Bitcoin Forum

1-  People buy Bitcoin because it makes them profit from it

2-  Bitcoin makes profit because it makes people buy it


It's a circular argument, and creates a perfect closed system, no other "product" can make it, in the center there is greed moving this perfect circle


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And why it's impossible to copy bitcoin's proof of work, meaning that only bitcoin's proof of work is valid:

If many people wanted to buy another PoW coin instead of Bitcoin, the price of Bitcoin would rise, meaning it would generate more profit, which would make people buy only Bitcoin. Therefore, it is not possible for people to buy another
proof of work coin instead of Bitcoin because this would make Bitcoin's price increase generating more profit, which would prevent competition.
In a normal company, competition forces companies to lower prices. In Bitcoin, the logic is inverse, it raises the price and prevents competition from emerging, which makes proof of work impossible to copy.

a- If people starts to buy other Bitcoin competitors, it would make the Bitcoin network less secure

b- Everybody wants the Bitcoin network to be the most secure, the buyers and the sellers

c- Then if the Bitcoin network becomes less secure, then all parties, buyers and sellers, are forced to accept a higher Bitcoin price to make the network more secure, and this price increase discourages/block people from investing in competitors

if this logic is invalid, please correct me if i'm wrong thx

To say that bitcoin’s mechanism is the only valid one is wrong. There are other coins that are built on pow mechanism but just with different algorithms. It doesn’t mean theirs are automatically invalid.
I’m confused. Bitcoin is not a company and does not have a group of people to decide whether they should lower or higher the price based on competition. Its price depends on the demand. If people’s attention shifts from bitcoin to other coins, then those coins’ price will hike up. Unless people who have invested in bitcoin start selling their coins, it’s not gonna do anything to the price. I don’t know how you think it’s going to work if people started buying other coins. People can allocate their money into different and multiple coins.

To Reatim

All other Pow coins are invalid, because if people’s attention shifts from bitcoin to other coins, the price of bitcoin increases, preventing people from investing in other coins, because they make more profit with bitcoin

"Bitcoin is not a company and does not have a group of people to decide whether they should lower or higher the price based on competition" - This mechanism works automatically. The higher the price, the more people will want

to buy because it means higher profit. I know it's not very intuitive, but it's a fact, no other pow coin succeeded and will except bitcoin

In theory at the present time, the price increase scenario is still continuing but it is not entirely based on the number of people buying/selling it, there is one thing that I think talking about the operating structure only partly makes people then pay attention to bitcoin and buy it. So some big questions who would buy it? And will prices increase forever? But we do not see fluctuations from the first stages, perhaps partly at present people are in a state of increasing market prices and forgetting about its volatility, only to find a way to reduce prices. Currently, the story surrounding the seller is being told. Anyway, in this context, accepting bitcoin is inevitable without any vague explanation, because the price is still based more on trust, but at different times the scale is different. The state of the market will also reflect the level of acceptance of bitcoin. Although I like bitcoin very much, I am not the type of person to believe in anything for sure based on a speculation.

To Blueblit 25

Yes the price will increase forever, because the buyer and the seller both want the bitcoin network to be secure, and the price must always increase for the network to be always secure. The increase in price also blocks all PoW competitors, because competition

means the network be insecure, if the network becomes insecure because of competitors, the bitcoin price increase and block competitors

It's not impossible to copy bitcoin, in a technical sense though. There have been a lot of bitcoin forks over the years but in terms of popularity, value, and utility, they're not going to get close anytime soon. Bitcoin is unique and it would be a big disservice for everyone here to say that someone can just copy it and recreate the success. Your loop seems to be on the right but I got to tell you though, I don't think that it matters, once there's people that have bought bitcoin with their own money, it's already done, bitcoin has a value. Also regarding the rise in prices, it will always be like that because there's always a demand for bitcoin and there's not a lot of people that know about bitcoin and eventually those people will know and some of them will try to invest and they will contribute to the increase of demand which increase the price of bitcoin even more.

It's not a good thng. That circular argument is the basis of a speculative bubble. It is a positive feedback loop, which means it is unstable and it is guaranteed to eventually fail.

It’s not impossible to recreate bitcoin’s proof of work mechanism in fact many have already done so.

To name a few: there are litecoin, dogecoin, monero and many others. The difference is that they are just utilized differently than bitcoin as they were created with different purposes in mind. What you can not recreate is bitcoin’s success. Being the first among many, bitcoin has the advantage of comfidence and reliability.

Resilience is also a feature that not a lot of coins have that only bitcoin has managed to exhibit over the years.

to btc78
to CODE200

 litecoin, dogecoin, monero can't grow, they are just moving horizontally. It's not possible to copy bitcoin and the chart proves it. The reason is that forks and copies makes bitcoin network insecure, and this forces the price to move up, when the bitcoin

price goes up, the network becomes more secure, and people make profit, and this makes impossible to compete with bitcoin


to odolvlobo

Yes i agree with you, but bitcoin is different because it does not have intrinsic value, so the price can rise indefinitely, Bitcoin has a price but no value. Financial bubbles only form when the price deviates significantly from intrinsic value, and then they burst.

But, if Bitcoin has no intrinsic value, only price, then the price can never deviate from value since it does not exist then it's not possible to form a bubble

It can rise indefinitely, but if it has no intrinsic value, it can also fall to 0. Bitcoin has already been through several speculative bubbles, so I don't see how you can claim that it is not possible.


Anyway, I disagree with the statement that Bitcoin has no intrinsic value. If intrinsic value is based on utility, then Bitcoin has intrinsic value because it has utility.

It is true that it is not impossible to copy bitcoin that's why there are coins and altcoins out there although the difference is that it doesn't have the success that bitcoin has and that's why many coins and altcoins depends on bitcoin price movements most of the time although there are situations where a coin or altcoin for example where it's price still increase even though bitcoin price didn't increase but not up to the same price as bitcoin but based on the coin or altcoin's current price.

This argument doesn't even make sense. If people dump bitcoin for altcoins, then the price of bitcoin decreases, it does not increase.

What's your definition of "intrinsic value"? How's Bitcoin not having that? And who defines what's the "intrinsic value" to something? To name value to a product, you need another product to use as exchange rate, preferably a currency. Therefore, the value of Bitcoin is determined by what others are willing to exchange for it, whether in the form of products, assets, or currencies.

Bitcoin's volatility attracts people, that's a fact, but once you get it... you stay.

"Come for the money, stay for the revolution"

 ;)

Haha, Op destroyed the entire concept of Bitcoin and demand to supply on the Bitcoin network by resembling it completely based on greed haha, I cant expect a more shity explanation compared to this, and my whole comment is on the first 2 lines from OP's post.

Buddy you need to study more about the supply and demand concept on Bitcoin, no doubt greed is one of the influencing factors but that's not the whole reality, I believe mostly the demand and supply is influenced by the Halving event.

It sounds to me like OP is calling Bitcoin a Ponzi scheme while sugar coating it.

Price goes up as adoption grows and adoption grows because people see the utility that bitcoin provides and decide they want to have that. Be it reaching financial sovereignty or just treating bitcoin as money (ie. store of value).

That makes no sense.
For starters bitcoin is not a company and nobody is sitting on top setting its price to get people to buy it or not.

Secondly if you buy something else, the price of that other thing would go up! In fact this is how the altcoin market works. People buy altcoins, they get pumped. That all happens regardless of Bitcoin even though the altcoin market is affected by bitcoin price movements.

As for "competition", there has been no competition for Bitcoin simply because nobody was capable of coming up with an innovation that is interesting enough to change the world like Bitcoin did and get adopted as much as Bitcoin.
So far we've only seen developers who were more interested in making quick and large amounts of money. So obviously the cryptocurrencies that are being created are serving that purpose and are used for pump and dumps not to be adopted! Therefore there is no competition.

Every coin that is coming to the market now has a regulatory body. so they can change their price and mint according to the token or coin supply. And it does it under one of the chains or depending on its own mainnet. However, it is not possible to copy Bitcoin using Bitcoin's algorithm or any other mechanism.

In every case when people like and hold a thing more and if its supply is fixed then the demand of that thing increases a lot and if the demand increases then a big hype is created on it in the market. the same goes for Bitcoin.  Its supply is fixed and very less and it has gained a lot of people's trust due to which its demand in the market is very high and due to this the price of Bitcoin is increasing day by day. Since its supply cannot be increased and new users are attracted to Bitcoin day by day, the price of Bitcoin will increase more in the future.

How so? I don't understand what you mean, if people buy other cryptocurrencies instead of Bitcoin, that wouldn't make the price of Bitcoin rise up or grow because the whole concept revolves around the demand and supply mechanism where the price of an asset only increases if the demand is high and supply is low, but if there is no much demand, the price wouldn't get affected even if the supply is low. So I don't see any reason why the price of Bitcoin would go up if people buy other PoW coins.
Please explain this a bit more.


Cryptocurrencies are not like companies because their prices are not controlled by a central authority but their price depends on how much demand they have. Bitcoin has such a high value only because it is the most demanded cryptocurrency and it has a limited supply, another cryptocurrency can compete with it if it gets the same level of demand and has a low supply like it.

The key word is that Bitcoin, is unique, and no other cryptocurrency comes near it because of it's value, popularity and utility, like you rightly said, therefore it's in a higher class of it's own. And inasmuch as there's always a demand for it, the price will continue to increase in the future, this is necessitated because over the years Bitcoin, has proven to be a store of value, an asset that if held on a long term, will always increase returns on investment for it's holders. Except for a few top altcoins, most of the projects in the category are scams, this is why making comparison in cryptocurrency, it'll be like choosing between Bitcoin and altcoins, obviously Bitcoin, will always carry the day, because of the trust and profitability that it has built over the years.

To pooya87

"That makes no sense.
For starters bitcoin is not a company and nobody is sitting on top setting its price to get people to buy it or not.Secondly if you buy something else, the price of that other thing would go up!"

To Gladitorcomeback

"How so? I don't understand what you mean, if people buy other cryptocurrencies instead of Bitcoin, that wouldn't make the price of Bitcoin rise up or grow because the whole concept revolves around the demand and supply mechanism"


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i updated the post above because it was really incomplete

Proof of work discovery solved those issues, because there is not only supply and demand, there also is the network security

a- If people starts to buy other Bitcoin competitors, it would make the Bitcoin network less secure

b- Everybody wants the Bitcoin network to be the most secure, the buyers and the sellers

c- Then if the Bitcoin network becomes less secure, then all parties, buyers and sellers, are forced to accept a higher Bitcoin price to make the network more secure, and this price increase discourages/block people from investing in competitors

The only thing that seems impossible in this space now is someone or developers walking in the same path as Satoshi Nakamoto.

It's not about how much they can copy Bitcoin, it's not about how many utilities that they can offer or that can surpass Bitcoin, it's about real decentralisation like Bitcoin.

Build and walk away, how many developers can do this? It's why many projects are a complete joke today, we keep having developers but they are here to make money, that's all.

At the end of the day what really matters in this world of crypto is decentralisation, and having PoW in your project doesn't make it decentralized, it doesn't make it better than Bitcoin in anyway.

Bitcoin gives value, and it's natural that every human want to associate with anything that can can provided them value and it's this utility value that attracts so many increasing network of users more than anything. More importantly, the profits created by the demand benefits the community not it's developers.  Many  projects out there but bitcoin is the big fish because it offers what they perfectly can't offer - decentralization in the real sense of it, 

For bitcoin network to become insecure the miners have to go away not the investors who buy bitcoin. Such a scenario would require the following three conditions:
1. An alternative cryptocurrency with the same exact mining algorithm as bitcoin (ie. double SHA256 of an 80 byte header)
2. Offering something innovative so that people bother adopting it initially so that it can gain some momentum, a higher price and the incentive for miners to switch over
3. Miners migrating to this altcoin quickly before it is 51% attacked to death itself

These 3 conditions mean it is impossible to have what you call "competitor".
Take bcash for example. It is a shitcoin that has the same mining algorithm as Bitcoin (among other things that are the copied). Since it has nothing innovative, it never got adopted and remained a very cheap shitcoin. That means that shitcoin is susceptible to 51% attack (and it did actually get attacked that way). Something that makes it an even bigger shitcoin.

So we go back to what I said earlier: lack of innovation is the reason for lack of adoption.

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Keep in mind that altcoins don't have to use the same algorithm to be susceptible to this attack. If they choose another mining algorithm, then no matter how high their price goes, they can not attract bitcoin miners because bitcoin ASIC can not be used to mine something else.
The best example here is ethereum which uses another algorithm (uses Keccak/SHA3 instead of SHA2). No matter how much they pumped it in 2017, it could not attract bitcoin miners to threaten bitcoin security.

Again we go back to what I said, lack of innovation is the reson for lack of adoption. Ethereum had some interesting ideas but they were implemented horribly which is why ETH back in 2017 was worth 0.15BTC and it is something like 0.05BTC...

Well, it kind of works as a circle, but not 100%. Some people buy Bitcoin not because they want profit but because they ideologically believe in Bitcoin as a great currency (decentralized, not under control of any authorities), or because they want to avoid certain restrictions (sanctions, bank account freezing), or just because they want to keep their wealth (not gain but not lose either). Then, when it comes to Bitcoin, it's important to note that it works both ways (when Bitcoin is going down, people start panic selling, which leads to further decrease of value).

Bitcoin is not a closed system when it comes to economics because there are lots of factor affecting it.  The increase in price of Bitcoin is not as simple as people buying because of profit and price increase because people are buying it.  Remember in this process people also need to sell in order to bag in profit.

Outside from selling, there is also emotional and logical factor included.  There is also the need for adoption, marketing and hype which is outside factor that affect Bitcoin performance in the market.  There is also this manipulation that greatly affect the fluctuation of the Bitcoin economy. 



Each cryptocurrency have their own community and market performance, emerging cryptocurrency can copy the template of Bitcoin but it cannot duplicate exactly the effect of Bitcoin because of the said different market audience. 

People are free to invest their money to any POW that emerge in the market since it is a free market and no one is controlling people on where to invest their money.  Whether we acknowledge it or not, there is always a competition between cryptocurrency since this competition is created the moment a certain new cryptocurrency is created, it is that these later cryptocurrency is unable to best Bitcoin.



It is not the buy and sell of  Bitcoin that made it secure but the hashes produced by mining Bitcoin.  So it would make sense if you stated that if the mining farm that were mining Bitcoin shifted their hashes to other cryptocurrency, it will make the Bitcoin network less secure.


Again it is not the bitcoin market of selling and buying that make the Bitcoin network secure, Bitcoin can be secured even it price collapse as long as the miners remains, after all it is the number of hashes mining to solve the block that has the direct affect tot he security of Bitcoin network.

Bitcoin is not controlled by anybody so I don’t really see the prediction that it’s been controlled by a certain company the rising of bitcoin is just depending on what people talk about it sometimes the information and the news going on at the moment consigning Bitcoin but sometimes you may consider some factors Because some certain people when they decide to invest in bitcoin, the price increases just like someone that is so popular a very familiar and famous person that’s half of the world knows about so they can affect bitcoin positively if they invest in bitcoin, the price will boom

Thanks for explaining your logic. I don't agree with it. I believe you are basing your claim on the fact that an increasing price allows more mining and thus more security. However, the converse is not true -- increased mining does not cause the price to rise.

The security of the Bitcoin block chain (against a 51% attack) depends on the cost of mining. If users are concerned about its security, then they will increase mining in order to raise the security, even perhaps to the extent of mining at a loss. However, as I mentioned above, the price of a Bitcoin does not depend on the cost of mining.

In economic terms, a less secure network would result in lower demand, which would tend to lower prices.

When Bitcoin was created the profit and investment angle was never athing it was purely decentralised P2P transfer without any third part involvement and now it's more knowledge for investment and profits. It's not possible to copy Bitcoin but they can try creating coin with similar services as Bitcoin if possible by providing secure transaction and if it's adapted by users then it's price may increase as everything depends on demand and supply here.

Ok, i'll correct then.

1. Bitcoin code is open source and have been copied several times and duplicates and variations have been made, sometimes by only changing the name, and i have lost count on the number of forks that derived from it.
2. Your circular argument doesn't really make sense. You are just basically describing popularity.
3. Buying bitcoin forks or altcoins doesn't affect bitcoin network security in any way.
4. Yeah, everyone wants bitcoin network to be secure, bit like i already said. Buying "competition" doesn't affect it.
5. I don't grasp what you are trying to say with point c. Network being less secure wouldn't rise the price, in fact it would have an opposite effect. People are buying it because it's secure. Which is one of the reasons there will be plenty of miners to keep it secure. And as long as that stays decentralized enough, it will stay secure.

Others have corrected this post and I would also like to chime in!

Security - the Bitcoin network has never been breached! Global miners, node runners and we
ourselves give Bitcoin its security.

Its actually very easy to recreate Bitcoin and call it whatever you want, all you need is code
and and a creator who can remain anonymous indefinitely, the tricky part is getting enough
people to adopt it.

So lets say you have created your new Bitcoin, how are you going to get us to abandon something ^BTC
which is proven to be secure, has utility and value and adopt your copy?

Value & Utility
Proven secure network
Borderless portability
Limited supply of 21,000,000
Can be a unit of exchange
Growing demand and reducing supply

And also some people buy bitcoin to store they hold it and wait for a long period of time especially the bullish market. Sometimes they wait for a long period of time like 3 to 4 years until Bitcoin stop pumping again it’s all depends on the time they bought and the time the market start rising repeatedly bitcoin is not something that is not useful Bitcoin is always useful to whatever you are doing with it I believe so much on Bitcoin because you may just buy and when the price pump you make more so Bitcoin is good for us to understand.

The Security of Bitcoin is not related to how many Transactions Binance has.  It is related to Mining Bitcoin, not to the number of Transactions.

True for the Buyers maybe, false for Sellers.  They probably do not care as soon as they sell.

No body is forced to accept any thing.  A LOT of Money went to 'competitors' years ago and Bitcoin never became less Secure.  Like I said above.  The Security of Bitcoin is not dependent to sales.