Bitcoin Forum

Is Bitcoin still as safe at it used to be? Tokyo isn’t the only place affected. Apparantly the Mt.Gox bankruptcy has had a major effect on the Indian sub-continent as well. A jolting shock struck them as Crores of Rupees held by have vanished overnight. The thread shows the article published by the Indian newspaper on the issue. The total lost is estimated to be around 10-20 crores.
http://www.indiatvnews.com/business/india/indians-lose-crores-in-bitcoins-as-japan-exchange-goes-kaput--10450.html
 (http://www.indiatvnews.com/business/india/indians-lose-crores-in-bitcoins-as-japan-exchange-goes-kaput--10450.html)

When a company goes bankrupt (or whatever the Mt.Gox situation might be called), its customers lose money.
In the case of Mt.Gox which acted world wide there were customers all over the world, naturally, so this affected India as well.
However, this is not a failure of bitcoin (just as the failure of Lehman Brothers was not a failure of the dollar), but a failure of a company which acted irresponsibly and did not protect its customer's assets.

Of course, such an event has repercussions in the bitcoin world, and it is hard to predict where bitcoin exchange rate will be in 6 months or so.
But bitcoin has never been a safe investment - if you buy bitcoins and hold them for a year, you never know whether you get 200% or 2000% profit :-)
The only time during which you got less than 20% or even a negative result was when you bought between May and August 2011 and sold exactly a year later - in these cases, waiting another year would have resulted in a pretty handsome ROI, but of course, hidsight is 20/20.

The main thing to remember is that only bitcoins you hold in your wallet are actually your bitcoins, and their safety depends on how well you protect them.

Onkel Paul

Not any more secure than gold would be after pirates steal a boatload of gold.

It doesn't affect bitcoin at all. Just protect your bitcoin like you would protect gold. Don't leave 4000BTC with ANY exchange or ANY pool or ANY wallet that you don't have full control over. Get cold storage.

Remember MtGox also owes a ton of fiat money as well. But nobody questions if fiat is still safe anymore.

Bitcoin has still been safe.
However the troubles come from exchange markets.

To be honest, people need to learn and stop storing their bitcoin on an exchange.

Exactly right, if people learned that their coins are only 100% safe when they are completly in your hands  or possession. just like real money unless someone says its backed and your getting your money back theres always a chance of you losing your investment or money. but exchanges cant be insurreed ya know

According to IRS, nope  ;D

Is money safe to use? Is getting a bank account is 100% safe? :)

There will be many issues with Bitcoin, but it will get safer and safer and if you are responsible and you will do what is the best to keep Bitcoin safe you should be happy Bitcoiner forever :)

There always will be some problems ...

What do you mean? Bitcoin is still safe. Mtgox is not Bitcoin and Bitcon is not Mtgox and Nothing will Happen to Bitcoin without Mtgox.

You can trust bitcoin, you can't trust humans  :)

If we use bitcoin wisely it is safe. Never put all your eggs in one basket.Don't keep all your bitcoins in exchanges.

If u take steps to protect ur keys from hackers, ur bitcoins should remain safe.

Bitcoin is safe to use. just make sure that you encrypt your wallet and use a passphrase thats very protected . but i guess the only real way for your bitcoins to be safe would be on  a device thats not connected to the internet and not used for anyhting else this is cold storage

Indeed. Perhaps in next 5 years all of us will have trezor, so this is IMO safest way to storage bitcoins with possibility to use it like a normal wallet.

Till now we can say there are so many ways to lose Bitcoins, but year by year it will get better, and we just need to follow safety instructions and do not worry too much :)

(easy to say when you have <0.5BTC :P ) - but, if I will have a lot of BTC I will just make some cold wallet :)

Bitcoin is always safe to use. Just educate yourself, you don't have to fear anything.

Bitcoin is the safest way to buy things over the net. However if you are unsafe in your practices then you could still get got. Just make sure you have total and exclusive control of your private keys.

Don't use online wallets and don't get scammed, these are the only 'unsafe' things about bitcoin, but it has been 5 years and nothing really bad has happened and I hope it stays that way

Just stay to the safe sources, like coinbase, blockchain, bistamp etc. It might be tempting to deviate but dont!

I wouldn't call exchanges (like coinbase and bitstamp) a safe place to store bitcoin, as you don't have the private keys.

Well trust coinbase/blockchain is like trusting the largest banks. Though not 100% safe, its the best you can do without handling the private key yourself

Private financial institution != Public currency

Although failure of largely influential financial institutions almost inevitably cause extreme price fluctuations on the global market. I'm really surprised that the mtgox incident didn't drop the price more than it did (most likely thanks to the fact that most bitcoiners saw something like this coming with mtgox and pulled out in the preceding year).

Transaction wise, yes it is safe to use because there is no middlemen that handles the bitcoin. It is a very safe medium of exchange for any type of payment transaction. The only drawback of this is its volatility.

safe
just don't generate your address + private keys from untrustworthy and unreliable source
keep you private keys safe and backup frequently when using online wallet

until it is needed for people everything will be fine

I think if your can take care of security of your device - bitcoin is very safe to use.

Its safe just can be risky!!

Bitcon is safe to use as long as:

1. You are taking regular backups.
2. You are taking adequate steps to prevent the hacking of your wallet.

Its safe to use Bitcoins as long as you keep them safe. Exchangers are always risky u should not leave money in an exchanger

Ahhh you know what we need, outside promotion, people giving paper wallets wearing a bitcoin polo shirts and giving away free bitcoins, They can teach others what is about and give info on it flyers to watch the video.

Yes it safe. If you keep then in your wallet. Exchanges ... I don't know; Have my doubts sometimes

MtGox is a website, not the bitcoin system.  
In the same way that hotmail is not email. If hotmail is cracked, it would not imply email is broken.

My personal opinion, I would recommend this:

• Dont use online websites to store your money (exchanges, banks, other). you want to be in control of your money - not to give this money to others. Recently, we have seen what can happen when you trust others (banks, exchanges) with your money - this applies for all currencies.
• Use either a desktop wallet, such as multibit, or an offline-wallet
• if you use desktop wallet, make backups of your wallet files

btw, do you know that 1 bitcoin is worth 447 us dollars now?  :)

Safe unless you wont keep your coins on exchanges.

OP made this post, and then abandoned the account lol.  ;D

The bitcoin is safe for use, even with the exchangers troubles the bitcoin has showed us that is safe for use, althought there is a lot of scammers or scam exchagers, just is necessary to be careful.

research good wallets, and never store all your bitcoins in one place/wallet.

we are all learning better security, it's evolving! Bitcoin is a work in progress!

Bitcoin is safe for use even so with the current problems caused of Mt Gox also that the fact the Chinese goverment has ordered to close all the exchangers in China, BTC is safe to use and trade with it just be careful at the moment to sell o buy it.

You are right just one think is not right - buy as many as you can :D hehhe :)
Regards.

Mt Gox is the past. lol. I`m sure most venture capitals who are on fence of doing bitcoin right, now knows what to expect.

I mean, if anything the bitcoin community is molding forward and this just starts a better foundation for people trying to do it right.

You have to be careful.

or you have  trembling hands.

there is no currency, that is perfectly safe to use

Keep your pc safe from viruses and keyloggers and don't keep your BTC on exchanges.

wallet should be on separate hard drive with a clean operating system

Bitcoin is as safe as you make it safe, that is the beauty of Bitcoin. With fiat you just hope justice will help you if you get hacked, with Bitcoin you might secure it very well

You need to use separate computer never connected with offline wallet. Hopefully hardware wallets will be available soon for no tech users

or virtual machine

I think that's the key. A lot of people I discuss bitcoin with want to get into it, but we are not those technologically savvy types...as it is, the learning curve is too steep for everyday people to adopt it as a currency. For my generation, it's possible with effort but for the older generation, I just don't see it happening with out hardware innovations like you mention.

safe if you use cold storage

but risky in terms of value

It's safe as long as you are.

Very true.
People really need to understand this, and use an offline wallet to store 99% of their bitcoin.

what is offline wallet? how do I get one?

Google it. IT's just keeping your wallet not on a pc.

An offline wallet is keeping your coins on either a paper wallet or in a wallet.dat backed up on something like a usb or CDR that's not online so it's safe.

I think bitcoin is about as safe to use as a condom. Somewhere around 90% safe when used properly and according to the instructions =P

If you follow the rules and don't do anything stupid the odds of you losing your coins is fairly low. But people do things like keeping coins on an exchange long term, not having a secure passphrase, keeping large quantities in low security storage, downloading questionable software and/or not using proper antivirus/malware software, using web wallets (seriously why the fuck do you people do that I can't fathom) etc etc and that greatly increases the risk.

 ??? ???
lol nice analogy, but I though condoms were 98% asafe?

Yeah this, but make sure you make several back ups and or write your private keys down too.

The easiest way to generate a offline wallet is to use bitaddress.org offline.

Yes, it's definitely safe. Constantly read and learn from others how to keep it safe and secure.

You can find a lot of threads here in BTT from enabling 2 factor authentication to your online wallet to the most secured cold and paper wallets.

You may find that BTC can be safer and easier to use than using credit cards or fiat.

Remember that if you are using an offline wallet (paper-wallet or USB-stored wallet.dat file), there is no way to recover them in case the backup is lost or stolen. So it will be better to make 2 or 3 physical backups, and store them in safe and secure locations.

Bitcoin is safe, but Rising and falling the price cause Unreliable.

Bitcoin is  safe to use.

True. And you can also apply encryption on paper wallet with BIP0038.

No. The volatility in the prices does not make Bitcoin unreliable. Most of the merchants who accept payments in Bitcoin immediately convert them to fiat currency. So they are not incurring any loses.

If you are still in doubt:
The market cap of bitcoin is currently 5.755.646.471 USD and new bitcoin business and services are rising everywhere.
Read more on bitprize.org (http://bitprize.org)

how bitcoin is safe to use . you have any solid reason behind your words .please share with us so we also will understand and do some safe transaction

Bitcoin is safe to use its just that you shouldn't trust those online sites, they can be hacked