Bitcoin Forum

So, what do you think the advantage and disadvantage of Bitcoin? what about people around you  think about Bitcoin ?

Honestly, People around here are scared of Bitcoin.  I was just talking to a local business owner and he likes everything that I said to him, he is just scared of the fluctuation in the pricing.  Some of these business work on a small profit margin, so if this profit flexes in the (-) 10% after a customer pays for a product that day, they are out that money when they exchange.

Yeah, the price fluctuations scare away the average merchant which is absolutely clueless about how the money creation works and doesn't understand the importance of Bitcoin, they just see a crazy price and tend to avoid it.

Uh, yeah.  It's actually a very valid concern for the merchant that the currency he accepts remain stable--which bitcoin is not.  And because of that, Mr. merchant doesn't price things in bitcoin but USD or whatever other currency is convenient (and stable).  It isn't cluelessness at all but prudence.

In my opinion, the advantage of bitcoin is the very easy to use system of it.
less stress and cheap transaction fees. the disadvantage of it is the flactuation of it
in the market. we cannot know when will it really go down or go up.
so we are blind of it. and the people around me thinks that bitcoin is just like some
other scam scheme in the internet. well i cannot blame them. people are afraid of what they
do not know yet. and its because of they have less knowledge about it. even you explain and explain
to them if their minds are close to absorb and accept it. it will be non sense for them.
But i think in the future it will all change. so goodluck then.. :P

The worst part of Bitcoin is knowing that if anything goes wrong and you lose all your money maybe even your life savings its YOUR FAULT!
My life is already very stressful and knowing that the very long and complex passphrase I keep only in my head is the only thing connecting me to my savings dose not help.
I must repeat that passphrase 50 times a day. (to myself of coarse) Visualizing it in my head, burning it into my very soul.  :P

Pros : fast, portable, electronic, backup, inox proof life money.
Cons : need learn before use.




you can learn at any age.

You don't have to keep it only in your head. Even if you are afraid of someone finding it written down, you can write it down in a way only you can decipher. For example the numbers you write down don't have to be the actual numbers, but use a simple method like every  number written down is actually +1 or -2 for the real number and certain letters are substituted for others.

To not have a copy at all is also a problem, how could you leave your money to someone else when you die?

the biggest con/disadvantage is for sure the learning curve.
Especially if your not computer savy. Its hard to explain to
a lot of older people even how to check their email let alone
understanding what btc is and what to do lol.

Bitcoin is cheap and fast that is why a lot of people love to use it. Some people are also scared to invest in Bitcoin because they think they will lose their money when the price drops.

This is very true. I have tried to tell a couple of my friends and family members, but they never seem to understand what I am trying to say. You kind of have to learn it by yourself online because not many people know how to explain it in an easy to understand way.

You can't really learn at any age. If you are like 0-9 or over 80 years of age, you will not understand the concept of Bitcoin. So you can't really learn how to use Bitcoin at any age.

I think the biggest advantage for me is that it provides an easy way to spend money online without having to apply for a credit or debit card.

Advantage: Provides anonymity(the people's view)

Disadvantage: Provides anonymity(the government's view)

Advantage: I'm getting it for free
Disadvantages: It's hard to have it for free

                     

Of course it is. Bitcoin is just like normal money, it isn't something you are going to get for free. You need to work for it, just like you do with fiat.

when a merchant comes up with the volatility remark.. your reply should not be the shady practices of the fiat inflation world in regards to money creation.

what you should do is tell them coinbase or bitpay swap it for fiat. at the value calculated at the point of sale, instantly

EG customer wants to buy $10 product via bitcoin.. merchant sends API to coinbase or bitpay with value $10.. then coinbase/bitpay shows a QR code with a bitcoin amount shown to represent $10 of bitcoins.. customer pays within 10 minutes and the merchant gets his $10 in the bank account within a few business days.

they can if they love bitcoin and they know the production cost of the $10 product was only $5 they can decide to only convert $5 back to fiat to buy more stock and keep the other amount as bitcoin.. which they can use instantly
volatility should never dissuade merchants to not accept bitcoin.. because its no loss to them

Bitcoin is not the first electronic money. So, it's basic format is very much familiar with all the Paypal users. So, by this time bitcoin should have been as adopted as equal as Paypal.
Due to bitcoin is treated as commodity (price changes based on supply and demand), many merchants fear to adopt. Otherwise bitcoin would have replaced Paypal by this time. Commodity nature is the advantage in long term, by now it seems as disadvantage.

Bitcoin has numerous advantages. No need to mention. All are obvious, already pointed out many times.
As you stated the unstable price are seeming disadvantages now. But prices will get stable in future then bitcoin will become flawless system in anyone's view.

the advantage of bitcoin is a lot my most favourite part is fast transaction, it is very easy and really fast to send bitcoin to someone

and then the wallet is also quite secure with so many layers of protection

the disadvantage is, not every store accepting bitcoin yet, also the anonymous causing bitcoin can be used for money laundry and other criminal act

It does have many advantages, Bitcoin does not require a central party to facilitate transactions or confirm account balances. the peer-to-peer functionality of cryptographic money which makes bitcoin so useful.

Disadvantages. This is mostly du to the fact that Bitcoin is still a relatively young and new currncy

bitcoin advantage : simple and fast payment,easy to get and register the wallet or account
bitcoin disadvantage : hard to accept in every store or online store
people around me are welcome to bitcoin,but they yet to try to use bitcoin.

Advantages I think are it's anonymous and can be transported on your phone wallet and disadvantages are that it's volatile and can cost you money overnight.

i personally not see any disadvantages minus the only one that can concern the miners and their reward, which is related somehow with security

stuff like still no adoption, hard to accept and regulation, are not intrinsic disadvantages of bitcoin, those are problems related to the government with their shitty rules, not bitcoin itself

Benefits: low transaction fees, money is yours (not in a bank)
Cons: currently unstable price, time it takes for confirmations.

These unstable price problems will be settled down very soon once we see higher prices of bitcoin with more number of adoptions like main stream.
The price fluctuation of gold is not a problem for using it as a medium of exchange, same kind of flexibility for bitcoin prices also on the way.

You are right. Even gold has unstable prices, we do not bother that for investing into it. Sam kind of mentality would come to bitcoiner's mind set when bitcoin is more popular. Ignoring the price fluctuation of bitcoin will help bitcoin to grow rapidly.

Yes, unstable price is mentioned by many people here as the disadvantage of bitcoin ecosystem. But I believe this as the time being problem, will be sorted out when bitcoin is becoming more established in terms of adoptions and value appreciations.

In my opinion, the advantage of bitcoin is the value of bitcoin . 1Btc can be 300 or 400 $ (not definite) and the disadvantage, what a difficult to get 1 btc but don't tired to endeavor

The advantage of Bitcoin is the anonymity, no one knows how much Bitcoin that we have. But it also the disadvantage of Bitcoin, because of it's we can't easily detect a thief because there's no trace of identity.

Here is what I could gather from my own thoughs and other comments in this topic :
In blue: what is inherent to bitcoin.
In green: what has to do with the present situation and can (will) change in the future.

Pros:
- decentralization allows people to free themselves from the traditional banking system as well as governments.
- price fluctuation makes traders happy.
- cheap transactions make everyone happy (at least outside of EU, because inside it's already cheap with traditional banks).
- bitcoin can provide acceptable degrees of anonymity (from 0 to almost complete, depending on how you use it).
- enormous potential with limited risks for investment.
- after bitcoin gets broadly accepted by the people and it's price stabilizes, it will offer high levels of reliability in case of economic krash.

Cons:
- price fluctuation frightens average merchants (this will get better as bitcoin gets more and more broadly accepted).
- requires some learning time.
- implies stress, as you are your own bank, which can be very stressful if you're not tech-savvy
- slow confirmations.
- the anonymity is a double-edged sword that makes life easy for black markets (as well as terrorist groups).
- we are still in bitcoin's early days and no one could tell for sure that's it's not going to krash if people lose faith in it.
- the economic model of bitcoin is a deflationary one and can't ever be modified but there's no consensus amidst econmists as to whether this system is practicable in the long run.

Cons seem to be more numerous then pros but they are, for the most part, of lesser importance too (slow transactions and learning time are no big deal), at least as the situation is now (let our descendants worry about what future economic models will be).

The fast transaction times and low transaction fees are big pros of btc..
In my opinion, there arent too much disandvantages.. since its secured by the law of universum  8)

The advantage of bitcoin is that you have a type of freedom with your money, less fees on higher transaction and fast when comparing to western union.

The unstable price might be a one of advantage for some people including me to take profit from bitcoin's volatility by trading Bitcoin at Bitcoin exchanges, buy low and sell high is the key. But actually the unstable of price can be solved by using bitpay's service, just saying

The fluctuative price is the main reason why people still scared with bitcoin, but for me we can used that thing to get profit.. 

For me the advantage of bitcoin is having a fast transaction without lot of effort and cost , the disadvantage sometimes account is hackable / wallet , sometimes its  hard to explain to other people that bitcoin can transferable to real money, lot of country using bitcoin to purchase something you want but here in my country are not and still not talking and innovating.

I don't think old people will ever get Bitcoin to be honest. My mother still has no idea how to check email, my dad barely knows how to use a computer, let alone grandads lol. I think the older generation is too separated from all things technological unless they grew up studying computer science or something related to their job.

Bitcoin advantage is faster and cheaper transactions, the losses if prices suddenly plummeted. People around me still considers the BTC as a fraud

Well for me I save some money and 25% of that I buy bitcoin. What I like is with holding with bitcoin that the price increase that is one of the advantages that I like and also with the low fees.

Bitcoin have so many advantages and features but also have disadvantage. If all people around you can superinted that disadvantage, bitcoin will become useful currency

My last transaction (I bought something worth 0.21 BTC) took quite some time to go through. Took more than 30 minutes to get a single confirmation even though the fee was right. If I buy something with VISA it takes only a few seconds.

yeah matter of time confirmations, currently a problem
I also get annoyed if they have to wait too long, how to solve this problem?

I think the advantage using bitcoin is very fast , low transaction costs , suitable for trading. and the shortage is not yet legalized wrote.

bitcoin pre 2013
pro's
able to transact 0.0001 ($0.006c) - micropayments possible
virtually free to transact (or less than a penny for priority)
transactions settled in 10 minutes
no need to reveal identity to buy on exchanges or localbitcoins

con's
accepted at only 30,000 locations worldwide
unregulated exchanges run off with funds, blame hackers

bitcoin post 2013
pro's
accepted at over 120,000 locations worldwide

con's
transactions of 0.0000015 ignored($0.006c) - micropayments IMPOSSIBLE
unregulated exchanges run off with funds, blame hackers
transactions cost 4pennies-9pennies on average still not classed as priority
transactions still not guaranteed within 10 minutes even when paying 22pennies
required to hand over full id to exchanges, BTM's and localbitcoins unless you risk face to face meetings with strangers

I think the main disadvantages is that microtransactions are not working anymore.
If bitcoin would reach a price of over 10000k, it's hard to sent even 1 dollar.

yep and miner will probably want to charge you 0.0001btc ($1) per tx if bitcoin hits $10k

fluctuation, maybe this is disadvantages of bitcoin,
because many people are not interested to bitcoin, because of this problem, is not stable in price  (volatile) very risky

yeah exactly,there are more advantages of bitcoin than it's disadvantage,
it's really simple, you dont need to upload your identity to created a new wallet, bitcoin is the simplest for paying things online

I think the main disadvantage is that Bitcoin is unstable and fluctuates in value a lot but this is expected.

yeah I think the advantages of bitcoin more than disavantages
I would ask that, it is anonymous including the advantages of bitcoin?
many who say it is causing bitcoin banned

Bitcoin is not anonymous (http://www.bitcoinisnotanonymous.com/), but rather pseudo-anonymous. For many this is considered as a disadvantage.

Advantage:      Easy to use, price will rise * it's like a gold.

Disadvantages: Hackers and general security, bitcoin is safe only in cold storage on safe place!
                      Relative slow transaction

There are many advantages we can enjoy with a bitcoin.

But the disadvantages only may happen in our mistakes and carelessness.
If we have strong password and all required precautions methods then there won't be any disadvantages with bitcoin ecosystem.

Advantage: fully anonymous, low transactions fee, can use it everywhere as long there are internet connections

Disadvantage: sometimes the price down with very fast just like several day ago the price down more than $100 only in two days

There is no disadvantages in my view.
I find bitcoin is the life time opportunity to invest and I can get my retirement very early. No other thing has given this hope so far.

yeah if we use the visa or credit card or paypal for payment
of course it will be instant because of the direct balance automatically confirmed, so it does not have to wait
bitcoin exactly the same, but it's a long confirmation
whereas a few years ago, a time confirmation, so fast?
why now so long?

That's true there are many advantages associate with bitcoins like decentralization, low transaction costs, instant transactions and many, the major disadvantage of bitcoin  is that it is not popular in every corner of the world and bitcoin is lacking support from the Governments and banking system.

It is very complicated from technological stand of point.
Many people just don't understand what is bitcoin about!
Mining, private, public key ..wallets.. Fear of hackers attacks, fear of new things!?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um63OQz3bjo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx9zgZCMqXE

Also mining and difficulty if you are the miner it is something that can  devastate you,
 if you invest a lot in equipment and forget to upgrade rig and sell old...

Thats well said about the disadvantages. There are few more disadvantages that I know are fake campaigns, no assiduity or guarantee, but the main thing is if we are little serious while using this we can beat all these disadvantages and make them as advantages.

Disadvantage could be ** lack of time for anything else except watching exchanges..

True, however you don't need to understand every aspect of bitcoin deeply in order to use it just like you don't need to understand how fiat transactions work either to use online payments. The only problem I see is bad propaganda and as you said fear, fear of being hacked or that someone is going to steal your money. Although bitcoin is just as secure as other transactions.

Or it can be more exciting than watching movies :-). yesterday I watched life as the mega pump happened on bitcoinwisdom. It was so exciting to watch the sell walls being torn apart in an instant!

Bitcoin has many advantage and disadvantage, few of them i would mention are small(zero) fee on transaction, not all wallets are easy to use for newbie, and what i don't like is when the price decreases so the stability is not great.

The advantage is that it is anonymous but a disadvantage is that the transactions take really long to process.

Bitcoin is not full anonymous, it depends how and where you use it, and the transaction it's real that they take some time but if you are lucky it can be confirmed within 10 minutes.

not with the problem of the capacity increase, when there are those stress test you're lucky if it is confirmed in one hours

still waiting for my to eb confirmed it has been more than 24 hours...

As you know paying low (or none) fee can 'freeze' your transaction and you probably will wait for days to be confirmed or getting back the funds, but if you pay enough fee you can get the transaction confirmed within an hour, or if you are lucky in 10 minutes

this can be a disadvantages when fee will be high enough to sustain miners(fee need to be x100 higher of what they ar enow in the future after the reward drop)

if you combine a 0.01 fee with a high bitcoin price, you are paying a range of $20-$100 in fee

I had some trouble pointing out the advantage of btc to a friend of mine. He thought it could be fraud, where it is FAR as the East is from the West from fraud. I

even had to laugh at him, it was so far out. I need broader info so I can sort this out more so as not to scare anyone. I have no idea how he became frightened

when I told him about btc. So far I told him it was like currency but digitally held. And, that it could be a great value in the future,

Such bullshit...

the advantages that I can say about bitcoin is its high price rate, I know in the past bitcoin reach $1000 but still $370 is still quite high. And the other is you can use world wide, though Many store are still not accepting bitcoin as a payment.

It's semi anonymous for now
Transactions are really not that long compared to a bank transaction
I don't understand why people keep complaining about this.

I'm sure it would be the advantages of using bitcoin. particularly in the financial transaction. one disadvantage we simply can not say no to others. only one.

Disadvantage of bitcoin can be different in different regions and countries..
We all know how it is in US and EU!

How bitcoin stand in non EU countries ? Middle east ? Pakistan ? ..
And what disadvantages and problems of usiage bitcoins are there?

In my opinion, the advantages of bitcoin is the ease in transaction, the disadvantage is the price very fluctuations

Yes, for the advantages of bitcoin, I would say it gives total freedom to anyone holding it. You are in full control of your money. And you are not charged anything to keep it, unlike banks.
For the disadvantages, I could not find may options to use it in my country, although that doesn’t stop the people from saving it for future.

Bitcoin has lots of advantages. With bitcoin, payments are fast enough than any other physical payment process. Bitcoin price is volatile, the volatility can both be advantage and disadvantage.

The bitcoin will also be efficient as visa and master card processors.
You will transact even $0.001 (Thousandth of one dollar) with almost zero fee when you mass pay.
Your transactions will be instant and will be confirmed in 10 minutes.

Yes, these are the few advantages we are going to enjoy with bitcoin system.

The advantage is that bitcoin is great for doing transaction etc

The disadvantage will be a lot of scammer in the bitcoin marketplace .

What do you mean for doing transactions? You can just as easily make transactions with fiat, they are actually faster and just as secure. When you send bitcoins you don't have anything protecting you for a possible scam, if you get scammed using visa, for example, the bank will easily give you your money back.

People generally are scared about Bitcoin, but you need to persuade them into using it. That is the only way we are going to develop.

More and more people getting into bitcoins can only make bitcoin more popular and grow, if people are scared about price fluctuation then its not a big deal, if they are well educated then they would view price fluctuation as an opportunity to make quick money and not as a threat, as big traders are taking advantage of price fluctuation and making quick money.

As an advantage, bitcoin payments can be anonymous. I love this, because it will ensure the safe of my wealth.
I can find enough options for my need of spending bitcoins and the bitcoin payments get it's conformations within ten minutes. So, there is no disadvantages I do see with bitcoins.

Other than is Bitcoin price is volatile, you can purchase it when the price is low, and sell it at higher price. Being volatile is a big advantage sometimes. I too don’t see any disadvantages with bitcoin, this may be because I do not have the enough experience with bitcoins to conclude this

That is definitely a big advantage, but there are only online shops that accept Bitcoin. There are no real shops near me that accept Bitcoin.