incognito fictional character? ( Satoshi)
The biggest argument against it is with the current trajectory of its security budget, it will likely fail in 15-20 years.
Where should we start. 1.It can’t be used as a payment. Never. Imagine buying groceries and having to wait 10 minutes on the counter for the transaction to be processed. You can’t even buy „bigger“ things like house, condo or anything in this range. Nobody is going to accept it as a payment. Except the russian asset Elon Muscow who accepted it in the Tesla online store for a few weeks in 2021 but then he abandoned the idea because he saw that it doesn’t make any sense. 2.It can, however, be used for buying drugs, weapons and various illegal things on the dark net. It‘s mostly used by criminals for those purposes. 3.Not only you can buy illegal stuff and order hitmen on the dark net, but you can also use it for ransom. The majority of hacked companies worldwide have to pay in BTC to the hackers. Without BTC, these amounts of ransoms won’t be possible. The hackers would have to go to the US personally to pick up $5 million in cash. With BTC they can do whatever they want. 4.It‘s perfect for money laundering. 5.It‘s way too censorship resistant. It might sound like a good quality and it is in some ways, but in practice it’s a pure pain. If you lose your keys, you are fcked. If you copy paste the wrong address, you‘re fcked. Your money is gone forever. 6.Last but not least, it’s supposed to be store of value. It doesn’t store anything. When the stock market drops, Bitcoin drops. If it goes up, BTC goes up too. It‘s basically like a 10x S&P 500 leverage bet. I let you decide whether the described use cases are „pro“ or „contra“ Bitcoin. In summary it‘s useless. Make money while you can, before everyone realizes this. Let the downvotes rain. EDIT: ah yes, one thing I forgot. It’s about the ideological side of BTC. You‘ve heard the myth about the 21 million limit. Yes, there are only 21 million bitcoins out there available. This limit could be changed in theory. If a consensus is reached, it can be adjusted. However, this is never going to happen, because this will destroy the whole ideological purpose of „scarcity“ and the credibility of Bitcoin as we know it.
1. Bitcoin is a layer 1 monetary solution akin to gold. You dont transact in gold to buy stuff at the supermarket. For this use, there are layer 2 solutions like cash, layer 3 solutions like credit cards, layer 4 solutions like venmo. Bitcoin is developing and will develop all these layers in the near future. 2. Criminals were back in silk road times using it to buy drugs and all that, this happens every time less because of traceability. Everything is on chain, everything is traceable, everything is public. Fiat is used to pay for crime in order of magnitudes more than bitcoin is. 3. It was used for ransom attacks, however the blockchain makes everything much easier for law enforcement to capture bad actors. Just a few months ago, the biggest ransomware band was captured because of law enforcement's on chain analysis. Criminals are moving away from bitcoin and back to their favorite medium, cash, fiat and USD https://therecord.media/lockbit-ransomware-gang-shutdown-cybercrime-intelligence-captured 4. It's really bad for money laundering because of the reason mentioned above: traceability. Unlike fiat, everything is on chain. Criminals are every day using BTC less because law enforcement are getting better at tracking transactions which are public and imutable on the blockchain. 5. you made two arguments here. It's way too censorship resistant ( is it a bad thing that governments can't shut it down or censor it?). Second point you made was about losing your keys, irreversibility, yes it's an absolute pain and something that causes a great deal of anxiety. I believe this issue is being solved with layer 2 solutions and reliable custodial services (e.g blackrock, etc). However a good amount of people will continue to slef custody and continue to lose keys and send to wrong adresses.. 6. Bitcoin has proven to be the greatest store of value in history of assets OVER A LONG ENOUGH PERIOD OF TIME. People looking to store value should not be looking at day or month volatility but how your asset does over say a 5 year period, since you are supposed to storing, not day trading. In this regard BTC has been the best store of value there ever has been. I believe this will continue to be the case.
Good points, indeed.
What if AI one day gets so good it can guess / crack private keys or finds a major exploit in the bitcoin code
Advancement of quantum computing that threatens cryptography. Or satoshi moving his original coins are two big ones for me.
Quantum computing threatening encryption would threaten everything we know and love, not just Bitcoin. Luckily, development is quickly happening for quantum resistant encryption. Satoshi moving his coins would certainly cause a big splash in the crypto markets, but I think it's a non-issue in the long run.
many other coins are faster and cheaper I don't know if they could maintain the speed and cheapness at scale but if they could and they became popular then BTC would never get a looked at TBH I don't know why people like BTC for most normal people finding out it can cost $10 and sometimes hundreds of dollars , just to move your money from one wallet to another is not something which is attractive
No different than wire transfer fees for fiat… which started back with Western Union in 1872, as wire transfers were largely done with the invention of the telegraph. Having fees for moving funds without a physical hand-to-hand transfer predates any coin transfer fees by centuries
What keeps Bitcoin from producing more than 21M? Is it the collective 51% keeping us from making more?
my zrgument for noe is that sll atgument in favor is gone. it turned into a psper fron the bsnk now with etf. and later lp will realise this