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Re: What is the biggest hurdle stopping newcomers purchasing their first Bitcoin?

Posted: October 8th, 2019, 7:42 pm
by dspp
bannanabannanagrape wrote:

Don't just write this off, it deserves some serious scrutiny but my personal view is that given enough research you'll view the risk of holding it far less than the risk of not.


I am not necessarily disagreeing with you, but neither am I inclined to agree with you. I am very happy to hear how you personally think it can maintain its value in the face of an onslaught by nation states.

However what I can personally contribute to this is that I watched a young chap I know put about £10k - which for him was almost everything he had - into bitcoin. He actually went with a blend of types. He hasn't traded it because it fell too fast for him to think ! To cut a long story short his pot is down to about £500 and most of the remainder is illiquid. At that point he 'fessed up and said he ought to have asked our advice earlier; and he also admitted he voted for Brexit.

There are many nation state currencies that exhibit similar downsides, and I've lived in a few of them during the relevant periods, so I appreciate this risk is not bitcoin-specific. However it is very real.

At least with gold you can fall back on the "store of value" argument, or the jewelry argument. You can't even paper your toilet with bitcoin.

regards, dspp

Re: What is the biggest hurdle stopping newcomers purchasing their first Bitcoin?

Posted: February 11th, 2020, 2:38 pm
by PitBullCH
If he really bought Bitcoin and didn't trade it, then his £10k cannot now be worth £500 (5% of what he started with) - at the peak one Bitcoin was just shy of $20k, it has been as low as $4k (so 20% of peak) and is currently around $9.5-10k.

More likely he bought "alt-coins" - other cryptos than Bitcoin, and for sure many of these have lost 99% or more - but some are still in good profit.

Re: What is the biggest hurdle stopping newcomers purchasing their first Bitcoin?

Posted: February 12th, 2020, 6:37 am
by GoSeigen
PitBullCH wrote:If he really bought Bitcoin and didn't trade it, then his £10k cannot now be worth £500 (5% of what he started with) - at the peak one Bitcoin was just shy of $20k, it has been as low as $4k (so 20% of peak) and is currently around $9.5-10k.

More likely he bought "alt-coins" - other cryptos than Bitcoin, and for sure many of these have lost 99% or more - but some are still in good profit.


Very old thread. dspp was quite clear that "He actually went with a blend of types".

GS

Re: What is the biggest hurdle stopping newcomers purchasing their first Bitcoin?

Posted: March 7th, 2020, 3:05 pm
by shares4me2
A few years ago, at a loss as to what to buy me for a birthday present, my son gave me £25 worth of Bitcoin. Now worth about £375. Quite a nice present above aftershave and my spreadsheet values it whenever I do a scrape. That is as long as they haven't been stolen as in the example above!

Re: What is the biggest hurdle stopping newcomers purchasing their first Bitcoin?

Posted: March 7th, 2020, 9:38 pm
by Lanark
For bitcoin or any currency to work as a store of value it has to have a limited supply.

Just like Gold - there is a fixed amount of gold in existence around the planet.

There is a mathematically limited amount of bitcoin, but there is also a lot of competition form alternative currencies like Monero or Facebook's Libra.

Any one of these currencies looked at in isolation may look like it could be a good idea, but taken together it should become apparent that they are built on quicksand, all it takes is a successful new coin to be invented and all the speculators will abandon the coin you are currently invested in and buy the new thing instead.

Another sign of a successful currency is that people use it to buy things with, I have yet to see any evidence of people doing that with bitcoin.

Re: What is the biggest hurdle stopping newcomers purchasing their first Bitcoin?

Posted: March 8th, 2020, 3:11 am
by johnhemming
If Bitcoin is to be considered as a currency then you need to resolve two issues.
a) Transaction costs and
b) Consistency as to value.

If the value is continually changing by material amounts it makes accepting payment via bitcoin a speculative decision (or a marketing exercise). Bitcoin is unusable for marginally profitable transactions whilst its value continues to fluctuate as it does.

Re: What is the biggest hurdle stopping newcomers purchasing their first Bitcoin?

Posted: April 15th, 2020, 6:56 pm
by JohnB
I'll never use Bitcoin because of the environmental damage the servers mining new bitcoins does.