Bitcoin Forum

A lot of news or events (e.g. china bans, random tweets, tether) have generally been dismissed as FUD, perhaps rightfully so.

I'm curious what are some genuine concerns for the future growth of Bitcoin? Some people in the space (e.g. Michael Saylor), when asked this question would say nothing can stop bitcoin but I'm asking here to hear more of a balanced view.

I guess Michael Saylor is right, no one can stop bitcoin's growth, because first of all no one can really control it. Bitcoin is decentralised, no single authority and as you can see there's even division before in 2017 that causes some entity to split and have their own fork coin, i.e Bitcoin Cash.

China's bitcoin mining ban? Nah, all miners will do is shift to other nations with cheap electricity.

Environment effect? this has been debunked during bitcoin's bull run in 2013,2017 and now 2021.

51% attacks? too expensive and no incentives for those who might pulled this stunt.

Crypto regulations? we have seen worst already, and yet bitcoin is still up and running.

Crypto exchange hacks? might put some dent on the price, but in the long run, bitcoin will bounce back.

FUD's? bitcoin is so resilient and proven itself against this FUD' mongers and negative news.

On the top of my head, slow improvements in terms of user experience(UX) in general.

This is going to be subjective. Some people would argue that Bitcoin's current state is good enough; which can be right when talking about the store of value narrative.

In terms of the payments narrative though, while we have great Lightning wallets now, it's still not in the best state; and that there could still be improvements to be made to make it more easier for the casual user.

While this definitely won't sort of make Bitcoin "outdated" or something, it's definitely going to be somewhat of a speedbump in terms of growth.

Why do you think we've seen the worst already for crypto regulations? Governments can create whatever policy they want to disincentive bitcoin investment if it gets big enough, if a sledgehammer approach doesn't work they can use thousands of paper cuts instead.

my Opinion the current largest impediment to bitcoin.


  Large quote   "The Narrative" 


Media no longer for the most part report news.  now they generate it.   lets frame a "bad guy"(bitcoin)   generate BS stories about it since we can.  profit from clicks and ads.   reality not included.   Bitcoin will recover since reality has a weird way of being reality but its certainly doesn't help.

Nothing has change though, crypto media is the worst, they just posted articles without any proof whatsoever and this has been the practice, specially in 2017 wherein there's a lot of bad media and it seems the pattern is repeating again in 2017.

For the still the biggest hindrance is the total lack of education from newbie investors, and then the attitude of "get rich quick" mindset. Lack of education means they don't know how to protect their bitcoin, putting it in exchanges, doesn't have the knowledge on how to protect their private keys. That's why scammers and cyber criminals are still thriving in this market.

Adoption probably? It's at it's baby stages right now so its development isn't proceeding the right way properly, just like how most people see Bitcoin as investment and not as a currency. There's also the issue with fees and transaction speeds, the latter being fixed with lightning network afaik. In one sense FUD is also something that impedes Bitcoin growth since it does impede people from trying to join the community. Ofc, with proper research, people could easily identify what is wrong to right, but hey, who does research in 2021 anyway.

It will be easy when the government openly adopts it, it only takes them to do that for the public to follow suit. I think thee one issue that needs to be solved is the network congestion because what's the merit of adoption if the network is really slow and could take days to do a transaction.

The ease of use of Bitcoin is indeed could potentially boost the adoption process. One thing that personally worth mentioning is to keep the decentralization toward the ecosystem. Some centralized companies might be focused to put their funds into the UX improvements while taking the decentralization and/or privacy aparts.

We need to improve the UX scalability of Bitcoin without sacrificing decentralization/privacy. One thing that stuck in my mind there is a chance that centralized companies managed by the elites of the blockchain community become such powerful. In consequence, the majority will use their platform, without the clarity of any privacy or decentralization process.

Yeap, that's why it's so hard to improve the UX— because it's hard to improve it without sacrificing security and the self-custody part. There's a reason why a lot of people tend to leave funds on platforms such of Coinbase and Binance instead; simply because it's far far more convenient compared to writing down 12-24 words on pieces of paper.

Uncertainty in the global market
At present, the demand for gold is soaring. In the remote first world, the demand for scarce assets should have caused Bitcoin to become popular.
However, the emergence of new crown pneumonia has not created an ideal living environment for super-national currencies such as Bitcoin. Instead, it has strengthened investors' dependence on traditional financial institutions.
According to the short-term signals of the current market, large traders are generally turning to oil investment or gold investment, and competition among Saudi Arabia, Russia and the United States to reduce oil prices has exacerbated this trend.
In addition, in the past few weeks, major commodity markets around the world have been turbulent, and the sharp discounts in commodity prices have attracted some investors. However, the large fluctuations in investment targets have also brought worries to some investment institutions. In this process, the Bitcoin situation is no different from precious metals or stocks. In recent days, we can see that the cryptocurrency market is slowly recovering with the stock market.
Stronger demand for cash

I would say, "Volatility" is a real concern for merchants.. because they cannot accept (direct) Bitcoin payments in an environment where the price fluctuates between 5% to 10% in a few minutes. (They are forced to use Payment processors at an additional cost)

Also, the transaction confirmation speed is also an issue, because customers are unwilling to wait 10 to 30 minutes for confirmation of their transactions. (Adoption of the Lightning Network to resolve this, has to happen a lot faster)  ;)

1 High fees
2 Maintaining the system requires a great cost
3 The cost of destruction (the cost of destroying Bitcoin / Bitcoin's market value) is low
In short, these fatal shortcomings of Bitcoin make it unable to be used as currency or as "digital gold". However, the characteristics of Bitcoin itself are a very good speculative product. The limited amount means that when it is fired, it will not have a large amount. Of coins to hit the market.

Bitcoin's impact on young people is waning
According to the survey, in developed countries, people under the age of 35 are the largest investor group of cryptocurrencies.
However, at this time, many young people's daily activities have been interrupted due to the impact of the epidemic.
Thousands of young people are now taking on the responsibilities of taking care of their families and maintaining their jobs. At the same time, millions of college students have been forced to leave campus. The pressure of life has made most people weaken their interest in the crypto market.
Once the current global epidemic crisis is reduced, these investors are likely to reconsider investing in Bitcoin after returning to a normal life.

Mass selling by Bitcoin miners
It is worth noting that although Bitcoin's recent rebound may herald its price stabilization, Bitcoin miners, who are the upstream of the entire cryptocurrency industry chain, have increased their sales.
We see that Binance’s transaction data shows that in the last two weeks, the price of Bitcoin has risen from $3,800 to the current $6,700, an increase of 76%.
However, according to miners' rolling inventory (MRI) data (which is an indicator created by encrypted data company ByteTree to track changes in the inventory levels held by miners), during the entire rebound, the number of bitcoins sold by miners exceeded their production.
Starting from a low point of less than $4,000, the rolling MRI data on the 21st remained above 100 throughout the entire process. An MRI higher than 100 means that the miner’s selling volume exceeds its mining volume, while a MRI lower than 100 indicates that the miner’s selling volume is small. Because of its mining volume.
Nevertheless, some opinions believe that when the price of Bitcoin can rise sharply from a low point, and buyers can absorb the excess Bitcoin sold by miners without causing a price drop, this indicates that the entire market is strengthening.

We can see that the current uncertainty in the global market, the increase in demand for cash, the withdrawal of potential Bitcoin investors, and the massive sell-off of miners have all had a great impact on the entire cryptocurrency market.

  Policy factors are also important factors that affect the price of Bitcoin. In the previous examples, the implementation and formulation of policies in South Korea, Japan, the United States, and China have all affected the trend of Bitcoin prices.
  Real financial factors and the instability of the real financial world have caused the demand for digital currencies to rise from time to time. For example, the default of the Central Bank of Cyprus, Brexit, the global stock market frustration in early 2018, local wars and other events have all made Bitcoin a safe haven The characteristics of the play out.
  Technological factors, although the security of Bitcoin has always been respected during its development, there have been several technological crises in its development history.

This is debatable. But I guess it's pretty safe to assume that the technician/contributors of the Bitcoin are more far-oriented toward the technical advancements in contrast to UI/UX, given the nature of the Bitcoin core contributors or the community majority are coming from the tech-savvy background.

The security and self-custody part made me think that it is related to the whole fully internet space in general. People are using identical passwords across many platforms rather than using any password manager. Not to mention, that a humongous data-gatherers platform is leading in many ways. As a result, people are getting used to using their platforms then didn't blink an eye to adapt or use other privacy or security-oriented platforms. The ignorance part also has a play in part of the migration process tho.

What do you mean by growth of Bitcoin?Do you mean Bitcoin price growth or mass BTC adoption?Unfortunately,those are two completely different things.
Bitcoin price volatility actually stops the global Bitcoin adoption,because the retail businesses won't accept BTC payments.There's no point of paying 100USD worth of BTC for goods and services,when you know that those 100USD BTC might turn into 135USD tomorrow.
Michael Saylor is a mindless Bitcoin bull.I don't mind people being optimistic about Bitcoin,but this guy is just spreading wishful thinking and propaganda.

I agree with Michael Saylor's said that nothing can stop bitcoin. But maybe the policy from each country can stop bitcoin and people to use bitcoin. But that does not mean they can stop bitcoin forever because I am sure people will find a way how they can still use bitcoin, especially if they can get the benefits from bitcoin. Besides that, the adoption process can be something that we need to concern about because, without mass adoption in all countries, bitcoin won't grow as today and bitcoin will be only for some people without any chance to be popular.

Personally, the biggest obstacle to rising Bitcoin prices I can think of right now may be Ethereum. At present, more and more applications are deployed on Ethereum. The rapid development of DEX represented by Uniswap has promoted the rapid development of Ethereum. In comparison, Bitcoin's blockchain does not have such a variety of application functions, and I will not be surprised if the market value of Ethereum exceeds that of Bitcoin one day.

In fact, the solution to this problem is to connect the public chains of Bitcoin and Ethereum. This is what Gavinwood is trying to accomplish.

For Bitcoin to continue its growth, I think that the most important thing is demand. Governments can continue to regulate it and even ban it. But as long as the demand from the people don't end, Bitcoin will continue to be bigger and bigger.

Yep. The UI/UX improvements job is more on the wallets and layer-2 side rather than the Bitcoin core side. Both parties are doing really important stuff, but in different sectors.

Pretty much. Having all people having to self-custody through private key backups is mostly going to be disastrous. I think it's either some clever developer is going to find an easier way of having backups without sacrificing security, or people simply need to slowly adapt and learn about security.