Bitcoin

Kevin boasted (yes, unprovoked boast) on 16th that his wealth had escalated to over $2.8m. The price was $4,400 then. The price dropped on Tuesday to $3,740. that's a 15% drop. I'd like to hear the ups and downs, not just the boasts. Also, if someone loses $600,000 in 6 days, I don't think he's doing a good job, he's lucky and unlucky, as I stated in my second post on this thread.

Got you... yes they price can move up and down a fair bit in a week... hence why I am trying to average over the week. Although I don't save Bitcoin, I have just pulled the chart from my tracker, and indeed there was a sharp trough on Tuesday to which the price bounced back, and also a peak on Friday to which the price has fallen back... if you draw a straight line over the week however it's a steady rise..

Hmm, this thread sort of reminds me of a character in a recent film...

Now what was it...

Oh yes!...

Smaug!

Kevin Richardson posted:

Also, I have no access to 98% of my bitcoins ....

Similarly, my unicorns greet any attempt on my part to monetise them with "Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!".

Which explains why they are presently entrusted to soft hands of the Virgins of Radnok.

I love disruptive mythologies.

Obviously - you will have the last laugh. Which won't 't stop me chortling for the next 50-100 years.

" As for the boast... It's $3.8 million not $2.8 million.. Not that +/- a million $ will matter in 10 years"

Kevin, the $600,000 loss is correct, I typed $2.8 instead of $3.8 here. You should have instantly understood the discrepancy. Perhaps your generations would appreciate the odd $600,000 now, instead of waiting until they're 103 for the big surprise.

You don't know it will grow over the next 10 years or 10 days, this is my point. If you knew, you wouldn't lose 15%. You're the one who boasted a value increase over days, I'm addressing that issue. It doesn't make me feel better whether the price goes up or down for you. I thought the thread started off with a potential to be interesting, but ended just being a platform to boast your wealth. I don't understand the logic behind your investing, I don't understand Bitcoins and tbh, I don't understand investing for 100 years time. Best of luck anyway. 

Bragging or boasting a side, I find crypto currencies a fascinating technology, and I suspect a possible vignette of future currencies and monetary transaction frameworks... certainly getting involved with them is fascinating if you are that way inclined... they appear are very much safer and cyber hardened as well as being much more transparent than current monetary mechanisms but obviously no where near as widespread, although crypto credit cards are now available in the US. using regular currency as an intermediary monetary unit. Probably as in most industries there is an IT disruptor looming around the corner, and this is one for the finance industry I feel  ... there is also the concept of the community aspect to improve their transaction efficiency, which is termed mining which if again if you are interested can be a steady stream of low value income..however the growth in Cryptos has outpaced Moore's Law and so profitability here is getting harder for the average punter .. and doing this is very sensitive to the price of electricity which in the U.K. is rather high...

In some ways it feels quite similar to the early days of the web, where those of us who then used, adopted, developed and worked with it were considered outside of technical communities geeks and it's products and uses socially non mainstream.... now twenty five years later it is very different..... and yes in the early days of the web there were fanciful get rich quick schemes.. and some did, but most found it an alternative channel of creating wealth and consuming it..

count.d posted:

" As for the boast... It's $3.8 million not $2.8 million.. Not that +/- a million $ will matter in 10 years"

Kevin, the $600,000 loss is correct, I typed $2.8 instead of $3.8 here. You should have instantly understood the discrepancy. Perhaps your generations would appreciate the odd $600,000 now, instead of waiting until they're 103 for the big surprise.

You don't know it will grow over the next 10 years or 10 days, this is my point. If you knew, you wouldn't lose 15%. You're the one who boasted a value increase over days, I'm addressing that issue. It doesn't make me feel better whether the price goes up or down for you. I thought the thread started off with a potential to be interesting, but ended just being a platform to boast your wealth. I don't understand the logic behind your investing, I don't understand Bitcoins and tbh, I don't understand investing for 100 years time. Best of luck anyway. 

I was not "bragging" or "boasting". I was simply sharing my experience in concrete terms. I am a relatively "normal" person. [I was not born into money. I went to university and worked for everything I have in life.] I told you I bought AMAZON in the weeks following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. You called that "easy". I bought Bitcoin and 99% of all people think I'm a fool.

There is no point on trying to time the market when you believe the asset will continue to appreciate. The tax burden of 45% makes selling a losing proposition. Also, I have no ability to sell.

You are correct; I do not know if BTC will appreciate over next 10 years. However, I have spent years studying the technology and it has changed my life. I had a near cathartic experience when I saw clearly the underlying beauty of Bitcoin. It hit me that the massive wealth inequalities in the US can and WILL be mitigated by the adoption of Bitcoin. Average people now have access to "real money" that will [if I am correct] exponentially increase their wealth relative to local fiat.

The "100 year" investment strategy was the result of the first major crash in Bitcoin in 2013. I saw BTC fall from $1,250 -> [some very low number which I was too depressed to even look]. I kept thinking "I should have sold.... I could do x or I could do y." After spending months\years in a severely depressed condition, I finally started to accept my "loss". I still believed in the technology but did not want to constantly worry about its USD value. I decided to hold them "forever". I created a trust which makes access to the private keys impossible at least until the year 2036. I thought maybe by that time they would provide $ to fund my children's retirement and/or grandchildren's college education.[ I am glad I did this since knowing the USD value now relative to my current income would create significant "emotional distress".] Now, however, I am realizing the dream of a democratic currency will come true. I am confident that my Bitcoin will allow my descendants absolute financial security. [Something I never even considered prior to Bitcoin]

So maybe I should not have used my Bitcoin wealth as an example. Please look at it from my point of view. I have been nearly constantly advocating my friends\family\colleagues to buy bitcoin. Nobody took my advice or even, AFAIK, took the time to learn about it. My colleagues derided it as a "Ponzi scheme", "a scam", and a "worthless nothing that will never have any real value". I then post on here in an attempt to chat up Bitcoin a bit and am met with mostly "subtle mockery." My goal was not to "bask in the glory of my infinite wisdom" but to merely share how absolutely committed I am to idea of Bitcoin.

I really hope that everybody on this forum takes the time to truly understand the Bitcoin\Crypto technology. Once you understand how it works, you will understand why it will change the world for the better. 

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Bragging or boasting a side, I find crypto currencies a fascinating technology, and I suspect a possible vignette of future currencies and monetary transaction frameworks... certainly getting involved with them is fascinating if you are that way inclined... they appear are very much safer and cyber hardened as well as being much more transparent than current monetary mechanisms but obviously no where near as widespread, although crypto credit cards are now available in the US. using regular currency as an intermediary monetary unit. Probably as in most industries there is an IT disruptor looming around the corner, and this is one for the finance industry I feel  ... there is also the concept of the community aspect to improve their transaction efficiency, which is termed mining which if again if you are interested can be a steady stream of low value income..however the growth in Cryptos has outpaced Moore's Law and so profitability here is getting harder for the average punter .. and doing this is very sensitive to the price of electricity which in the U.K. is rather high...

In some ways it feels quite similar to the early days of the web, where those of us who then used, adopted, developed and worked with it were considered outside of technical communities geeks and it's products and uses socially non mainstream.... now twenty five years later it is very different..... and yes in the early days of the web there were fanciful get rich quick schemes.. and some did, but most found it an alternative channel of creating wealth and consuming it..

Some good points. The days of the "little guy" mining Bitcoin is about over. You can still profitabily mine in the US but the better approach is to simply buy and hold.

The thing that differentiates Bitcoin from most of the 900+ other crypto currencies is the organic growth of the community. It started with just a handful of people and has grow to millions. It was not conceived with purely a "profit motive" [many of the other coins are outright scams]. When your "average person" finally has access through [what they consider "legitimate sources" [IRA, 401k, Stock Exchanges...], they will most likely want to first hold Bitcoin and then speculate on other crypto coins.

What are the real constraints on price appreciation of Bitcoin? Consider the world wide Gold market % allocated to investments = something like 3 Trillion USD. Bitcoin is slowly being recognized as having most of the positive attributes of gold without many of the negatives. I believe it is very likely that in 20 years, half of the gold investments will transition into Bitcoin. This alone, all other things remaining static, would elevate the price to $89,090. Is this really possible? Im quite confident given admittedly  anecdotal evidence from fellow gold bugs having already diversified into Bitcoin. Now consider the US Bond market. It has been on a 40+ year bull run. Unfortunately, the game is nearly over as there are $ trillions(?) of negative yielding bonds currently in existence. If interest rate are raised, bond holders will lose massive amounts of wealth. The standard 80-20 Equities-Bonds does not look great in the next 10+ years. I suspect a great deal of institutional and retail USD will flow into the Crypto space. I have no data to back up that claim just going on my instincts. So maybe another $ trillion from bond/equities -> $148,535 price for bitcoin. Now look at the "post oil" world. The USD is largely propped up by the fact that the global oil markets are priced in USD. What happens to USD in 50 years when everything runs on renewable energy? My somewhat informed opinion is that it will lose its status as the primary world reserve currency. What currency will replace USD? Quite possibly Bitcoin. In this scenario, very long term really beyond my lifetime i suspect, Bitcoin will ascend to $1 MM + valuation.

All those number are great to imagine but leaves out the single greatest source for massive price appreciation: mass acceptance by average people tired of feeding the majority of the world's wealth into the hands of the top .1%. [I'm a member of this camp.] Crypto will likely become a multi trillion $ asset class and the bankers do not get to create bitcoin out of "thin air". They will have to buy it on the open market just like your average Joe. In this space, they will not get same ridiculous advantage they exploit in "legacy" markets.

My challenge remains the same as always.... buy 1 bitcoin and hold it. You do not have to buy a whole bitcoin in a single transaction. In the US you can buy as little as $0.01 at a time. If the volatility concerns you, "dollar cost average" into it over 3-6 months. Then keep buying small amounts every week with some fairly trivial amount of fiat.

I may have mentioned this before but I'll say it again. Would  you go back in time to the early 17th century and buy land in Manhattan? That is the type of opportunity I believe Bitcoin offers people today. Except you probably only need to wait 10 years vs 300.

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Bragging or boasting a side, I find crypto currencies a fascinating technology, and I suspect a possible vignette of future currencies and monetary transaction frameworks... certainly getting involved with them is fascinating if you are that way inclined... they appear are very much safer and cyber hardened as well as being much more transparent than current monetary mechanisms but obviously no where near as widespread, although crypto credit cards are now available in the US. using regular currency as an intermediary monetary unit. Probably as in most industries there is an IT disruptor looming around the corner, and this is one for the finance industry I feel  ... there is also the concept of the community aspect to improve their transaction efficiency, which is termed mining which if again if you are interested can be a steady stream of low value income..however the growth in Cryptos has outpaced Moore's Law and so profitability here is getting harder for the average punter .. and doing this is very sensitive to the price of electricity which in the U.K. is rather high...

In some ways it feels quite similar to the early days of the web, where those of us who then used, adopted, developed and worked with it were considered outside of technical communities geeks and it's products and uses socially non mainstream.... now twenty five years later it is very different..... and yes in the early days of the web there were fanciful get rich quick schemes.. and some did, but most found it an alternative channel of creating wealth and consuming it..

I forgot to mention a way for everybody to mine coins at a profit. Last year I started running a program on my music server called Minergate [minergate . com] and have mined a bit over $2,000 worth of Monero. I calculated it took < 10 watts/hour to run 3 threads. I did it for two reasons: 1. I like mining as a hobby 2. The early amounts more than covered the cost of the additional electricity. [I leave my computer on 24x7 for music etc]

It is still profitable to mine Monero on that site. I am currently mining about $5 USD / week. [The price of Monero shot up from like 3$ -> 140$ in past year] Give it a try. You probably won't get rich but it is easy and free Crypto with a potential for significant price appreciation in the coming years.

count.d posted:

" As for the boast... It's $3.8 million not $2.8 million.. Not that +/- a million $ will matter in 10 years"

Kevin, the $600,000 loss is correct, I typed $2.8 instead of $3.8 here. You should have instantly understood the discrepancy. Perhaps your generations would appreciate the odd $600,000 now, instead of waiting until they're 103 for the big surprise.

You don't know it will grow over the next 10 years or 10 days, this is my point. If you knew, you wouldn't lose 15%. You're the one who boasted a value increase over days, I'm addressing that issue. It doesn't make me feel better whether the price goes up or down for you. I thought the thread started off with a potential to be interesting, but ended just being a platform to boast your wealth. I don't understand the logic behind your investing, I don't understand Bitcoins and tbh, I don't understand investing for 100 years time. Best of luck anyway. 

Uh...that's called volatility.

Cash in a mattress'd be good for you...

Kevin...would you please buy ME a Lamborghini????

DrMark posted:

count.d posted:

" As for the boast... It's $3.8 million not $2.8 million.. Not that +/- a million $ will matter in 10 years"

Kevin, the $600,000 loss is correct, I typed $2.8 instead of $3.8 here. You should have instantly understood the discrepancy. Perhaps your generations would appreciate the odd $600,000 now, instead of waiting until they're 103 for the big surprise.

You don't know it will grow over the next 10 years or 10 days, this is my point. If you knew, you wouldn't lose 15%. You're the one who boasted a value increase over days, I'm addressing that issue. It doesn't make me feel better whether the price goes up or down for you. I thought the thread started off with a potential to be interesting, but ended just being a platform to boast your wealth. I don't understand the logic behind your investing, I don't understand Bitcoins and tbh, I don't understand investing for 100 years time. Best of luck anyway. 

Uh...that's called volatility.

Cash in a mattress'd be good for you...

Kevin...would you please buy ME a Lamborghini????

What? What's it got to do with you. This is a conversation between me and Kevin. Stay out of it and ignore me.

Kevin, it will be interesting to follow the Bitcoin prices. Your last few posts have made interesting reading. 

Just a quick update on Bitcoin price action. Today "pre fork" BTC hit a new all time high of $5,479 USD. Possibly a correction coming once "post fork" BTC hits $5,000 USD but.... wow....

DrMark posted:

count.d posted:

" As for the boast... It's $3.8 million not $2.8 million.. Not that +/- a million $ will matter in 10 years"

Kevin, the $600,000 loss is correct, I typed $2.8 instead of $3.8 here. You should have instantly understood the discrepancy. Perhaps your generations would appreciate the odd $600,000 now, instead of waiting until they're 103 for the big surprise.

You don't know it will grow over the next 10 years or 10 days, this is my point. If you knew, you wouldn't lose 15%. You're the one who boasted a value increase over days, I'm addressing that issue. It doesn't make me feel better whether the price goes up or down for you. I thought the thread started off with a potential to be interesting, but ended just being a platform to boast your wealth. I don't understand the logic behind your investing, I don't understand Bitcoins and tbh, I don't understand investing for 100 years time. Best of luck anyway. 

Uh...that's called volatility.

Cash in a mattress'd be good for you...

Kevin...would you please buy ME a Lamborghini????

Hmmmm..... Well you were the first to ask so I guess you'll be first in line!

DrMark posted:

"Brett Arends called Bitcoin garbage with no real world use outside of online gambling, trafficking in illegal goods and services, and money laundering. "

Well yes, that is what Central Bank Useful Idiots would say. They're saying the same things about cash too...just to begin priming the pump of public stupidity, er, I mean opinion. (See Rogoff, Summers, etc.)

Simple fact is they hate anything that might break their grip on total control of everything, because if you control the money supply, you are 100% in charge. This hatred encompasses cryptos, PMs, and cash. Of course, the simple fact that the US dollar has lost 97% of its purchasing power since the Federal Reserve was formed should give no one pause for thought...after all, they are the experts.

That is why that silly/stupid woman running the Fed can make a statement as she did last month that we are highly unlikely to see another financial crisis in our lifetimes - oh really Janet? I give it 2, maybe 3 years at most. An awful lot of this bogus credit loaned at faux interest rate levels that prompted this "recovery" is NEVER getting paid back. And once the dominoes start to fall, watch out below - 2008 will look like a walk in the park, because the setup is exactly the same, only this time the numbers are way larger.

The reality is that when we deposit money in a bank, it is literally no longer our money...all we have become is an unsecured creditor to the bank. And almost all western nations have passed "bail-in" laws in the past 5 or so years. Cyprus was just a Beta-test.

I am not in cryptos, but looking to get some exposure - definitely NOT something for the rent money. Interested in Ethereum, Factom, maybe Monero, and there is an ICO of Ahoolee upcoming - but the whole exchange/wallet thing is difficult for me to wrap my head around.

Cryptos, PMs (including shares of quality miners and royalty companies), some physical cash, and shorts (including long-dated puts) on highly indebted companies with lousy balance sheets. Then after the crash, go shopping for the stocks of quality businesses that will be on sale at massive discounts.

The "easiest"/"safest" wallet is a hardware wallet like the Trezor [I got one for $105]. It can currently hold BTC, LTC, ETH, ETC, ERC20 Tokens, DASH, and ZEC. Currently no Monero support .... but hopefully it will soon.

Oh well, my investment's in CaCO₃ and ceramics.

Ethereum and Litecoin here... seem to be doing rather well .. especially the latter. I have set myself a little game... how long will it take, if ever, for a £1000 to get to £20,000 and then I might just treat myself to a 552, if it all goes horribly wrong well I will have lost £1000 and slum it with my 252... it feels a bit like my own Blue Peter Appeal 'Totaliser' board. I just hope I don't get too old and deaf by the time it happens 

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Ethereum and Litecoin here... seem to be doing rather well .. especially the latter. I have set myself a little game... how long will it take, if ever, for a £1000 to get to £20,000 and then I might just treat myself to a 552, if it all goes horribly wrong well I will have lost £1000 and slum it with my 252... it feels a bit like my own Blue Peter Appeal 'Totaliser' board. I just hope I don't get too old and deaf by the time it happens 

Probably sooner than you think. LTC already got to $94 USD this evening. LTC just had the first Lightning network transaction which has made a lot of people bullish on the coin. [$500 by 2019?]

My personal "moonshot" coin is NEO. A platform that has significant advantages vs Ethereum. Currently trading around $31 USD. Most holders believe NEO will appreciate to a market cap similar to Ethereum in 18-24 months. [15x?] Although recent rumors regarding "government meddling (regulation)"  have spooked the price down by 25% this week..... September 10 will be an important date for the near term prospects. [This is my "get the new Berkeley DAC" coin....]

Anyhoo.... Hope it works for you. [Im holding ETH and LTC long term]

Kevin Richardson posted:

Just a quick update on Bitcoin price action. Today "pre fork" BTC hit a new all time high of $5,479 USD. Possibly a correction coming once "post fork" BTC hits $5,000 USD but.... wow....

Ok there was a 12% "correction" across the Cryptocurrency sector today after the "post fork" BTC was unable to break the $4,975 sell wall.... I was pretty close on the 5k but I went to sleep with a SELL order above 5K. My night was filled with dream about bitcoin. In my dream the price was either $4,500 or $5,500. I did not want to wake up since I knew it was more likely to be down... and it was @ $4,500 ish by time I looked.

So it isn't a straight line up. However, it is still up 3.52% for the week. Might be some additional downward pressure over the next week if anybody is looking for a "cheap" entry point.

So, if/when we have a similar cash 'liquidity' issue as per 2007, which caused pretty much all assets to drop in value, what happens to Bitcoin? Down, up, nothing? 

JamieWednesday posted:

So, if/when we have a similar cash 'liquidity' issue as per 2007, which caused pretty much all assets to drop in value, what happens to Bitcoin? Down, up, nothing? 

Liquidity crisis is unlikely to negatively impact Bitcoin price. It is currently very difficult [impossible?] to enter into highly leverage BTC long positions. The entire market is 70 billion USD with a near 0 $ derivatives market. [I believe there are some tiny exchanges which offer some kind of options but the USD value is probably just a rounding error] If you hold your private keys, Bitcoin has 0 counter-party risk. Some hedge funds MAY own 100,000 BTC [not sure but probably few could own more]. If for some reason they decided to sell them to raise USD, the price would plummet to the point selling them would not raise a significant amount of USD so it appears to be a poor option. [Unless there are a buyers pumping in $ fleeing the equities\bond markets.]

If we have another event the size of 2008's Solomon Brothers bankruptcy, I suspect USD would flow into Bitcoin as a 21st century "safe haven". [Gold\Silver got killed in September - December 2008 due to the massive leverage of the paper-market] UST yields would drop below 0%. People need to put their USD somewhere..... So my guess is if it happened in the next few months, Bitcoin would go up in USD price.

OK, I'm leaving... I've just had enough of this draconic / Ferengi (take your pick) approach and smugness.

In retrospect I'd say Bitcoin started as a really cool idea but is now on its way to become something sinister. Because the USDs you now invest in Bitcoin probably go to a drug lord or a cyber criminal. This use and speculation ultimately drive the Bitcoin value. I can't see it as an utopian currency for the "common man".

Common men need a stable currency which can be used to reliably pay the rent or buy food. The use of a currency must be simple and understandable. A currency must be accepted everywhere in its region. A real currency is closely related to a "real" national economy and thus backed by real work.

Nothing of this applies to Bitcoin. A national economy based on Bitcoin would collapse due to deflation, i.e. everyone would keep clinging to their precious Bitcoins because they still rise in value. That's the reason why central banks try to avoid deflation at all cost.

If I were you I'd sell my Bitcoins and get a nice apartment in Manhattan. Because Manhattan will still exist in 20 years.

Huge, I am not sure Kevin is particularly smug - just sharing his experiences - and perhaps doing that in a way that riles you. Its still early days but cryptos don't behave like regular currency,  traditional investments or traditional commodities.  As I say this was exactly the same sort of attitude in my experience that occurred with the early web in the early to mid 90s when people were grabbing domain names and then selling them or using them to set up services  - and most were very dismissive at the time as it was seen as simply too 'geeky' - but that was a side show to the whole world that was then opening up.. and yes I have still my domain names and two of them I am pretty pleased about and made some money from being able to optimise my web site for Google matches by 'playing' the algorithms  - before big business stepped in making it harder for newcomers... another early web geek culture.

Cryptos have been around as we know them from around 2012/13 - they are just starting to leave the geek and ultra early adopter phase ... have a look into it - but try and get and beyond the personality of the messenger.. you may want to play in the space - it doesn't have to cost a lot - and if you hodl some new alternative crypto coins you may be able to have some fun with them in a few years time... 

Kevin, its interesting to muse here what the relationship between LTC and BTC will be when Lightning Network is activated on the Bitcoin network... as that of course brings atomic transactions the LN transaction cost will almost certainly be cheaper via LTC than BTC which may well push the value up of LTC coins...

Also you can really see how big business can start to use this with the arrival of SegWin and LN and create their own block chains for their businesses and consumers - a bit like a 21st century store card that can extend easily to associate partners and provide so much more  - sort of like a combined private currency/social network .... [it looks like Bugger King are toying around with something similar to this in Russia]. You can see how cryptos could become the new currencies of the future where traditional centralised currencies from national banks are effectively privatised and decentralised and perhaps only used for state transactions like taxes, benefits, state assets and government contracts. I am sure the regulator will try and impede this and control this as with regular web technology - and so will be a case of catchup for them - but also they will be under pressure not too stifle innovation - as players here could be great at creating new tech business revenue streams and potentially provide great commercial advantage - and more resultant taxable wealth...

So SegWit and LN really do introduce the feasability  of real electronic privatised currencies without transactions needing to use nationalised currencies as intermediaries. Interesting times. In ten years if I find this post/thread it will be interesting to refer back - a time capsule if you like... 

jfritzen posted:

In retrospect I'd say Bitcoin started as a really cool idea but is now on its way to become something sinister. Because the USDs you now invest in Bitcoin probably go to a drug lord or a cyber criminal. This use and speculation ultimately drive the Bitcoin value. I can't see it as an utopian currency for the "common man".

Common men need a stable currency which can be used to reliably pay the rent or buy food. The use of a currency must be simple and understandable. A currency must be accepted everywhere in its region. A real currency is closely related to a "real" national economy and thus backed by real work.

Nothing of this applies to Bitcoin. A national economy based on Bitcoin would collapse due to deflation, i.e. everyone would keep clinging to their precious Bitcoins because they still rise in value. That's the reason why central banks try to avoid deflation at all cost.

If I were you I'd sell my Bitcoins and get a nice apartment in Manhattan. Because Manhattan will still exist in 20 years.

 

Let me try to "spin" some of the issues:

1. USD -> "drug lord or cyber criminal": In the USA, the biggest gateway between USD and Bitcoin is Coinbase.com. To transact through them, you need to provide all the information banks request when you open an account. They also place a relatively small max $/day that can be withdrawn [$10,000 USD]. If you are a criminal, you probably do not want anything to do with Coinbase.

2. "crime and speculation driving BTC value": There certainly is a lot of speculation going on in BTC. Bitcoin has also been used by criminals. Bitcoin is not great for criminal activity due to the fact the ledger is public and organizations like FBI are getting better at being able to trace Bitcoin payments. Long term, Bitcoin will not be the coin of choice if you need absolute privacy. [There are some privacy focused coins like Monero, Cash, DASH. <= These coins are impossible to trace sender, receiver, amounts.] Bitcoin did gain noteriety by its use on Silk road and the dark web but this is no longer a primary use-case.

Speculation -> increased volatility -> less stability. This is a real problem. Volatility should decrease over time as the distribution of BTC spreads over a much greater % of the population.

3. "Common men need a stable currency to pay rent\food": This is a big problem right now. Bitcoin may never become a "transactional currency" for small purchases. There are other coins vying for that role [LTC]. Bitcoin may be happy to become just a "store of value" for long-term wealth preservation. [However, the number of merchants accepting Crypto as payment increases every day. My kids' violin teacher is considering accepting BTC\LTC]

Do you remember when working people "saved for retirement"? Over the past 20-30 years the term "save" has been slowly replaced with the word "invest". People now need to "invest for retirement". Is that a big deal? Yes. [For many reasons]

   1. Most people know nothing about investing

   2. Most traditional investments offer greater rewards to wealthy individuals and middle income people just get scraps.

   3. Traditional assets are manipulated to a point avg people can not make real long term predictions.

This gives Bitcoin a possible wealth preservation role in long-term portfolios. [In 20+ years once the exponential growth finishes.]

4. "It needs to be easy": Crypto is currently fairly complicated to use but new products are appearing to make crypto as easy to use as debit cards\paypal\cash. Older people may not get involved but younger people [and future generations] will likely view Bitcoin\Crypto in the same way we view ATM\Debit cards [My mother is in her 70's and refused to have an ATM card until this year (she would carry $600-$1,000 in cash whenever she took a trip)]

5. "Currency must have universal acceptance in a geo area": Unfortunately, even the mighty USD is not accepted at every merchant in the USA. [I was on a flight and they would only accept VISA as payment for drinks (I do not drink but felt like it was a scam to not accept cash)]

6. "A real currency is backed by real work": That is a great utopian view on central bank issued \ debt backed currency. How many trillions of USD are created by speculation on the financial markets? Is that "real"? Every bitcoin created takes substantial investments into the real economy. [CPU, GPU, Electricity, Realestate, Salaries etc.....] Also, Crypto market is rapidly expanding in terms of new companies creating new products with real world applications.

7. "national currency can not be deflationary": True. The Fed needs to constantly print USD so people can keep up with interest on debt payments. This QE\0% interest rate steals wealth from savers and hands it to speculators\materialists. I am not going to suggest that BTC will replace USD in my lifetime. However, in time the price of BTC should start to level out to the point that predictable price increases will replace the current "highly volatile exponential growth" period. At that point, people will not feel the need to "cling" to BTC and should be thought of an asset class like gold. [My home was purchased with gold. I can see a day when people will "save" in BTC for large purchases like homes\education\retirement. Right now how can people "save" for a 20% downpayment on a house when home prices increase >> wages\inflation & interest rates on savings are 0%?]

8. "buy a nice condo in Manhattan": I've looked at nice places in Manhattan and.... too much $.... Also you never really own real estate in the USA. You are simply renting it from the government. If you think that is not true.... try not paying your property taxes. The government will sell your property to somebody else.

You made some good points about the current issues with Bitcoin. As you can see, I am optimistic that many of the current problems will get solved and adoption will continue to speed up. If I am wrong... well... I'd by lying to say I will not be greatly disappointed.