Bitcoin Forum

I have seen a lot of myths and misconceptions that are being repeated again and again on the forum, so I decided to start this topic to debunk and change some of the most entrenched myths and beliefs regarding Bitcoin which have nothing to do with reality

1. Bitcoin is not recognized in the world, its use is illegal in most countries
In fact, Bitcoin is legal and accepted in some form in all countries where it might matter for its future adoption and prosperity. In the US Bitcoin had been classified as a convertible decentralized virtual currency as back as in 2013, and as a commodity for regulating Bitcoin derivative markets. In the EU Bitcoin is officially considered to be a means of payment, i.e. money. In China, bitcoin is fully legal for personal use and possession even though banks and financial institutions are prohibited from using it. The legal status of Bitcoin in Russia is not yet fully defined, but the local authorities now tend to consider Bitcoin as a foreign currency, despite their former threats of criminalizing its use and possession

2. Bitcoin cannot exist without fiat, especially the US dollar
Bitcoin was conceived as a currency, and as such it could facilitate the exchange of goods and consumption of services directly, without any other currency. Money doesn't need other money to function. Saying that Bitcoin couldn't exist without fiat is equal to saying that weight wouldn't exist without scales, which basically comes down to claiming that Bitcoin is not real money (see below). Regarding the US dollar specifically, the total majority of trades involve exchange of Bitcoin and the Chinese Yuan, therefore even if Bitcoin somehow depended on fiat, that most certainly wouldn't be the American dollar

3. Bitcoin is not money altogether since it is not used as a means of exchange
This myth is based on the claim that people don't get paid in bitcoins and don't pay bitcoins to others. The existence of signature campaigns on this very forum outright refutes that. Campaign participants are paid in bitcoins for posting here while campaign owners pay bitcoins for advertising they receive. As simple as it gets. On the other hand, the majority of currencies existing across the world can't be considered as money either if this claim is followed to its logical conclusion. Because any smaller currency can be exchanged directly only for a short list of goods produced domestically while imported goods are paid either in the currency of the country of origin or in dollars, and the national currency thus gets pegged to that currency

4. Bitcoin is hard to regulate and taxing it will be next to impossible
The primary cause for this myth is an implicit assumption that tax agencies and services will be going after every bitcoiner, thereby making it prohibitively expensive to tax Bitcoin. While it is certainly true that it wouldn't be an easy task, it is not how the tax system generally works. It is assumed that every law-abiding citizen should calculate and pay taxes all by himself. If Bitcoin is made taxable, it will be your obligation to pay the tax. Deliberately avoiding such a tax would basically make you into a criminal since tax evasion is considered a criminal offense in many jurisdictions, and you will have to live with that

5. Bitcoin is totally useless in everyday life
This myth might have had some substance a few years ago, but with the massive expansion of Bitcoin payment cards over the last two years (at the very least), it is no longer true. Many web wallets such as Coinbase or Xapo and exchanges like CoinsBank started to issue Bitcoin payment cards which you can use as a typical credit or debit card. Such a card is linked to a user's Bitcoin account, and when he pays with it, the wallet makes all necessary conversions which are totally transparent to the user. These cards allow virtually everything that you would expect from a bank card, for example, paying for goods and services, withdrawing fiat, etc. So owning Bitcoin doesn't any longer mean that you can’t shop conveniently

Will add more myths later, and I don't mind if this topic gets stickied eventually

Wouldn't most of the myths be like it would for anything else ? Ignorance and lack of education pretty much lead to the same or similar misconceptions.
Like when it comes to the media so many things are said with little to no proof. Just one or two people going off about things they have no idea about but people that know nothing of the subject at hand might tend to listen since it might be the first they have heard of it.

For example when the whole "bitcoin is used for crime" bs story was around. People who knew nothing believed the first thing the hear just because it is a fact that yes bitcoin is used for crime. But... Everything is used for crime so it actually means nothing. They think if that one part is true then the rest probably is true as well.

It is the same as saying playing video games will make you into a mindless criminal hell bent on violence. 

3. Bitcoin is not real money, because only banks or governments can run money systems

This myth suggests that money has to be "official" in some way, but history tells us otherwise. Money existed before governments or banks, and has continued to exist when governments or banks dissolve. Barter and trade naturally end up in one commodity or another being used as the most common medium of exchange. Money emerges from marketplace activity over time therefore, and communities will also change the good that they use for money depending on practical or political circumstances.

I beg to disagree with u, though I understand the spirit of your post. By Bitcoin is not real money, it means Bitcoin is not a legal tender. And it is true that Bitcoin is not a legal tender anywhere on earth, though it does not matter much.

I'm going to include only "real" myths which I encounter myself on a pretty regular basis here. My purpose is certainly not to artificially expand the list beyond what people actually seem to be erroneously stuck with. For example, the story of "Bitcoin is used for crime" is not very popular on the forum, so why make mention of it?

So, in a sense, this thread is meant to be a collection of "live" myths (as of writing this)


Such a myth is essentially a logic conclusion of myth #2, namely, that Bitcoin cannot exist without fiat, and therefore it is not real money. I updated the OP a little to reflect your idea

Better to focus on development, promoting than debunking, its waste of time. As above, ignorance is human nature so u won't win with that.

I guess nowhere on Earth foreign currencies are considered as a legal tender domestically, but this doesn't turn them into fake currencies of sorts. I know that Bitcoin is not a legal tender anywhere across the world and most likely won't become one for the next 50 years (though who knows)...

But this alone is apparently not enough to claim that Bitcoin is not real money, even purely on formal basis

4. Blockchain.info is the offical wallet of Bitcoins :)

Many people believe it just because the wallet's name is Blockchain.

About the BTC illegality. Where I live it's not illegal or legal, the law just doesn't know what to say about it. But some banks here block the transaction when you try to convert BTC into local money on exchange and send the money to it, when they distrust about crypto-currencies money.

Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme
Ponzi scheme definition in a few words "A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investing scam promising high rates of return with little risk to investors. The Ponzi scheme generates returns for older investors by acquiring new investors"
Bitcoin has nothing to do with this,it will not ask you to 'invest' and it will not promise you any profit it was not created as an earning opportunity (even though many people seem to believe the opposite) but a currency and unlike Ponzis it doesn't require new investors/users to keep going and avoid the collapse.

About #1 "Bitcoin is not recognized in the world, its use is illegal in most countries"

Actually it's a mess, every country have their own rules and most are just shallow words because it's something new. Let's wait for the future to see what will happen.

I don't quite agree with this statement. Crypto currencies need to be pegged to fiat currencies in order to be useful. Do you want to bring back the old days of bartering goods which in itself is very unreliable. Like : 'Hey, I will give you 10 000 Bitcoins for that pizza, is it okay?'
How will you quantify what is worth how much if you don't know what your currency is worth in the first place? Or you will base the price on the amount of electricity used to generate 1 Bitcoin? But you are again basing the price of Bitcoin on fiat because electricity costs fiat money.

You're not disagreeing with my point, you're disagreeing with it's label. And you're right about something else too: it doesn't matter much.

this "conversion" will happen but doesnt mean it's needed.
i can accept bitcoin in my local store and say something like "it will be 0.5btc/month". i dont have to peg it with my local currency... if someone wants to pay me in fiat the price will be 0.5btc and the conversion will be made. in my example, if the local FIAT "die" the price will not be affected.

Thanks, yes!  More "popular myth"  debunking:

http://frass.woodcoin.org/top-5-errors-in-bitcoin-reportage-volume-2/ (http://frass.woodcoin.org/top-5-errors-in-bitcoin-reportage-volume-2/)

http://frass.woodcoin.org/top-5-dumb-things-to-say-about-bitcoin/ (http://frass.woodcoin.org/top-5-dumb-things-to-say-about-bitcoin/)

I do not know how bitcoin became a ponzi scheme. There is no recruiting,a percentage to upline and no one is profiting from it  but the community and users also. It is by the community for the community to used.

This is not a popular myth, it is not even a myth anymore. it was long time ago when bitcoin was bran new and nobody had a clue about what the heck it is.

nowadays apart from some scumbag fudster in their spam attempt to drop bitcoin price, nobody else says it :D

I guess the thing that are trending now, is : China control Bitcoin. It is not to say that China with it's massive mining farms are in control of Bitcoin. Whatever their hashing power is, and whatever control they might have over Bitcoin, does not matter. The incentive to harm the network, are nullified by the incentive to do it.

If you kill the cow that are giving you milk, you will lose milk production. So why would you want to kill the cow?

The people saying this, do not know how the consensus work and how decentralize Bitcoin is. If China stop all mining and nodes, the network will still exist in many other countries. ^smile^

I've been massively contributing to such topics myself, but the opinion (I mean the erroneous one) has not yet established itself, so there is no myth to debunk so far. Regarding the question itself, it is multifaceted, to say the least. We can't deny that Bitcoin mining and Bitcoin trading are heavily centralized, there is data proving that. I can't say either that the attempts to exert the power obtained through such centralization will not affect Bitcoin since its price will certainly get affected...

And most likely in a negative way


Every country (well, most) has different rules and laws irrespective of Bitcoin, so it is a mess on their own

Okay but Bitcoin is a rare commodity with a limited supply so by design its value is going to be volatile. How will you know how much to charge your customers for the same service or item this week, next week, next month and beyond that? How much would you charge for 1 bottled water today in Bitcoin? It's not so easy as you are describing it. Have you tried paying for your restaurant bill with a piece of gold or a piece of silver? If Bitcoin is not pegged to fiat it's like bartering goods whose value is decided by the seller and buyer which has its drawbacks because something valuable for you might not seem so much valuable for another. 

No. Bitcoin is legalized in most of the *important* country already. There are obviously missing regulations, but these take quite some time to develop and deploy.

Those people are not exactly the brightest people around.

This question is correct but flawed because of the narrow perspective. How do you know how much you should charge for 1 bottled water today in USD? USD is not pegged to anything either, and the value comes from the implicit agreement that is does have value. The free market would decide whether that bottle of water is going to cost 0.001, 0.01, or 1 BTC (arbitrary numbers).

Hmm,

Maybe you should study decentralization ,

Fact : China Mining Pools Combined are more than 51%

Fact : China like all Governments can exert control over any Entity inside their borders by Regulations or by Force.

Fact : 51 % attack is a valid concern and sticking your heads in the ground about it , is foolish.
Reference: In his Bitcoin paper, Satoshi identified several issues, with the 51% attack being the greatest.
http://www.btcpedia.com/bitcoin-51-attack/

Myth: China stop all mining and nodes, the network will still exist in many other countries.
Why on earth would they go thru all of the trouble to Completely Dominate it, merely to give it up.
They have an intent and purpose planned for their BTC Dominance , and it will be carried out on their timetable.
They could increase fees on all Foreign Countries while discounting in their country, they could hold your BTC for ransom or for Political Compliance of one of their Agendas.
You would comply to receive your BTC. Look at how they control their Yuan, their business, and their People , expect similar control of BTC when ever they deem fit.
Giving up Control of BTC would be Stupid, and the Chinese are many things, Stupid is not one of them.

Fact: China mining pools already blocked BTC XT from going to the 20MB blocks because their internet infrastructure would not yet support it. 
https://cointelegraph.com/news/chinese-mining-pools-call-for-consensus-refuse-switch-to-bitcoin-xt

Fact: BTC is still having Transactions delay problems because the 20MB were refused.
http://www.ibtimes.com/bitcoins-big-problem-transaction-delays-renew-blockchain-debate-2330143

Observation: When Ghash.io passed the 51% everyone in the BTC Community was terrified.
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/184427-one-bitcoin-group-now-controls-51-of-total-mining-power-threatening-entire-currencys-safety
But now that the Country of China has done it for over a year, no one is concerned.

Fact: Satoshi himself listed the 51% attack as the Greatest Danger to BTC, and now the Majority of the BTC community ignores his most important warning.  :P
The Chinese Officials are smarter than all of you BTC Advocates, with your heads in the sand over this 51% attack security threat.

Warning: When you make another entity your Master, be prepared to be Punished at their discretion.
Good Luck , you are going to need it.

 8)

Nope, Actually you are wrong because if that certain person realizes that what he may be thinking about the certain thing is wrong then he would probably be going correct his/her misconception. Which may also lead to what are talking about, developing something that misleads a myth.

bitcoin is money myth
bitcoin is not money. because bitcoin is not a standard medium of exchange.. people cannot easily know that 0.0000x btc will get the X amount of loaves of bread without having to convert it to another value first to derive how much bitcoin is actually valued at.
yes you can exchange it. barter it swap it. but having it as a stable value that people can directly correlate labour vs goods is not a feature of bitcoin right now. people seem to emphasise the word 'exchange' and hide the word 'medium of' to not fully grasp what money is or is not.

bitcoin needs to stabilise in price, well actually bitcoin needs to stop being valued against money and instead get valued directly against goods and services for it to then have its own direct value medium of exchange. then people can know without stress or a calculator how many loaves of bread they can buy with X bitcoin.

money is about taking the majority of guess work out of the whole: 'how many hours of sweat labour equals how many loaves of bread'. which bitcoin has not reached that point yet.

china 51% attack
comparing a country of 1 billion+ citizens individual mindsets and lives vs a single company like ghash is silly.
most of the pools in china have multiple servers. so if one server goes offline in one country there are other servers to hop to, so treating a country as a 'pool' instead of realising the server/company running a couple servers is a pool, is where things fall flat for this myth.

the mindset should be:
china 2014-2016  vs   america  2011-2013
or    Ghash  vs  antpool
not
china vs ghash     or     antpool vs america

treating a country as a pool is silly beyond belief and mainly sounding like subtle racism rather then technical understanding of centralization.
especially when bitmain has servers in multiple countries, thus are not worried about what one countries government may or may not do to them

Substitute Bitcoin in this text with foreign currency and will get semantically identical text. There are major currencies like dollar, euro, yuan, Swiss franc, but there are a lot more currencies that most people here don't even know the names of. For example, can you tell me the name of the national currency of Peru without looking into Wikipedia? But I could just as well claim that the Peruvian currency is not money anywhere beyond Peru since it is not considered a "standard medium of exchange" anywhere outside of this country. And so what?

And who is actually not fully grasping what money is?

I would totally agree with you. As far as i have understood money is being used as a medium or a way of payment and obviously bitcoin is on the track. I think we should never argue to this one because it is just so obvious

OMG, you guys are so Stupid, it is beyond belief.

You deserve what is going to happen to you.

Enjoy the Beach.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/12/18/article-2525602-1A2B2A3600000578-553_634x408.jpg

http://cdn.quotesgram.com/small/28/21/763764312-robin-baker-quote-he-stuck-his-head-in-the-sand-and-deliberately-avoid.jpg

 8)

facebook credits are facebooks currency.. but facebook credits are not money

the thing with money is that it has to be the main/major used medium of exchange by the populous that give it value, fully and direct knowing its value of labour vs goods without reliance on another currency to give it value.

bitcoin is not measured directly between labour and goods.
bitcoin is not mainstream
emphasis:
bitcoin is bartered rather than actually used as a stable value to measure the difference between labour and goods

until bitcoin can actually be utilised the way it should have been to have a direct connection to cost of living, its not a medium of exchange between labour and goods without having to rely on a more mainstream currency to then attribute value.

bitcoin has become too reliant on fiat to give it value. rather than forming its own 'cost of living measure'

once we stop caring about bitcoins fiat value and start thinking 0.01btc is an hours labour and 0.002 is a loaf of bread and not caring about national fiat currencies as the measure.. THEN bitcoin is money..
but until that point its not money..

put it this way, in peru people can know X peruvian sol's is an hours labour. X peruvian sol's is a loaf of bread.
however if peru had to value a sol in dollars to then work out labour and value a sol in dollars to work out a loaf of bread. then the sol loses its status.

yes bitcoin is a currency
yes bitcoin is an asset with a value (derrived by the dollar)
but until bitcoin is mainstream, until bitcoin has its own cost of living understanding by those that use it.. its not money

the strange thing is. not being money can actually have its advantage in some ways.
but also not attaining mainstream/direct labour/goods valuation disadvantage too.

lol you need to do more research and expand your mind beyond the confines of your racist rhetoric.
you are trying a little too hard to push "china are bad guys" and not think of the technicals.

if governments stop chinese pools.. the pools simply move IP addresses in under 3 seconds. yep thats right these individual pools also have individual servers in different countries.
thus they dont care about politics in regards to bitcoin security
trying to presume that 1billion people are colluding together is a failure of understanding the technology and political risks.

all you are doing is trying to provide false distractions to hide where the real vulnerabilities of bitcoin are.

Man, you are dim.

Ceo of the Mining pool gets a phone call from a Chinese official, telling him what to do.
CEO refuses, Official lets him know they have his wife and child.
Do I really need to explain anything else ,
it is amazing you can even type.

 8)

FYI:
In Satoshi original warning he mentioned Governments, guess he was just being silly according to you.  :P
Fact : 51 % attack is a valid concern and sticking your heads in the ground about it , is foolish.
Reference: In his Bitcoin paper, Satoshi identified several issues, with the 51% attack being the greatest.
http://www.btcpedia.com/bitcoin-51-attack/

The labor theory of value (the tenets of which you basically seem to be pushing here) has long been abandoned as inconsistent. In any case, I don't quite understand what you are trying to say here. At first you say that Facebook credits are Facebook's currency and then you claim that they are not money. Alternately stated, currency is not money. But what is currency then? It pretty much looks like as if you don't really feel quite confident and clear about your own arguments. Could you express what you mean in a more coherent way? Just in case, since I'm paid for posting here, I think exactly the way you mention, i.e. one hour of my labor costs, say, 0.001 BTC, and I can spend the bitcoins which I earn here directly, though not on many things. But this is only a quantitative difference, anyway. In this way, I guess I'm not much different from a lot of Peruvians who consider their national currency as money without any reservations. Even despite the fact that, strictly speaking, they can't buy over 90% of goods with their money directly. I mean imports which are paid either in the currency of the country of origin or dollars...

It seems I should address this issue specifically in the OP

currency and money are 2 different things.

think of currency as the umbrella term. anything valued or exchanged is a currency

but money is a subcategory within the umbrella term that has its own definition/utility

bitcoin is a currency
bitcoin is not mainstream/ direct independent valuation of labour/goods to be defined as money

I think that number 1 myth about bitcoin is that btc is decentralized.

This myth is going to be busted soon,but i still support bitcoin.

Number 2 myth is that bitcoin has no future and sooner or later governments will destroy it.

These are mayb some limitations that Bitcoin has at the moment, I wouldn't call them myths.
The thing is that regulatios or lack of regulation in some countries determine the Bitcoin status and how people will use it. With time some of these obstacles will disappear, maybe some new will appear, but there is stil a long strugle for Bitcoin to be fuly recognized and appreciated in financial world.

This is no more than semantic quibbling. I tend to consider these two terms completely interchangeable for the purposes of this thread


The total majority of currencies existing in the world should not then be considered as currencies/monies since they are, first, not mainstream, and they have, second, only a limited "direct independent" valuation of labor/goods, valid and applicable only to a short list of domestically produced goods and services as opposed to what the countries which issue these currencies import. On the other hand, I can just as easily claim that, for example, posting for bitcoins on the forum is perfectly in line with what you basically refuse Bitcoin in, i.e. in your so-called direct independent valuation. People on signature campaigns get bitcoins for their labor while owners get services for which they pay bitcoins...

I updated the opening post to reflect this misconception

Still no one has answered my question: how would you find out the value of 1 Bitcoin if there were no Bitcoin exchanges?

Bitcoin is more like a commodity right now than actual, useful money. Bitcoin is like crude oil. People waste energy and resources to gain crude oil for example, that crude oil has a price attached to it depending on the market. The market speculators regulate the price. 1 barrel of crude oil costs $44.65 at present.
Now, I can go to Amazon and shop around bringing my shopping cart to $44.65 with the shipping included. Can I send them 1 barrel of crude oil because it is the same value just because the market says so and it's 'money'? I guess no.

Now we have Bitcoin. What are people doing to get Bitcoin? They sit at home digitally extracting that commodity racking up electricity bills and breaking down expensive electronics in the process trying to extract Bitcoin from the Blockchain. 1 Bitcoin is valued at $708.8. This is what the market thinks 1 Bitcoin is valued at - or the speculators.

Now, I challenge you to delete all bookmarks to any online Bitcoin exchanges, BTC debit cards, Circle, Coinbase all the other fancy-schmancy websites and tell me what 1 BTC is valued at this Christmas based on your calculations.

Because I know that 1 bottle of water or 1 Subway sandwich will be x amount of fiat at the end of the day but there is no way you would know how much that would cost in BTC if BTC weren't pegged to fiat. Or I could pay for my sandwich with x amount of gold, Facebook credits, CS Go skins, World of Tanks points or any other token but this doesn't make it money just because it has a value. Anything can have a value so what? Just because Satoshi said that Bitcoin will be free digital currency for the people worldwide that doesn't mean that everyone will become rich out of the blue. You still have to buy equipment and 'mine' for it in the virtual world like you would mine for ores or extract petrol in the real world. And no, Bitcoin at the moment is not money.

Barter. That's exactly how Bitcoin got it's first valuation: 2 pizzas (+ delivery) were traded for 10,000 BTC in 2010.

Real good and informative topic, many people still thing that these myths are true this topic would surely help some of the new bitcoiners. Right now you only have included the most common myths but i hope you would add some more soon.

Just like the value of any other fiat currency is determined when it is bootstrapped. Bitcoin is also a sort of "fiat" currency, in the sense that it doesn't have intrinsic value beyond that of pure money (namely, a transactional utility). In short, you know in advance how many coins (or bills) are to be mined or issued over time, and this amount of money should service the exchange of goods and services. The amount of goods to be sold and the volume of services to be offered is pretty much known in absolute terms (for example, quantity of goods and hours of work) as well as their relative values (for example, oranges are typically valued twice as high as apples), so you can assess how much everything will cost. In other words, you know the specific scarcity of your money which is what defines the value of a unit of currency per piece of goods or hour of service. If you are a government you start paying salaries to government employees and making payments on public contracts based on your estimates as well as accept taxes and other obligatory payments in the new currency. Government employees and public contractors then pay for goods and services of the private sector. And this is how the new money enters the economy...

In the case of Bitcoin, the process is essentially the same (it is assumed that people trust the new money). How much you can buy with a single bitcoin will be determined empirically, by trial and error, but the final outcome (value of Bitcoin) will still be based on the same premises and conditions as with fiat currency (i.e. scarcity of bitcoins vs the amount of goods and volume of services). Hope this helps

Okay that's true, but Bitcoin will have 21 million units in circulation by 2150. 21 million coins will need to service the financial needs of the whole world by that time. How can we attribute the global net worth of everything on Earth to 21 million units? Because Bitcoin will be a truly global currency if this ever happens - to effectively supersede fiat. I think we will need a lot more subunits past the 8 one to even accommodate such big numbers. And 1 satoshi by 2150 would cost astronomical sums compared to now. And what if some very wealthy individuals just buy out massive amounts of units and put them out of the market - let's say they burn them. The 21 million units will be even less. That will lead to massive inflation and deflation every time a portion is added or removed form the global pool of 21 million units. This will lead to a cluster fuck of problems because unlike traditional fiat we can't print out additional coins to accommodate the market.

When you say 21 million, you really mean 2.1 quadrillion. That's because 1 BTC has 100 million pennies, not 1 hundred pennies.

That is another question

Personally, I don't think that fiat will go away. More likely, Bitcoin will exist along with government money. In any case, there are a lot of other cryptocurrencies out there that will readily fill the void if Bitcoin fails to fully substitute fiat money, provided the latter should disappear in the first place, of course. But, as I said, this is highly unlikely to happen

the worst thing that I have heard was about mining bitcoin and it was in the early days that I did not know what bitcoin is and how it works. what I heard was that someone said "mining bitcoin is solving an equation" which was really confusing to me because I kept thinking about how do these equations work!

A better analogy is that mining is like a dice game, where the number of di gets increased every time someone new wants to start playing. It ends up where the person who wins the most games is the one who invents the best machine for throwing as many dice simultaneously as quickly as possible.

And we should compare a exchange hack to a bank robbery.
Media say "bitcoin hack", "bitcoin unsafe" like robbing a bank make the USD unsafe...

I think that's a good myth about safety.

Bitcoin Mining Wastes Electricity
A recent report found that Bitcoin’s network hashrate could consume as much power as Denmark by 2020. Other reporters dispute this characterization, pointing out that Bitcoin uses the same electricity as the yearly consumption of 674.5 average American homes, two Amtrak locomotives or a California hydroelectric plant. Do these things waste electricity? It depends on your point of view. The reality is that the use of computing power serves a purpose in Bitcoin, which is securing all of the transactions on the network. If you don’t think Bitcoin is valuable, maybe that’s a waste. If you don’t think fiat currencies are valuable, maybe keeping the lights on at the Federal Reserve is a waste.

Electricity-intensive Bitcoin mining is essentially a way to prove that someone has expended resources in hopes of getting a block reward and transaction fees in return for their efforts. Proof-of-work, as it’s called, acts as a prevention mechanism against Sybil attacks (forged identities) on the Bitcoin network. Waste? You decide.

Very few countries officially allow the local use of other fiat currencies alongside the ones they issue. You would not find any developed countries in that list for sure. What's peculiar about Bitcoin is that even the most protective governments tend to at least give bitcoin some leeway as they want to fully explore it before committing to any official stance on it. Surely, it may be the case as bitcoin is still too small to make a difference globally and that can change should they start viewing it as a threat.

I'm also happy to see that the overall perception of bitcoin among the world governments has been positive and that of something that's here to stay. That's a good thing.

You can compare consumption of energy of bitcoin network to process of printing FIAT banknotes/minting coins.
Do you think that printing new money is cheap, effortless (compared to Bitcoin) and requires no/less energy or manpower?
Quite the contrary. Additional argument: mining of precious metals - this process is more destructive/harmful to our environment than mining bitcoin will ever be.

It's actually kind of entertaining when some of these things are brought up, if anything it is more entertaining watching users try to perform the mental gymnastics to somehow justify Bitcoin being worse for the environment compared to a majority of other forms of currency manufacturing or generation. I see nothing wrong with the amount of power consumed by Bitcoin.

I'd ask the brewer down the road how many cases of beer he will trade me for ten bitcents.  


First of all, you have no idea how many rupees you will have to trade me for 1 Subway sandwich in 2018.  Technically you don' t know the price until the deal goes through.  

Second of all, who cares whether you call something money or not?  In the end of the day, you will trade your cases of beer to me for a certain amount of my facebook credits, private bank issued dollars, publicly issued bitcoins, or maple syrup.  It's an exchange.  Commodities which are used exclusively for exchange are called exchange commodities, many refer to them as money.  It doesn't matter, does it.  Perhaps you need to make a legal argument and say it's not money citing some things people wearing wigs and suits said many years ago.  Sure, go for it.    

  

 

Funny,  :D
the Energy companies supplying the electricity don't feel the same way you do.  :P

http://www.newsbtc.com/2016/07/21/bitcoin-miners-in-washington-state-to-pay-more-for-electricity/

 8)

FYI:
Wonder if you will feel the same way , if your electricity rates increases because of Miners. ;)

http://kernelmag.dailydot.com/issue-sections/staff-editorials/11336/how-much-electricity-bitcoin-use/

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/bitcoin-is-unsustainable

Reason Proof of Stake will Defeat Proof of Work in the long run.
Proof of Stake is energy efficient, where as Proof of Work is just energy wasteful.

Public coin adoption absolutely will lead to people using energy more efficiently.  Somehow I don' t find that a bad thing.  


Personally I'd rather accept coin which provably required energy to generate than one which provably required.. no energy.  We'll see what the market says won' t we :D  

And I would rather accept one that does not raise my electric bills.

Agreed, Time & the markets will Decide the Final Winner.   :D


 8)

This looks more like a FUD attempt or sensational news rather than a real myth


I've seen a lot of users claiming here that the American dollar is universally accepted across the world. I even had to provide a link to the Canada Travel Guide (Canada is closest to the US both geographically and economically, in case someone doesn't know), and it outright says that the US dollars may be accepted only in stores near the US border...
 
That seems to be another big myth, though it is not related to Bitcoin directly

I think you are true. Only a few countries which regard bitcoin was illegal. But there is use bitcoin which used for illegal activities, I read on some thread.

Lol, i always found this they mentioned that blockchain is official wallet, well if there such an official wallet it must Bitcoin Core which is created by Satoshi Nakamoto honestly i've never heard satoshi declare that Bitcoin Core is official wallet.

About #1 i believe every country in this world using bitcoin either as a payment method or investment tool, however used bitcoin for transaction is illegal here but police won't arrest you if you hold or trade them like stock.

bitcoins ethos should be that there is no official wallet. there should always be a diverse choice of wallets to avoid control risks.
yes use terms like popular.. but saying 'official' is a failure of bitcoins ethos

also some notes:
satoshi made bitcoin-qt.
satoshi disappeared in 2010

bitcoin-core was not invented until 2013..
bitcoin core and bitcoin-QT are 2 vastly different codebases. so try not to attribute satoshi to be anything related to core. satoshi had no involvement in core.

also dont attribute the bitcoin-core devs to be highly linked to satoshi.
pieter wuille appeared 2013. gmaxwell appeared 2011.. both long after satoshi disappeared. there was no collaboration..

yes core is the popular choice. but should not be branded the official choice. no one should be an official of bitcoin otherwise the decentralized and diverse nature of bitcoins ethos will be removed.

I am thinking about adding another widespread myth about the Blockchain wallet, namely, that it is the safest wallet between the web-wallets such as Coinbase and Xapo (as far as it can be called that), but I'm still sitting on the fence, so to speak, and haven't yet made up my mind whether this myth is worth adding to the list...

What do guys/gals think?

blockchain.info official web wallet no
blockchain.info popular web wallet yes

It seems that I somehow totally forgot about another very widespread myth regarding Bitcoin usage in everyday life. Just today I've seen a few posts claiming that Bitcoin is completely useless as a means of payment for daily expenses like "rent, groceries and activities (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1137697.msg16884411#msg16884411)". That story might have had some substance just two years ago, but things in the Bitcoin world change very fast nowadays. And the reality now is that most, if not all, self-respecting web wallets (and not only wallets but exchanges too) issue Bitcoin payment cards which make payments with Bitcoin as trivial, simple and fast as with any other such card, be it Visa or MasterCard (the ones I use myself). These cards have been available for over a year now, with BitPlastic being the first such card which appeared as back as in 2013...

But the myth seems to persist and is hard to root out

The most popular obe is among new people "bitcoin will make you rich quickly". :D

Personally I think is a false illusion, even in the real world is not easy to become rich in a fraction of second. You need to work in order to get the bitcoins into your wallet, without action nothing will happen.

Even if you buy it with you own money, the price should increase to a good number in us dollar.