Bitcoin Forum

Hopefully I'm not alone in this thought but what is the end game? The way I see it is that these last few years of price movement is just price speculation. Complete idiots are putting money in this machine and expecting a profit. Too many people don't know anything about how BTC even works.

I just don't get it. Am I just maturing in my opinions of this industry? What is the end game here?

I know what I did, bought low and sold high and moved along. My profits are measured in my local currency, I don't see how BTC will ever fill that void to be universal.

Do we just wait patiently, buy the dip over the next year or so, and sell our bags to the next wave of dreamers? I miss the days when BTC was just this interesting internet money that was on the darknet.

Thanks for reading, would love to hear if anyone else has these thoughts on a daily basis.

My view is that Bitcoin will slowly continue to gain adoption, but will remain an obscure payment method used as a last resort for people who can't use traditional payment methods for some reasons. Lightning Network's official release would provide a boost to adoption, but it won't turn Bitcoin into a widely adopted global currency, because it also has limitiations, and because it doesn't fix other Bitcoin problems like price volatility.

Just because Bitcoin is not used by everyone and maybe never will, you don't have to be pessimistic and say that Bitcoin is useless. Bitcoin has its own niche, and IMO that already is a success.

Tldr: just invest if you like the technology. There's too much talk on smart money and dumb money - a lot of "smart money" is just big money that can inflate itself.

The market thrives from sensationalisation. Do you think people ever know what they're investing in? The stock markets have high profile companies worth a lot less than they should be (0.5-5x annual profits).

The network is odd and so it how company accounts are filed. Companies are generally assessed on their profitibility at the time and any short strategic statements they give, no one cares about their assets or about their market share unless they point it out...

---

I'm pretty sure investors, accountants and other people have the worst job satisfaction too - that's probably a strong reason for it.

Well yeah. I was once positive. Most of the time I'm neutral or negative. I am sort of the outlet for crypto in my circles. Just have had so many people ask me about doge in the past few months. Maybe I'm just disappointed.

You're right. It does have a niche. Maybe when media cools down more I can re-open my brain.

I realized I was talking about any investment product when I typed this. I got to try to think less sensationally- I tend to overthink.

You're prolly not alone, but I'm afraid, the majority of people who share the same thought as yourself are either trying to spread unnecessary FUD, or do not understand how the network works and it's original purpose.
However you choose to use the network, spend or accumulate coins is your sole decision, but mind you that Bitcoin is definitely going mainstream, do not be confused, that's not to say that there'll come a time that Bitcoin will be the only currency used, Bitcoin is definitely going to be universal cause sooner or later, with all the dictatorial policies governments keep implementing, people wouldn't be able to resist the freedom and control of funds Bitcoin offers it's users, this will make more and more people to use it and hence mainstream adoption.
Like I already said, you can buy and spend the way you deem fit, but I am pretty sure that people who believe in the network aren't 'dreamers', it's (Bitcoin) actually a currency that can change the financial system for good.

Yeah, you've became mature on this market.

Yes.

That's better if you do that as the other people don't know what to do when they see the price of bitcoin goes down. They're probably thinking the same as it's already the end for bitcoin but no, it is not.

I can't disagree with you on that part. It is true that many people just buy because they can, simply out of interest or FOMO, greed, etc. But you should consider that there are other people as well, the ones that believe in Bitcoin adoption and buy it to gain more freedom. And the way I see it, the latter group has started prevailing lately.

Consequently, there's much more to the Bitcoin community than just "waves of dreamers", otherwise there would be no point and Bitcoin would have been long gone by now. There's an expanding loyal network willing to sustain adoption, which is why IMO we are nowhere near the end game.

Everyone knows moore's law defines a rough cycle for transistor density increasing over time.

Bitcoin's history is defined by rough 4 year boom and bust cycles correlated with miner rewards halving.

Don't know the origins of the narrative claiming markets are fueled by speculation. Credit and savings for poor to middle class earners is at all time lows, while debt is at all time highs. Markets have not been significantly influenced by lower wealth brackets in decades. All trends and price movements are defined by hedge funds, banks and state QE.

If history repeats itself, we have already seen the end game in past eras of history. Its only a matter of identifying which past history bears a resemblance to the current one.

Bitcoin's market is still fairly young and this argument could benefit us in the long run.

Just look at the early adopters, now they are reaping their rewards for buying low with literally hundreds of BTC and hold for the next 10 years. End game? we are still far from it, and as we saw it despite it's still being new, the market is in a cycle, bearish/bullish and this is how we should look at it. We could learn that it's better to buy more when the price is cheap because we are in a bear market and then sold off some in a bullish market.

That's your choice, you can buy and hold or you can actively participate in the market by just buying and selling.
This is the cycle of pump and dump and currently we are on the dump trend so technically, buying at a cheaper price is always a good idea and you'll sell it later on once you already happy with your profit.

This is not an end game, and if you already here for years then better to look at the price history of the market because it always like this. Many says the market will die eventually, but for me that's is FUD because until now we are still making a big difference and makes the financial system much better.

Well come on, you got to realize any immature new money are these "dreamers" who read headlines about massive gains on micro-caps or a friend who mad $6k on doge. Sure, there is also new money that may be smart and waited out for the market to mature a bit more. I think we both know what this rally was really supported on.

But whats the end? If BTC is not the universal currency there will always be people selling for the more local or dominant currency. I just don't think this can work like this. I have always considered Bitcoin as computational digital gold. Not meant to a primary means of value exchange.

You are doing good mate if your main intention to invest on crypto is for short term investment.  But telling that Bitcoin is already approaching in an end game phased is quite not suitable just because you are referring on the price alone. The technology is still developing while many businesses are  trying to adapt the blockchain tech on there system. The current market condition is just a result of whale manipulation. This is not new on Bitcoin since we experienced worst than this before.

Inherently, the market wouldn't die unless the underlying cryptographic "proofs" were no longer secure... I think. Or as others have said, legislation from the countries of the world. I find using 10 years of data (realistically its 4-5 years of real life use casa data) is extremely short minded and there simply has not enough time to call it the future. I do not have anti-crypto ideals, I just am disappointed of the state of something I held near and dear to me. I am afraid the average IQ of a crypto user will be too low for anything other than a digital gold.

I think this is a point I completely glossed over. Like the TOR network and other "deep web" networks, there are groups of people in this world who have THRIVED having access to a decentralized internet currency. This is crucial for these people who may not enjoy the benefits of western civilization or a cruel regime. The amount of people I have met internationally through slack/discord crypto communities was extremely enlightening. However, hearing El Salvador introduce Bitcoin just feels wrong. I hope it improves the quality of life for those citizens.

This most recent bull run I did not deal much in btc txs. I tried to stay with lighter tx fees when moving funds (ltc,bch) if I was selling to USD. In 2017/2018, I do remember sky high fees & time. It is my understanding that BTC will always have a scalability problem. A quick google search shows me 4.6 txs per second or so, with visa doing about 1700 per second. Assuming that small countries will begin to onload their people to bitcoin would this not make dealing with BTC completely inefficient (pending any forks that can help this problem). I will provide a disclosure that this knowledge could be dated by a year or so. I will opt to do some more research into this issue.

The end game should be you and not the market, your end game should be getting a lot of profit out of crypto market as much as possible in a short span of time so you can enjoy life. I think what you were doing is already good so I don't think that you have to change anything.

Apparently yes, you have to do that, be patient and......in the next year.

But at least you can still play in a certain period of time, for example: $ 30,000 you buy and $ 35,000, you sell in / week, I see this system is still valid for Bitcoin at this time, honestly I see this week at least 2x changes.

Your ideas above are great too, if you have the patience.

No, there's already solution for scalability problem it's called Lightning network. It will reduce significant fees when you made transaction, unlike on-chain network that often people use. You could pay small amount money without worrying the fees will overtake your micro payment. However it's still quite new and has bugs, so it need more improvement.

End of game has been called endless times for bitcoin at 100, 1000, 10000 and perhaps it will be called again at 100.000. The fact is that non of us understands or can predict where this is going long term because it is still a innovative market and ecosystem - 10 years is nothing in the history of money. Demand is a strong driver of bitcoin, since the supply is known a fixed. That demand as of now is much higher than it was 5 years ago or even 2 years ago because investment funds are buying into the idea. The next step is widespread adoption and that may take another decade... a decade of growth.

this is nothing new. in fact what you are complaining about is not limited to bitcoin. there are lots of assets that have markets filled with "idiots" who are dumping their money in something they don't even understand and expect profit.

for example last year we had a stock market bubble during which a lot of these idiots jumped into the market, some even sold their house to buy stocks thinking they were going to become rich. obviously the bubble popped and they went bankrupt, some even had heart attacks!

bitcoin is still the only decentralized currency and the fact that YOU think of it as a get rich quick doesn't make any difference :D

This remind of Shiba family. This people are the most blinded investors I have seen in crypto space, they invest on trend either its profitable or not and I ponder where they get these free money from.
It's going to be disappointing if btc go below $30k, I don't k ow how we all going to explain if it's an investment or ponzi scheme that grow at every 4 year cycle of halving. We can only hope but sometimes I dislike volatility in this business.
But some altcoins has been money printer for some folks, meme coins were good ones and bad ones.

No matter what bad news or reason, my passion and love for electricity can't be changed by anyone. There are a lot of people telling me that investing in crypto has no future, it's just an illusion aka an inflated bubble. I just believe what I know about the technology and the future of BTC.

I don't know exactly what's my end game in all of this but one thing that I am sure about is that I make the most out of all this while it lasts and everything, that's the beauty of being on crypto, you are racing against an event that is a Schrödinger's cat, it may happen or may not happen.

The end game was stated by satoshi, bitcoin is to become a currency and it can be used this way right now, however its main use at the moment is as an speculative asset and I can understand why you are frustrated about this, after all when bitcoin was used on those dark markets its main use at that moment was as a currency and not as a trading asset, so I can understand why you are disappointed with the current reality of bitcoin, but eventually we are going to reach the point in which you can use your bitcoin to buy whatever you want no matter where you are but it will take some time.

I'm not sure I will want a world where Bitcoin is the SOLE method of currency. As an option, I can get with that. I tend to believe that (random number) 50% of value exchanges are done with people who we can't trust to be scammed or to accidentally send a non-reversible transaction. Thats what scares me. One can hope that the new generation can have a higher average IQ to trust with this power.

I personally think that the whole idea of bitcoin becoming a global currency is not going to happen, all the people that invest in it just like you said are in it for the money, they buy low and sell high, bitcoin has become an investment rather than a currency, and this is getting more and more the norme the higher price it reachs where people are just blinded by the opportunity of getting rich from it, and i think we are past the point of no return and we just have to accept this as a fact.

I admit that nowadays most people use Bitcoin as an investment, not as a payment. Moreover, there are still many countries that have not
accepted Bitcoin as a means of payment, and with the volatile Bitcoin price, increasingly making Bitcoin desirable as a digital asset. This is
a fact that is happening now, but the future no one knows. So I dare not say the idea of Bitcoin being a global currency is not going to happen,
it just might be, but not to replace fiat. But Bitcoin in the future is likely to be a payment alternative.

It is undoubtedly true that bitcoin has now evolved into an investment rather than payment. I have seen a surge of people coming into these sphere trusting bitcoin that it could skyrocket their investment.

Most probably, I can see bitcoin could still be use in the near future. Many projects are coming out for bitcoin utility like SOVRYN. The DeFi for bitcoin.

I agree with bitcoin never becoming a mainstream payment option. Even within the community, the goalposts have been moved consistently as bitcoin never lives up to the hype. Years ago, we used to talk on these boards about how bitcoin was the perfect micropayments platform, but that went away when fees made it impractical for micropayments. More recently, it’s all about “store of value” and “hedge from inflation” but honestly that’s even a dumber argument since bitcoin is literally thousands of times more volatile than the dollar. It doesn’t store value effectively or hedge against inflation. Bitcoin specifically is pretty poor as an everyday currency, and I don’t see it ever overcoming those things that make it so.

You are correct, and reading your message made me reflect for a moment. When I first started, I believed that the future of bitcoin was for payment, online transactions, or any bitcoin physical store that would accept bitcoins or crypto, but now you are correct, I can see people looking for bitcoin as an investment, and that is my opinion as well, unlike before when I believed it was for online payment. I believe it is because of its price, which is currently extremely high, and virtually everyone knows that if you store bitcoin for several years, you will benefit.

It is good if bitcoin can be the next investment as people did in their real-life, which uses gold as their investment. With the traditional way into the digital way, bitcoin surely gets its way to know by many people. If it will still be the investment or using for payment, people will try to have bitcoin because, in the future, bitcoin price can increase so high, which makes it people hard to buy with fiat.

no not only your thoughts but all of us have their thoughts changed and it was now matured and the reason for it is because btc got matured too .
before the space btc was moving is only limited but now it have extended .
more people people now think that btc is best for the purpose of investing  but you dont need to follow it . you can still treat btc the old way . its only depend on us if how we use our btc .

I think that it's more of an improved but not evolved because evolved implies that it left the early parts of it which didn't happen to bitcoin. I think that we are going to be seeing much bigger increase in the prices in the near future.

I get what you’re trying to say. You’re not the only one that do feel this way at times. Bitcoin has really changed a lot and we are all fighting to make money and get rich through this cryptocurrency market.

It was totally different for me when I got here, and the main thing that attracted me to the community was just so I can use it for transactions, since I was working and had to receive my payment and the easiest to do that was either Payoneer, PayPal, and then… bitcoin. Bitcoin seemed way too cool than the others, and it was fast and costs less, so I had to use it. But things has really changed, and I’m not going to lie about it, that what now interests me most is how I’m going to make money from it. Though I still use it for transactions.

Bitcoin is not something that is owned by anyone, or produces anything, there is no product, there is no real value. It is always about me buying some, then waiting for it to go up, then someone else buys from me at higher levels thinking they could wait and sell even higher and it goes like that. This is the nature of crypto which means that the end game will always be people who buy and hope that it goes up, sometimes it falls and makes people lose money but that is fine because that makes sure that we are not a ponzi scheme, there is no guaranteed profit in bitcoin and because of that some people end up losing money, and they have to in order for us to keep going.

I really hope that we could end up making a bit of a profit from here on out but that doesn't mean that the end game is to keep profiting, the end game is to be like gold market or stock market where we go up in the long run, but have downfall time to time in short term.

Yeah, agreed. But the mode of payment using bitcoin was put into shadow by investment sectors. Most institutions hold BTC and sells just like Tesla. They are accepting BTC before, yes but for me its their way to accumulate more and more BTC to hodl.

It seems to me that those about "The End" appear every year. The crypto market has been this way all the time, and it is now.
In fact, over the past 5 years, little has changed, it just became more coins, more variations for speculation, more blockchains, but the very nature of the market, as it was speculative, has remained.
This is not the end, it is not even the beginning.

Why should there be a "End Game" for this experiment? If you use Bitcoin as a currency, it should go on forever.... if you use it for speculation and profit.. it will just loop the "profit" cycle and there will be winners and losers and people waiting for profits.

If merchants start to give discounts for people that pay in Bitcoin ... adoption will increase and this experiment will succeed. (Most merchants can give a little "reward" or "incentive" for people paying with Bitcoin.. because they are saving on Banking fees and handling fees with Fiat)  ;)

The "Never" ending Game will be when EVERYONE are using Bitcoin as a "Currency"  ;)

Glad that you've realized how we don't need to formulate the various endings of this game. At least out there are still immature to face the turmoil of changing prices from year to year. Although it sounds very profitable for some traders or investors, we learn a lot from all that we have been through. That way you just need to continue to adapt so that you continue to add confidence in the future, you're not the only one who feels that way.
You are not alone, behind there are still many people who are starting to realize you are right now. No need to worry about Bitcoin's future, as long as you know the movement of investors thinking you will be on a safe path.
When you already know, don't forget to share your thoughts with the cloud, it will really help them in finding their identity as one of the major contributors to the growth of Bitcoin in the future.

Bitcoin will have a great future soon, we just need to be firm in our investments. Just keep buying during the low and selling on high, let us learn how to play this game and avoid being a slave on the system the world has given has. It is quite confusing why most of the people chose to stick on their unhealthy and lifestyle that is not progressing. They should know and learn that bitcoin and other crypto offers them breakthrough from that cycle they are stuck into. The end game will be defined of all the things you are doing in your life, do not settle for less, find a way to escape the slavery brought to you by the world.

I doubt some will provide discounts in BTC because that is what they require and will keep in case another ATH occurs. Perhaps promotions such as offering them more or perks, reward or incentive, such as what you've mentioned, are better if they pay with bitcoin, as this will encourage more people to utilize cryptocurrencies.

Another point is that I believe banking costs are cheaper than BTC, yet BTC is sometimes cheaper than fiat, if a market meltdown occurs, it will always depend on BTC.

In the end you are thinking very negatively, BTC will continue to grow in the future and your way of thinking is so negative that people who do not understand about participating become afraid. Everything will be fine if you think in a positive way.

You do not really need to understand everything about bitcoin to get some and use it. Fully understanding all aspects would require degrees in economics, computing, psychology, computing sciences... There are so many aspects just on the technical side that it is quite difficult to apprehend. The good news is that it is not at all necessary to understand all these aspects, you just need to understand how to keep your keys safe and how to make the basic operations. Let me put a simple example, you do not need to know how to make antibiotics, you do need to trust them and know how to take a pill.

Re adoption, there is no more end game that there is for Euro or USD.

I do not think you have to be worried about it, even if there are only cryptocurrencies in the future you can be sure there are going to be many options, from those created by the government to those created by individuals that will compete with bitcoin, the chances of a future in which there was only one currency printed by a government were low but now thanks to bitcoin that will be impossible, however I think the first mover advantage that bitcoin has is going to be more than enough to allow it to become the most popular cryptocurrency in the future and it will be accepted almost everywhere in a few decades, fulfilling the vision of satoshi.