Bitcoin Forum

Saw this:

I'm a long-time bitcoin holder, like many I wish I had bought and held more back in the day but I feel very fortunate to have always kept a core holding and never have sold. The mantra used to be "spend and replace" and I would do that, I found ways to use bitcoin wherever I could.

This whole narrative around bitcoin has changed since 5+ years ago, I just can't wrap my head around "the utility IS as a store of value", it does not make sense to me. At least before when people would ask "why does it have value", my answer was always, its super easy to transfer to anyone in the world, no middle man, nobody can stop you, its relatively fast (10-15 min), and FINALLY it has a limited supply, no central bank can print it.

I really do believe that the utility comes BEFORE the store of value, you need both to have sound money, not just one. The only hope of BTC is that the lightning network actually works, but I have my doubts. I'm open-minded, I don't know if BCH has all the answers either, we are still early in this crypto-revolution, who knows what the world will be like in 20 years and what crypto currency eventually wins out in the end.

Your thoughts?

I can. I don't know what the problem is. What is clear is that for day to day payments, in the end it will be used either LN, if it ends up succeeding, or some shitcoin, but Bitcoin as it is is succeeding as the best store of value in the world. For the same reason you say. Try sending $1M of gold in 15 minutes to Japan.

BTW: you've said you saw that but you haven't quoted: https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/m562vm/longtime_bitcoin_holder_starting_to_question_the/

That is what you call a hindsight, he could've bought more but he didn't so there is no point regretting what you didn't do in the past, the important thing is that you bought bitcoin and you earn a lot of money because you have faith that it will grow more than just its current amount at that time.

Bitcoin can serve different purposes for different people and these people view its utility from different perspectives; Some are in because of the resistance to inflation, for others it's the 'borderlessness' of transactions, and for some others the immutability and decentralization of the network. All of these are correct and accurate and the believe of one person in one does not invalidate the other.

Lightening Network would sure make daily transactions easier and cheaper for merchants, but the future of Bitcoin is not hinged on its success, there are lots of improvement propositions aimed at improving scalability and in the future a couple more would be proposed.

For the sake of analogy, just think on what banks do with gold.
Do they use it to manufacture good electric conductors? Do they manufacture jewelry? No, clearly no.
They simply store it as a "store of value" because it's known that gold doesn't change its properties and it's believed that gold is scarce.
If the banks would sell all the gold staying for no actual use, it may not be any longer such highly valuable.

Now Bitcoin. It clearly doesn't change its properties and it's known for sure it's scarce. So it already becomes something better than gold, exactly for store of value.
The fact it can be also used like a coin makes it even more suitable for the job.
What else it gives value? Its security. Unlike banks that have to pay for heavily guarded storage, you can hide billions on a piece of paper, knowing that the underlying math and the huge mining difficulty makes it a safe asset (as long as you know how to keep safe the information from "that piece of paper").

And same goes with Bitcoin as with gold. The price is high because of the demand. If there will no longer be demand, if whales sell, the price can also fall.
The "digital gold" choice of words is pretty well chosen and tells a lot.

I'd like to add that I can imagine almost any combination of characters and calculate a bitcoin address from it, which I can use to send my money to (NOT RECOMMENDED TO DO THIS, but still ...) Try this with gold!

Well, if one is rich enough and mad enough, he can ask for having built something like Voyager probes and launch it to the void  ;)
Or one can mix the gold with aqua regia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqua_regia) and probably throw away the result (but I have enough knowledge on the matter).
The result would be pretty much the same  ;D

Do not ask yourself such questions. Of course, everything will end sometime. But crypto is only at the beginning of its journey.

The method AND the result are not the same.

It took me a few seconds to generate a Bitcoin address with your posting.


1GDKrFverko4oFPDA3NKP5piXxyA1wpB2M
5Kau4cNztUQJHKoL25hm3XLycgpCWe2QEfqTfzp9k3ZU9NP2vjb

It would take a few seconds to do a transaction to that address and about an hour to confirm. When I want my money back, I would need only your posting and some code from the internet to recreate my private key.

Past has nothing to do with us today we skip it because that's how our destiny would be. Even though in some aspect of our life we have so many things we wished we have done or things that we wish we didn't do. That's the same with bitcoins and the other altcoins which we see in the market that are on the top list. If we have to get something right now, we need to do our own investigation about certain coins, and if we want we can still stick to BTC if we really want something to invest on some high assurance that our money will not lose. unlike the investment on some other altcoins where their price will not recover when it falls.

Everybody questions the future. It is only a matter of how you question it. It is either you are questioning the future based on an optimistic mind or a pessimistic one. The one who made this question was clearly a pessimistic person who happened to get stuck at a certain perception of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is not static. Insofar as its use is concerned, it could be flexible up to a certain extent.

Why can't it be that Bitcoin is flexibly adapting to the future? Our BTC is still a kid in a way and still has a long way to go. In terms of development there are a few implementations very much needed to allow it to become future proof (taproot); true bitcoin hodlers don't need to question the future as they know it was paved when they first gave bitcoin a chance in the past.  8)

I think the (Author) was started doubting about the future of Bitcoin And the one reason I observed is that bitcoin has changed a lot already especially now that the price was skyrocketed the transaction fees were rising and the confirmation time became lengthy and because of that reason he has also quoted about the LN or the Lightning Network function which is until now still not been perfected. so I think that was a normal reaction that pointed out a valid question. When?

OK, I misunderstood what you meant at first. I thought that you make a burn address simply adding the checksum to something.

And the rest is (more or less) covered by "unlike banks that have to pay for heavily guarded storage, you can hide billions on a piece of paper". Yes, it's much easier to build a Bitcoin wallet than a vault for gold  ;D

if there are still doubts about bitcoin, of course it is something strange and it needs to be questioned again why is it still analyzing bitcoin. where now bitcoin has experienced a very sharp increase and it is clear that many are making transactions and of course there will be significant changes in everything that is done by bitcoin at this time, because changes in price are certainly quite high.
all of that is a natural thing because it occurs cause and effect and we must understand it.
bitcoin will continue to do well and it is clear that the future will remain profitable for its holders.

even though the future of bitcoin is not yet certain, but bitcoin has the potential, somehow the potential of bitcoin in the future. certainly there will be coins that can be valuable like bitcoin, it's just that we don't know what coins. so for now bitcoin is still the best

Why not link to source?

I've met my fair share of long-time holders, and I've mentioned before how surprised I am that many seemed to have folded and lost hope in 2018, a year after that rally and ATH. I thought seeing it at least once or twice before would lend them more confidence but I guess ICO era and true mainstream explosion shook their faith and changed beliefs.

I've met people who exited at $10k and they have no regrets. Also met many more who made the entrance above $10k!

Questioning the future can only be a good thing.

to to OP, write again after BTC hits 150K, then 200K, then 500K.

That is life changing for most people.

anyone who has held for long should be confident of the future as no one knew what would happen today till we got here. a lot of things will still happen to bitcoin that we cant even imagine as of now. the best thing that anyone can do is to keep the hope intact and wait for whats to come. whether LN is implemented or not there is still more greater solutions on the way.

To be honest, I do not regret about my sold Bitcoin. Doesn't matter what was the price, because I sold for my needs. Holding is always better, but how long? No one could answer that even as a holder I don't know that. Sometimes we need to take real-time decision bases on situations. Our high expectations would lead to loss as well. My thought is should sell when I think the price reasonable. For example, yesterday Bitcoin traded Adobe $61K, but today trading at approx $54K. So if you sold yesterday's price then you could buy back today. Keep in mind, there always a dump after a huge pump. I will say hold bitcoin for life but not for a lifetime.

Turn off twitter and other gamified social media and you'll stop getting fed quite a bit of concerning nonsense.

Don't worry it doesn't make sense to anyone else who understands what bitcoin is. The funny thing is that bitcoin is a store of value BECAUSE it is a currency, otherwise it is just some numbers on a computer that we are giving it abstract value.

Keep in mind that this is the settlement speed not the transaction speed. In comparison the same time frame for most payment systems is weeks or months.

We don't know what the future holds for bitcoin but we are certain that a centralized immutable shitcoin such as BCH has no place in it.

I think there will be always people who will be talking about Bitcoin in a bad way without considering how special it is as it differs from fiat and how important for its users to be able to use a currency that you have the full control. Even though digital currencies start dominating the market, I believe there will still be someone who are against it. So we have not much to do except trying to inform him/her about it correctly or help him/her to have an education of it.

He does have a valid point when it comes to that because majority of people now are really eyeing it for store of value which we cant really deny and who would be the one wont recognized if the entire community
or to those who had been supported it is really just eyeing for the sake of profits and not into its actual utility? Lets just accept on whats the current situation we are in even if you do already have doubts
when it comes to its real usage but still it do able to perform well when it comes to that even though there are really some obvious flaw into it but still can be handled or bearable.
For the situation of full adoption scale on next decades then that would really be a problem for sure.

My advice for longtime holders is not to pay too much attention to the market and social media, because that's what makes us doubt the future of
Bitcoin. Because paying attention to the market will only cause panic if the Bitcoin price goes down, then social media usually spreads a lot of FUD
which affects our minds.

In my opinion, what longtime holders should do is only buy Bitcoin regularly every month, and if we want to check the market, do it every 6 months
or once a year. I believe that by doing so, holders will be stronger in holding Bitcoin, and will be more optimistic about the future of Bitcoin.

This is sure no one in this world can tell what things are going to happen to tommorow, its because tomorrow is not in us. Investing is word for brave only who are really willing to invest thier money and believe that he can make good profit on that investment.

Nothing will Last forever, so just grab the opportunity today if there is.

Uncertainty is law of time! A dimension one can not skip really. Considering bitcoin in the matter, it's sitting on the tip of needle and trying to balance itself with many factors. The governments, their rules and regulations, acceptance by investors, influencers and what not. The day this balance is tipped off, bitcoin would no longer serve good purpose as asset or currency.

But, the good thing is bitcoin's balance well furnished with green future. The past? Who cares what happened in their since it can not change or neither it will change anything in the present scenario.

However, long time holder should get the feel for it's insane roller coaster ride which is going up and up all the time. So your future starts with  your decisions made today about the bitcoin.

Well, we do have our own needs in life or satisfaction or simple as self decision of what should we do to our bitcoin, does it good to be hodl for a longtime or better trade it while the amount of bitcoin in the market was worth enough for you to sold it at that certain value. No one are controlling nor preventing each and everyone to make a certain decision, as long as they know the principle of trading which of course i know everyone knows to be able to generate a profit. I guess we do only differ from the fact of how much do we like to generate.

Bitcoin has enough potential to continue to increase in value over time.

LN works or not, BTC network is working and its community is growing exponentially. More members you have in the ecosystem more utility we have. Imagine 1 billion BTC users, the biggest utility will be transfer of funds among this community instantly and without any middlemen.

We all of course question the future and get very curious about what is going to happen for the money we use mostly and at what position cryptocurrencies will be. Their system is the most important thing that draws people's attention to themselves in the end, I think. And imo, it looks like there is no way that fiat money will always continue to exist. It is inevitable that we are going to use digital currencies in the future. And I expect the cryptocurrencies to be good alternatives for the digital currencies that will be developed by the governments.

Of course we question on what Bitcoin can offer in the future because of today, there are a lot of good alternate coins that also offers great platforms to a much better future. It is just that Bitcoin was the first out of all the cryptocurrencies and that maybe the author is questioning what more it could offer in the future if it will still be the top crypto coin. And he may have regretted he didn’t buy a lot a few years back but I’m pretty sure what he has today is still enough for him, he just did not expect Bitcoin to have that much value as of today.

"Everything will end" is this saying the days of crypto are numbered?
 I honestly don't think so, crypto is the new generational money and if something is to end it will be fiat not crypto. And with the heavy reliance of digital mediums today it makes it easy for crypto to thrive only problem is non availability of reversing transactions, but there is still hope for it to displace fiat or rather coexist till people understand how crypto works.