Bitcoin Forum

Been chatting with some IRL friends about bitcoin. This one guy, total gold bug btw, refuses to touch btc. I ask him, "why"? And he replies " gold can one day become a low value, I'll admit. But never zero, as it is physical, and has industrial uses, so if nothing else would be used by industries. Bitcoin on the other hand is digital, so has no "bottom line" per se". He has me stumped, and I like to win  ;D Any suggestions?

Theoretically it can however the adoption is too widespread.

Worst case even if bitcoin fails, it will still be traded between hardcore geeks and crypto enthusiasts and will be worth a few cents to a few dollars.

Zero is possible, so is the end of the World tomorrow.
Bitcoin has an established history of strong up moves, especially after the price falls more than 50% from the all time high.

I'm a big bitcoin bear and I don't think it will ever reach zero. Only reason is there isn't one alt-coin that is at zero. It will always have some collector appeal.

Of course this all changes if bitcoin gets hacked where coins can be produced freely. This would be similar to someone figuring out a way to manufacture gold. Both would go to near worthless.

However, being zero and being worthless are very different.

Your friend doesn't understand basic economy. Bitcoin has value because it does things that existing financial systems can't.

It's a high risk investment. gold has a much lower limit than bitcoin too.....

It would have to be a technical and fatal reason for zero. If the rest of the world just lost interest I'd buy a bunch and send them to myself just for fun. I'm sure others would too.

You can easily take it to zero yourself:  Just give me your coins at no cost.  Voila!  What power!

You like to win what? Theoretical battles that can't be proven? Please explain how you win one of those exactly?....

When the other person can't respond back logically, battle of ego ::)

Bitcoin, being digital and not "real" has no theoretical bottom.... it also has unlimited upside.

Worst case scenario, your friend buys a Bitcoin today and loses $400 bucks, which doesn't seem like a very big hit for someone who buys precious metals all the time.

Best case scenario, your friend buys a Bitcoin today and in 2016 it's worth thousands... even at these high prices such ROI is possible and beats any stock.

Any examples I should particularly bring up?

Decentralized, being able to send shitloads of money to the other side of the planet superfast and for a very low fee, governments/central banks can't print them so you lose purchasing power by inflation etc.

Basically the reasons why Bitcoin was invented.

Alright thanks for the tips! Buts he got the gold bug hard, don't think even logic will work at this point ;D

If any day BTC price goes sufficiently low, I will make an offer, which may count from now on if you want, to buy all of them for the price of 1 USD.

So the minimum price will be, at most, 1/21000000 USD, but never zero.

Yes tonight or tomorrow it's going to start dropping and it won't stop until it hits 0!

Gold does have uses but think about how much it would really cost if people stopped using it as a store of value. Answer: it would be worth pretty close to zero compared to what your friend paid for it originally. Once you include storage and security costs your friend has to pay, he could end up below zero in real terms. If your friend really wants something close to a risk free asset he should buy inflation protected bonds and bitcoin. The bonds will hold their value unless there is a govt default and in the case of default bitcoin will skyrocket.

Haha I'll PM you xD

There were times and places when you could get a bag of potatoes for attire worth $50,000 today. So yes, technically he is right. Gold won't go to zero.

Yes thats true. Does BTC have features that would keep it from going to zero?

Except a competitor could have the same features

By competitor you mean coin? Well yeah, basically all coins are btc coins, but no company allows basically fee-less transactions, instantly around the world.

I mean altcoins or ripple

I don't think it will ever go back to zero.

Ripple is going be huge, its a payment system which was meant to complement coins, not compete. Personally, Ripple has much promise and so does Nxt, just gotta wait for the corporates to get a hold of it.

I agree.  Better to invest in businesses because there is cash flow.  Thats why you dont park your money in USD.  You buy JP Morgan or Visa Mastercard stock

I'm just waiting for the bottom to buy more. I've been buying the whole way down. I'll buy the whole way back up too.

Why don't you just buy at the bottom, and get more btc for your fiat?

I think, once the bottom is reached, you may have sold all your bitcoins in desperation.

I am totally bullish on bitcoin, but as a thought expirement. It can go to zero... all of the posters here fail to realize that once bitcoin falls into a certain level of disinterest, the blockchain hashrate would fall so far, that it would almost surely be forked, and all bitcoin would become worthless at that point.

That's when I would start mining again xD

It's possible but extremely, highly, improbable. I'd bet on a bitcoin going to $100000 than $0.

It will prob happen in few years but not that soon for sure.

If he knew for sure where the bottom was ahead of time, then sure I'm relatively certain he'd do just that.

On topic to your post, I don't really get why having some marginal "use value" is comforting to PM bugs.  If PMs or Bitcoin crash to some very low floor value (2% of current value, or whatever), the odds are the investor will dump it at some point in either case at some point in it's plummet to zero or near zero. 

If speculative value of Gold goes away your friend's 10k investment in Gold might be worth a few hundred dollar, whoopty-doo?  Can't see how that trumps all the advantages Bitcoin brings as a decentralized network of near instant value exchange.

Yeah that's true, and I consider the bottom when prices/ hype starts going up again when the prices have crashed for a while.

The Bitcoin ecosystem is far mature even now than it was 6 months ago, and lightyears ahead of where it was a year or years ago.

Bitcoin will never go back to 0, ever.

If you can time it right you can make a lot of money.  

So far I've been pretty bad at it when I've tried though (one good call worth a bunch of bitcoins has pretty much let me break even on a further string of bad trading calls, I've since stopped trying since I'm not willing to put enough work into it not to get slaughtered in this market).

You could always set your own "bottom". Just be like "okay, if it makes $xxx, then I will buy"

When EC is broken and I have the ability to steal any bitcoin I want for free, does that count as trading at $0?

What is EC?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EuroCity

When that train is broken, Bitcoin will go to zero.

is this supposed to be metaphorical? How does a train relate to btc?

cuz choo choo mofuka ;)

http://comparebitcoins.net/images/bitcoin-train.png

The Bitcoin ecosystem growth is a great reason to be buying today.
Zero is not an option, at least not this week.  :)

There's just one simple answer to that: no.

Why do you say that?

I will buy them all at a price close to zero ;D