I've had quite a few discussions on steemit.chat lately about bitcoin. While many are very excited about it, I myself am very careful with holding my funds in it, let me try to explain it from my perspective and experience with it. I know many won't like what they read here but its just my opinion.
Everything written here might not be 100% true, but that's how I see things lately.
Bitcoin was created in late 2008 and made open-source in early 2009. Back then almost no one knew about its potential or how it worked so very few people took the time to mine it with their CPU's. One of the early birds is the creator and mastermind of the Graphene Blockchain that powers Bitshares, Steem and Peerplays.
Bitcoin started gaining traction a few years later and the hashpower started to rise. Someone figured out that if you use your graphics card to mine it it would give you a much higher effect on hashrate and would increase the amount of coins you got as reward from new blocks. Still not too many mining it at this time, but graphics cards were easy to obtain for anyone in the world so it was still deemed as a fair distribution.
Then the era of Asics started. They figured out that if they put a bunch of processors which only focused on the bitcoin algorithm it would mine even faster than graphics cards, but not everyone was able to create these. The flood of new companies promising miners these special computing powers were not many and not many of them delivered on their promises either. The asics were getting upgraded from time to time until it reached the technical limit of processors size in general and it couldn't get faster than what that technology was evolving. (this is said in a simple way so most users will understand + that I myself am not so technical about the details of it - feel free to correct me in the comment section)
At the same time as this was happening, Litecoin was created with another mining algorithm that didn't let Asics mine it, only GPU's. It was the first altcoin and many were excited, finally something to mine again with the GPU's they had in masses after bitcoin went for Asics. All was nice and fun, people were mining, holding and taking profits.
Because of Bitcoin's and Litecoin's open-source protocol it made it easy for others to create their own little "shitcoins", some with a certain goal and potential, others not as much. What many of them did do though was add more players to the crypto scene and helped its adoption in general, one of the best at these at the time was the joke of the altcoins called dogecoin.
Bitcoin had its bad moments here, many realized it was mostly being used for negative things such as drug markets and laundering money. It didn't help much that the biggest exchange at the time, Mt. Gox, "lost" over 880k bitcoins and screwed over a lot of investors. Thus a really negative vibe was brought upon the technology and left many people with a sour taste in their mouths afterwards, not only the ones that were invested in it, but also bystanders and newcomers looking to get in. Bitcoin started to dramatically fall in price over the next few years from over 1200$ to almost 150$.
Over the next few years more and more altcoins were created, most with each own purpose and many with what I believe a much better technology than the mother of all coins, bitcoin.
Now a short description of how I currently see bitcoin and why I am afraid to leave my value in it. What I am confused about and what I am sure about.
Let's just see this from a greed perspective. Everyone likes money, everyone wants their money to grow over time, especially since fiat money just keeps on inflating and losing value and banks have started resorting to negative interest rates in some countries. So the people who have found out about bitcoin, understand its technology and potential might have put a lot of money into it, so much that a crash in the bitcoin price might cause a lot of personal problems to them.
Now let's say I have invested a ton in bitcoin and I see these new currencies come along, all innovative in themselves and adapting to newer innovations and safer algorithms. What would I try and do to not lose market cap to these "shitcoins"? What would I do if most of my money is now invested in these special miners that cost me a lot and would be obsolete if bitcoin was to adapt to better algorithms? What am I supposed to do with them if Bitcoin were to go GPU only or Proof of Stake? I don't know, all I know is that I would lose a lot of money in it.
Let's see some options that I could choose though, from my profits I already have I could use a portion of them to help bitcoin along versus all these other currencies.
Do what most of the world has been doing lately, pay others to change their opinions and control others opinions on the internet. What we call shilling for a currency you yourself are invested in isn't even half as bad as shilling for direct profits from someone else who profits from it in the long run.
A few things I know for certain about Bitcoin.
Its biggest and most popular forum is Bitcointalk.org and is owned by a user called theymos. There are a lot of conspiracy theories around that and I don't really want to get into too much detail about it, all I know is that he also controls the biggest subreddit r/bitcoin. These are 2 very big "pools" that control a lot of discussion about bitcoin, about its mining, its future and its weaknesses. Everything is controllable and can be censored/edited, etc.
Is someone talking bad about my beloved bitcoin? DELETE their posts. Is someone questioning bitcoins development and adaption? DELETE 'EM!
Okay let's skip all that censor stuff, another big problem is that no one to this day still knows who created it and who this "Satoshi Nakamoto" is. Why is this a problem? Why can't he remain anonymous? Well, he can and he is, but he still owns a big percentage of the total supply of bitcoins. Many suspect its over 1 million bitcoins. If you go to blockchain.info and type in a random block number from the early ones in the search bar you will stumble upon addresses with 50 bitcoin in them that haven't been moved ever since they were mined. Are they lost forever? Is the person who owns them just waiting for the right moment? What happens if they start moving to the markets? A strange identity owning currently over 2 billion dollars, I wouldn't want to trust something like that, would you? Would companies? Would real powerful people who want to integrate their businesses trust in a technology that has no face of the creator and currently the biggest shareholder?
Hmm, let's see how we can help that. Oh right, I can just pay someone to pretend to be Satoshi Nakamoto!
This is what really pisses me off, even on a Twitch channel last night talking about bitcoin someone went "oh but didn't they find out who created it? I heard it in the news."
I wanna keep this text only so I won't be posting links to relevant videos of this, but it is true. Craig Wright went on different News Channels announcing that he was the creator of Bitcoin. The timing and his reasoning for coming out now seemed a bit odd, almost too odd. When he was asked to provide proof of this, i.e. signing a message from a really early block where Satoshi's coins resided, he accepted to do so and "show it" to a couple people. Why so few people, Craig? Why not broadcast it over the whole network? Why not be proud of your creation, show everyone that the coins are yours and in "safe" hands, give trust to the people about the biggest innovation of the century and let it go mainstream? Why not?
Oh right, it might also be that he isn't Satoshi Nakamoto and someone just wanted him to pretend to be to so Bitcoin wouldn't lose trust to the newcomers. He shared a "signature" of a transaction and it took a Redditor a few minutes to find a bug in it that made it invalid, afterwards he went back to the News Channels and expressed his "I just can't do this, I don't want to do this, apologize for not following through". These are not actual quotes but paraphrasing what he said. This can all be googled of course for more details. It still doesn't change of what happened and how someone somewhere tried to give bitcoin false trust by sending this person to pretend to be the creator of Bitcoin.
Then we also have the whole scene of Bitcoin Core Developers and BlockStream. I myself have stopped following Bitcoins "development" or lack thereof since 2 years back. Looking back at it now I am really glad I did. Sure Bitcoin might have seen a 5x rise since a few years back, but considering its scarcity and how hard it is to mint new ones should have made it go a lot higher in value, right? It being the first and most known, the biggest and most "secure". Why is it not seeing as big increases as Ethereum for example? Why not as big increases as Bitshares?
"It's still going up, though". Sure, many stocks and other commodities go up in value, many of them go up in value also before a big fall. I'm not predicting that Bitcoin will crash in price massively, but it sure wouldn't surprise me considering everything that is going on with it, and everything we don't know of what is going on with it.
I like Bitcoin, I'm grateful it brought me to this innovation and paved the way for so many others and newer ones to come to life and revolutionize almost everything that is currently being middle-manned and leeched off of as a "service" without there really being a need for it anymore. But why is it being held back this hard? Why has there not been a solution to the blocksize problem in so long? Are investors manipulating the price of it while jumping ship to other coins, or are they manipulating all the doubt that is rising right now so that they can hoard more of it since it is this scarce? I guess that's the billion dollar question here and the one I can't answer. Everyone has to be the judge themselves about it.
Anyway, if a lot of this is news for you I guess you'll have to google a lot of the facts to make sure I'm not just bullshitting you. My main reason for not trusting bitcoin is that these Core Developers are doing anything in their power to censor people questioning Bitcoins development. It doesn't take a genius to figure out how censored and controlled the biggest news platforms for Bitcoin are and how they are withholding information about other currencies and projects, but of course a big percentage of users don't care about it or never find out that the subreddit is being censored on the daily. That's also a big reason why I believe in censorship-resistant platforms like Steem where anyone can have a voice, wheter its a rant like this one or genuine distrust about something. My voice is still heard and visible and nothing can take that away from here.
Make sure to do your own re-search and try to dig as deep as you can if you are investing a lot of your value in these currencies, much like anything else in the world right now a lot of stuff is easily manipulated. Often so much and in such a big degree that once you realize it it might already be too late.
Let me know what your thoughts on it are in the comment section if you made it through the wall of text.
I think that Bitcoin has enabled a wealth of innovation, made Incumbents worry about being disrupted and really shined a light on, and raised awareness about, developing economies and how Blockchain technologies could be used to improve their quality of life.
I'm also a fan of the next generation of technologies that have spawned because of Bitcoin - Ethereum, Counterparty etc. and the projects based off of them.
However, I'm concerned about the cost of using Bitcoin, Ethereum, Countyparty - it has become very expensive recently to use them and I think that this is really degrading their advantage / adding barriers to adoption.
I am all with you. - followed!
Well Bitcoin confirmations are expensive ~ at around 20 bucks a pop right now. We are paying miners more than 10 dollars for these confirmations, unless Bitcoin scales this is absolutely unsustainable. Either fees even out at 20 dollars with the current capacity or we raise the capacity massively. It is that simple. This is cryptoeconomics 101.
true that, I'm new to crypto but when I heard of ETH i was really willing to jump ship, just because of interest and the nice names :D but I suppose we have it good here and I'm too young for another learning curve :D I need to first get the grips here and with the Graphene projects.
I share similar concerns about Bitcoin. The other day, I heard Trace Mayer say something along the lines of high fees are a good thing because it shows that people are willing to pay to use the network. He also strongly supports these so-called "core developers" and he called all other developers the "JV team."
I find statements like these by Trace to be highly suspicious. It sounds like something you wouldn't say in normal discourse...unless you have ulterior motives.
High fees are NOT a good thing. High fees render almost every use case for BTC obsolete. So why are people willing to pay so much to use the Bitcoin network? I'd argue it's because they want a piece of the action. The price is going up almost every day, and they want to make a quick buck.
What happens when the price stops going up? What if it crashes 80 or 90% like it has several times in the past? If this happens (which I think it will), we'll have high fees (probably lower than they are now, though), far fewer people with faith in Bitcoin, and still only able to process 7 transactions per second.
The community has been at an impasse for years now regarding scaling, and I think it's going to take a major crash before they come to an agreement. Even then, I believe it will only be like putting duct tape on a broken engine, not a permanent solution. It seems to me that Bitcoin isn't going to win the crypto race.
I'm extremely optimistic about cryptocurrencies in the medium to long term, but I'm very wary about them now. I'm bearish on Bitcoin in the short term, and since the altcoins are traded in Bitcoin, a crash in Bitcoin will likely bring the alts down with it.
If you purchased Bitcoin at $2500 today, in 10 years, I think you'd have a significant gain. But I believe we'll have another opportunity to buy Bitcoin under $500.
Followed, upvoted, and resteemed.
I like your response. Followed!
I don't know about the under 500$ opportunity. We will sure see.
Awesome, thanks for the follow!
I subscribe to 5 btc at 500 please get them for me :) btc was always a wtf is this for me, seemed interesting, but I never saw a point, since I didn't have the capital to use.
The entire Craig Wright story threw me off. I thought it was so bizarre when he initially came forward. It is very disheartening the lengths it seems people are going through to control and withhold
Damn, Bitcoin history is full of anonymity and secrets.
But I just now learned about how some of the currently top 20 cryptos (Litecoin and Dogecoin) came into existence. It seems very human, specially the part where the doge crypto was created.
For me one of the reasons why Bitcoin continues to grow big is because it's kind of the main gate for people to be able to invest in altcoins. But I'd also believe the deception part. It would make sense to use someone well known to gain people's trust. It's strategic, as well as using Reddit.
Wow (a wall of text for sure) what you said ! hehe
My latest theory - Steem = $ 1 & BTC = $ 2,000 +
What is going to double faster and easier ? what could do 10x fast 100x maybe in the very near future ?
I did a couple rants about bitcoin (links below) instead of going farther here:
Thanks for your time
Good posts, thanks for the comment!
Thanks for the feedback - every single one is appreciated :-)
Thanks to steemit : I'm busier than a cat in a room full of rocking chairs & more scattered than leaves in a Hurricane.
And reply's are easy & Pleasant to deal with (as apposed to posting a quality blog) But every day, I'm getting a little more organized, and getting my head full of steem through the keyboard to steemit.
Life is Good @ steemit.com
yup If only I was spending some effort on my part and actually making posts :D I'd be doing well too
This I think fits into your discussion on the crypto markets.
I have been sharing this info on something not widely known/talked about, crytpo related stocks. For me , just another opportunity to capitalize on this new and exciting paradigm. They are currently trading for pennies.
The stocks I think, give that still large segment of people who are not ready to learn about crytpos and exchanges, but have been on the sidelines hearing about all the excitement and gains, the opportunity to get on board this earth shaking crypto move, but within their own comfort zone by simply buying a stock that is related to bitcoin.
Most of these people already have a stock account they know how to use and in this way can participate easily. There are very few crypto stocks so these are already starting to skyrocket just in the last couple of days but may present an very unique opportunity. As a warning, there is not really a ton of info about them so use risk capital only!
I have put some money into them in just the last 1-2 days, already up significantly which means they may skyrocket further, or pull back hard, I do not think anybody can predict. Dollar cost averaging is probably the best way to enter at this point as they are just moving so fast now and price points could be anywhere next week. Anyways, I thought I would share, fwiw.
Here is a link with some of the info on 2 of the stocks crypto stocks that I just put together for myself and others as a starting point for due diligence.
https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@motowngold/global-arena-holding-inc-gahc-another-rare-bitcoin-and-blockchain-stock
An interesting perspective @acidyo - I still hold 7 of the original Bitcoins I bought @$24 in 2010 - 2 of which I mined with a GPU! Those days are well gone now!!
@mindhunter , 7 bitcoins can purchase a lot of chickens ; )
I bought a whole house for them here in Polska! :)
Boring boring boring ahahahah
Joking. Well I told you already my point of view!
You are fully justified in being fearful about bitcoin & crypto, in general, being a safe haven store of value @acidyo
BTC as a store of value
Be afraid, very afraid
Just as someone drove up the price of bitcoin, the market cap of which never exceeded USD 50 billion, someone can drive it down. The fiat currency trading market is USD 6 trillion a day.
It does not take much for a fiat leveraged billionaire to move BTC up or down.
When a person or group acting in concert begins to dominate an open network.
Trump : Twitter :: Chinese miners : bitcoin mining
The only true, time tested store of value is gold
Like fiat, cypto is currency.
Gold is money.
You too can make gold your money. @acidyo
I read your post carefully and I understood you..
Upvoted for the good content..
But I have othe point of view regarding Bitcoin!
I invested when was $250 and I did not sell..
I will keep it
Thanks for sharing
Have a nice weekend
hey there :) I applaud your commitment you have some tough nerves, or you are pretty well off, but still I suppose I'm a noob trader, 2250 for 250 is a good trade in my mind :D sure 50k bitcoins is just a few years away :D
Thank you for posting @acidyo.
Appreciate this well-written article......without going into the weeds. Lots of rabbit holes. From a market perspective.....Bitcoin is where people are putting their money......and it seems BTC does not mind being cumbersome and letting letting other coins have market share who are more nimble. Why....do not know yet it seems they are setting themselves up for large purchases only.
Yes...we should question bitcoins in general. A criteria for ones own crypto portfolio seems to be a good idea........the trouble is that the coins making strides in the market are not necessarily the ones of value..
Ether is the one that is the most troublesome as it has JP Morgan and others of that sort in the creation of it. It that not a red herring?
There will be winner and losers in the crypto world......now to find a criteria for the ones to go with.
All the best. Cheers.
what is that about ether, I've heard only of ripple being a shill coin :D
Greetings @j3dy.
An article over at CoinTelegraph.com titled Top Ten Alt-Coins...... included some information regarding Ether.....hope this helps.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/top-10-altcoins-all-you-wanted-to-know-about-bitcoins-contenders
Having read it and everything one can find regarding its operations.....nothing seems out of the ordinary and certainly every analysis has it going up and up with new things in the works and such......it is just something to bear in mind.....Dan at the Consensus made the remark that Etherum did not have the capability BTS has. (paraphrased)
As for Ripple....it should and has done well......however because of its relationship to the banking industry.....it is adviseable to get out when the banks start to go wobbly. Watch Italy and Germany.....wobbles already.
All the best to you. Cheers.
Thank you! well I'm a bit stumped on all the information, I'm sure ETH has it's fans, so far I've only watched one video on some conference it was great and the community there seemed really tech and smart, but that came off the speaker and it's too little to guess for the entire ecosystem.
Thank you for sharing I have to check it out. If I get the chance I will
I'm sure I've heard of at least half of the coins already, but it's better to learn on those that don't make such news, BTS being one, I'm just brushing past them as a community but they seem really stable and dedicated. I was very surprised when I found out that stan is dan's father :D funny times and they have great members "subscribed" there like @onceuponatime
I've already heard of the marketing talks for BTS/Graphene/Steem so I know what everybody knows, transactions, transactions and a great foundation capable of wonders :)
As for Ripple and banks, I'm wwaaaayyy too far away from that, I do wish banks were doods and helped out, but I'm sure that i they have to close offices they'd do everything to disrupt their disruptees. Still it's the stupidest thing to punish your smartest and most forward thinking citizens. Since most of crypto people are looking into innovations and improvements, even if it's mostly in the tech field, they are the "top of the top" since we are so "decentalized" we get to know a lot and communicate much :)
I can't upvote this enough. You killed it man.
:) whaleshares :D it's not on, or you can try the steem voter guild.
Acidyo, thank you for your helpful personal view on Bitcoin.
Great insights @acidyo! It's wonderful to see you write a long expressive post like this. We've talked about censorship on Reddit. Steem is the way to go unless something even better comes up in up-coming years.
Blockchain is the future. Perhaps it's just a matter of time before the paradigms take a shift.
Not bad info/insight. BTC is being used in places where fiat is crashing hard! It was once said of the USD that it was the proverbial "cleanest shirt in the dirty laundry bin" and I suppose you might make the same or similar case for BTC.
I believe it will continue strong in value, but that it's snail's pace to adapt and expand will leave room for coins that are actively seeking market share by just doing smart things to make their coin better (ex. Dash).
As for Satoshi, well, we don't know who invented the wheel either, and I don't think it matters as much as some might think.
well said, many inventors are thrown under the bus too :| you are probably right on the mark, or I seem to think that.
That taught me a lot, but I see where you're coming from. I have not heard of these conspiracy theories but I might take a look into it. Although I do hate the censorship that they are doing. Great post!
Read your article some of it went a bit over my head but still very interesting
There are many red flags appearing lately but we all have to be cautious. Not looking for votes but if you have the time see my posts here, here, here and here.
:D just sign :D .. .. . . :Dk ok ok good posts :D
a very long report.
thank you for your point of view. :-)
Great read. Totally agree with you here. I have seen bitcoin's positive news everywhere before... to the point that today the mainstream media is blindly talking about it.
Those days of controlling have only led to the growth of bitcoins. Just look at the fees... $1 for 350 transaction...
Unacceptable.
If Satoshi does dump his millions of coins, we will see the blood bath for real and the population on this planet will significantly reduce (well, that seems like a plus).
It seems manipulated which is why I invest very little. That, and the fact that I have little because my ex-wife decided to play her game.
Those 50 bitcoin probably belong to the "British gentleman" who Marco Streng talked about here (5:37) ;)
Tl;dw : Man mines a ton of bitcoin very early when it didn't even have a price, his gf doesn't understand what he's doing, they decide to put the computer in the trash. Then on one fine day he discovers 1 bitcoin is selling for $100.
Wow his english makes it hard to follow, lol. :P
Subtitles could make it easier :)
Yeah looks like he just had a rough start.
just noticed something here, all comments getting 12 upvotes from the same exact users? Are those your "delegates"?
.
I've heard from someone u can do that but haven't seen it in action
Its from Streemian.com.
Before they added the option to not follow votes on comments.
I've heard it being around 5000 bitcoins the old "threw the pc in the trash" story.
Not 300k as he mentioned, but I should check it out on google.
Great article! My eyes need a break after this "wall of text", but it's really interesting to think about all that you mentioned here... ~ Resteeming this ;)
yeah I left it open and midway, then saw it made some gains and I wished I scrolled down to vote at least :D
For some reasons I had miss that post. Nice post. I never get enough of crypto related posts.
Bitcoin is still the crypto that most influence all other but things are changing really fast.
Hehe maybe cause I didn't add an image. xP
A provocative and thoughtful peice, a lot to digest here
I liked everything you wrote.
Read the title, Nope.jpg. :) J/k I love you.
Comment written for upvotes.
Penny for your thoughts.
That's all there needs to be said about it.
Disclaimer: I am just a bot trying to be helpful.
Good job! I upvoted your post.
I followed you please follow me 🔙
Thank you for the informative read and the nice conversation sparked here. I'm not too sure of the bitcoin politics, but I tend to stray away from traders and pumpers, those guys "selling" are actually mining us, they've bought in and they need a ROI, at least that is what I can see in the faces of the "traders" it's the same as Peter Schiff for instance pumping the gold market. He's against bitcoins, why? because there are a million reasons if you don't have any :D and a million reasons gold is the greatest gift to mankind, or is it.
Market mentality is profits, and that clouds judgement and destroys perspective, "look at how good we have it" let's not change it's great. Meanwhile all the innovation is stifled.
wow....!nice post @acidyo
I am one of the Mt Gox. Victim. I bought $100 worth of BC. It went up to $1200 in value when I decided to turn some of the BC Back to FRNs and discovered that I could not. Today I am still waiting to see what the Japanese courts will decide to award us with. Not a big loss ($100) but a big loss in opportunities. I am slowly trying to get my feet wet again. Just like before it requires several steps to convert FRN into BC.
earn here, there are many exchanges, pick a good one, reliable I like bitshares as a base after all, bittrex and openledger are ones using it, it's a blockchain exchange, so it's all smart contracted and the money is there, everywhere within the BLC
Interesting post here too :) linking both :) https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@kingscrown/interesting-facts-about-bitcoin-blocks-and-lost-coins
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