Bitcoin Forum

Like the thread title says.
I bet alot of people are still strugling with if they should invest in bitcoins or not.
I am not really talking about $10 or $100 but really invest $1000 or more in this whole thing. (this may be in the form of a mining rig or just pure USD/EURO money)

What is your main reason you do not invest in BTC with huge amounts of money?

(The fact that you cannot afford it not included ofcourse)

My top 3 is:

#1 I still do not understand the system good enough. I cannot answer each question about Bitcoin with a legit answer. Wich makes me doubt about it.
#2 I do not know if everything that is being said about bitcoin is true. And I cannot research myself since all information out here that i can base logic on can always be false. You never know.
#3 Like the stock market, this whole thing can collapse in a matter of days cause of some major development within the system.
 

First i see bitcoin as a currency not an investment. Do i invest in USD? No.

I use it to trade, bying something. And what is left is my investment  8)

I have dropped about $3000 into mining gear and a dedicated AC unit for them. I've made back about $2400 so far and value the equipment at $1500 used. I feel that ive already made my investment back and continue to bring in more. Now that I've mostly paid back the initial expenses I'm looking at using BTC for other uses like some of the Double Trouble threads and other game sites. It's fun and in my opinion a good use case for BTC.

Regardless of what you do, don't invest what you can't afford to lose

Having tons of money to start with.


That and having to go to physical bank agencies in order to buy BTC (i only got a savings account, and with my bank the webbanking is significantly limited in reach for savings accounts when compared to regular accounts; what keeps me like this is i don't need to pay anything to have a savings account, only a bigger fee for withdrawing/transfering money from the account, but since i don't do that often i save more than i spend with them)

1) Paranoia - some founded and others a bit more quirky. For example, it is clear that BitCoin highly favors the early-adopters. How can you know there is not someone out there with 500,000BTC at their disposal, ready to pump and dump whenever they want. Also, given that this is considered "high-tech," there is always the problem of online security.
1.1) Scams - There is inadequate information flow. For Mt Gox, there isn't even any other form of contact except through a single e-mail. Something that handles $Millions should not be this primitive.

2) Government - I fear that government(s) may try to introduce legislation that are unfavorable to BitCoin, if not attempt to eradicate it completely.

3) Volatility - Though I'm not proud of this, I am one of the rather recent newcomers to BitCoin. I unfortunately bought a little bit during the massive spike ($26 per BTC), and this taught me a good lesson. However, something that can double in value, and then the next day one-third in value is not very appealing at the moment. Even though I am not a speculator, I am in it long-term, this troubles me because it means the values are wildly fluctuating, so it is hard to price anything consistently.

Nothing. I already invested some. It's a gamble, but I think it's a greater than 50% chance I'll see long-term profits.

Actually having more money...spent it all on mining rigs.  I know I could have made more investing...I have my reasons for mining.

Nothing. I already poured literally tons in "this".

Then again it's paid off a long time ago thanks to the sudden price increases around May.

poverty

Clayton Christensen has written that it is not the first innovator who wins but the next few guys who learn from the old ones. Though BTC being an open source project have  a lot of advantages over corporations as learning organisms.

We don't know what other characteristics of crypto currencies are needed or are missing right now. Bitcoin is an awesome awesome concept, but it is very new and very vulnerable.

Look at what just happened on MtGox, and you will understand why people are a bit cautious spending their life savings on bitcoins...

Agreed. It's not even that it crashed in price, but that the major market making service seems to be a total clusterfuck of manipulation and technical errors. Does not exactly inspire confidence. I'm willing to risk losses on my poor judgement. I have no interest in losing money on someone else's fuckup.

I dont have tonnes of money - yet.

Other than BTC(as well as all related exchanges and accounts) not being insured, backed(neither by an economy nor central bank or any other instance whatsoever) or regulated by anything and thus being worth as much as a seashell, it's a perfectly fine system!

By the way, that's "price is capable of going to 0.01 within minutes", thanks to literally no real depth or liquidity existing in the market, not days.

We've just done that exercise, it's no longer a thought experiment.

How this has not shown people what's what is truly, truly amazing.

1) what questions?  read the faq.  unlike other markets you actually are able to understand everything.
2) again the faq, all info should be able to be looked up.
3) bitcoin is NOTHING like the stock market, stocks are shares of actual companies with actual income, capital, and cash that back them, bitcoins are backed by nothing except peoples perception its worth something.  buy a share in a company is an investment, buying a bitcoin is exactly the same as pulling the lever on a slot machine.

reasons holding me from investing:
#1 volatility - the value may be $0.01 $1 or $100 a week from now, there is absolutely no stability or sound forces behind the market of bitcoin, its 100% speculation.
#2 hackers - with all of the money to be made the market is going to be plagued with hackers, the 2 recent events of half a million stolen and mtgox are only the beginning.  its a hackers wet dream.
#3 getting USD into or out of bitcoin is ridiculously slow and inefficient and at the whim of gatekeepers (ask anyone wanting their money right now held at mtgox)
#4 intrinsic value of bitcoin is 0

I follow bitcoin because its entertaining seeing a 'market' evolve and its something unique.

Rational thought.

I'm not going to invest anything substantial in this simply because the exchanges aren't secure. They don't do enough to mitigate the risk against any sort of attack. I very much doubt they have any sort of security policies or adequate security practices in place. In short I will only invest what I can afford to lose if the exchanges are compromised. The MT. GOX affair should have alarm bells ringing because it was a computer of "an auditor" that got compromised which still had access to the database. That just leaves a lot of questions unanswered such as:

Why was the account on the database not removed or disabled and why was it active ?
 
Is this auditor from an actual security firm or an employee?

What sort of attack was carried out on his machine?

What other systems did this person have access to which could potentially be compromised?

How is my personal data secured?

Who has access to my personal data?

Do they have a security policy in place?

Are they audited by third parties if so who?

Until there are a set of data security guide lines  in place for the exchanges to adhere to and the exchanges are audited by independent security firms, I class them as a "Mickey Mouse" operations and everyone should be careful with what they do with their BTC's and their Fiat currencies and their personal data - unless you deem the risk vs reward worth it.

Unix covers the logical concerns well and this thread probably would have had significantly more sway before today's fiasco. I think most people are cautiously waiting to see how volatile the price remains over the next few months and it goes without saying that the MtGox hack is not going to do anything to create stability.

That said, I think Bitcoin holds an incredible amount of promise and if security issues can be resolved people will likely start investing more modestly.

Well, if by invest you mean "buy and hold bitcoins," that's really more speculation (not that speculation can't technically be investing.) I'm not that big on speculative investing, which is partly why I don't buy stocks, etc. in the hope of selling them for higher prices later. So there's no way I'd put huge amounts of money into buying bitcoins. That said, if I see something that looks solid, I'll "invest" a little... so yeah, I am sitting on some bitcoins for that reason.

As far as investing by creating a bitcoin-oriented business, that can be more difficult and require more time, effort and expense for a lot of folks (although I see no reason why most of us here can't buy a few extra bitcoins, stash a little extra cash, and advertise that we're exchanging bitcoins: buying from and selling to others locally. The market can use the extra liquidity.)

If i expect it to go up in value, and i park my money there, its an investment. sure, once it stops growing, then it might only be a currency.

I'm not the one holding, MTGOX is holding all my money and coins!!

If you think the value was .01 the other day then it's up over 100000% in a few days. 

I don't think it makes sense to invest in mining or holding right now. For mining, the profitability just doesn't seem to be there. Holding to take advantage of an expected deflation, as I've argued elsewhere, won't work.

Short answer, I don't like to "invest" my money in things I don't have a lot of direct control over. That's why I bought an inexpensive video card rather than a few bitcoins at peak price. For me it's been a fun hobby so far but I prefer searching though real coins for base metals and silver. With coin sorting there is still the lottery aspect but the markets are not nearly as volatile.

i don't have money to invest   ;D

 The fact it takes comparatively long to transfer money into exchanges (used to a max 2 hour transfer), needs to be converted beforehand, and may dissapear at any minute with little recourse. Apart from that, nothing. Wish I could get a few thousand £ into mt. Gox in quicktime with it being secure to take advantage of the expected dip. I guess my input is - a more professional level has to be attained before I risk my money with bitcoins, amateur hour has outstayed its welcome

1. No independent third-party audit of the source code (Satoshi could be one rich man one day).

2. No independent third-party audit of the latest development release of the client (nobody in their right mind would put money into a digital entity without security checks and encryption).

3. No trusted third party exchanges able to produce a contract guaranteeing the security of held deposits (my dollars are safe thanks to the FDIC, which is backed by the trust and will of 300 million Americans).

4. Evidence that 99% of the economic activity of bitcoin is generated by exchanges or miners (clear evidence of a super-bubble) - is there a real-world use for bitcoin?

5. Client is still early beta.

I asked these questions in a thread which is currently getting buried...

I can't, in good conscience, hold bitcoins as a long-term investment because, for me, the future is still clouded due to rampant security issues and real-world viability concerns.

Irrelevant. You don't need to trust the source code so it doesn't matter. No matter what the source code says, it is computationally infeasible for your bitcoins to be taken.

Doesn't matter. You don't need to trust the client. The protocol includes security checks and encryption.

Doesn't matter. You don't need anything to hold your deposits. If you have secured your private key, there is no known mechanism for compromising your deposits.

I think you're missing that the security of the system comes from the protocol, not anything else. Your other points are valid, IMO.

1.Bitcoin client is being audited by independent 3rd party all the time because they are open source. If you want to do  your own audit, you may.

2. The deposits held are in the record of every single one of the clients blockchain. Every user holding the same blockchain you have are essentially serves as witness to you holding w/e amount of bitcoins that you do. This blockchain always will be the same on all clients therefore you don't need trusted third party to do any accounting to guarantee your holdings. What could be better than having the entire "jury" agreeing to the same facts that your claim are true on your accounting books? Because that is literally what is happening when bitcoin transfers ownership from one to another and is recorded on the blockchain ledger so to speak. Encyption is on it's way to be in the client itself shortly, but the option is already available if you seek to perform this function yourself via truecrypt or similar software available for free.  

3. You have a choice to not use any exchanges if you don't want to. You are not investing in an exchange, but in bitcoins. Due to bitcoin being still at in infancy, exchange services providers have yet to come up with a bulletproof solution as of yet it seems. Not worried as growing value of bitcoin will simply demand a better exchange and free market will surely respond and meet that need at the right time. For now, I just consider all hick-ups at exchanges as early growing pains.

4. If you could actually provide the evidence that 99% percent of all economic activity of bitcon is generated by exchanges or miners, I will acknowledge this as a valid question rather than a troll attempt. Just as a quick reply, bitcoin is still at it's infancy and there is still a valid need to exchanges currently. This obviously will change as the acceptance of the currency grows with time and more and more business accept bitcoins directly reducing the need to exchanges altogether.

5. This comes down to your own level of risk tolerance. One thing for certain is that the code is open and transparent. If you are like me and others that are accepting of the risks, then you can give yourself the option to participate early in a new currency that was just created. If you also have the technical knowledge, you can easily see that the core functionality of the currency and it's cypto are very secure. Of course you should take responsibility of your own security at all times regardless of involvement in btc or not. Somehow I have the feeling that even when the beta tag comes off the official client, that it will still continuously be updated and supported. I don't see how this is any different than how it will be for the rest of it's existence.

This is the reason why some people like Steve Jobs are called visionaries whereas ordinary people buy his ipads instead.

yep, some universal standard interface would be cool. would make arbitrage so much easier  ;D

The first rule of smart investing is diversification. Putting away your life savings into one thing is something only old people with dementia ought to do.

Secondly, BTC is not even comparable to the stock market in its volatility. That would be like comparing a mild draft to a hurricane. If any one person decides to sell a large amount, the price plummets.

My philosophy as an investor could be said to be conservative and long-term interested. Although I do have a weak spot for things like BTC which I do try to set a little bit of money aside for.

I don't have tons of money.  I have more value in bitcoins than in cash. And my net worth is negative due to student loans.

I keep my percentage small for 2 main reasons:

1. Bank-driven legislation.  Everyone else on here feels comfortable being a criminal.  Whether BTC would survive while illegal is one question, and I think it would survive.  Whether I'm willing to risk my reputation, freedom, etc., to use it while illegal is another.  If BTC use and exchange is illegal, I'm out, and I'm guessing others like me are too.

2. Over-concentration among miners.  Either a tech breakthrough, a massive buy of equipment, or collusion by pools could disrupt the integrity of the currency.  It's not a flaw in the protocol, it's an unavoidable feature of human nature.  Satoshi's brilliant solution depends on decentralization, and as we've already seen, the free market does not guarantee it.  Collusion between the big 3 pools would already constitute a majority of computing power.  And that is before those with a vested interest in bitcoin get involved.

Nothing else troubles me deeply.

Still, it's just such a winning idea, I feel a duty to do my part while I still legally can.

security

liquidity

withdraw limits


Picture a trader with lets say ONLY $500k scalping AAPL or GOOG or any other liquid stock every day. To that guy bitcoin is a joke, no matter what it could be potentially worth years from now. They simply can't trust $500k to any exchange right now, even if they did trust an exchange, liquidity is way to small for them to matter and then in the end there is 10k per month withdraw limit without going through 5634 hoops, sending personal info to some geeky guy and his friend in Tokyo.


Plus on top of everything $500k is small potatoes. So we will let YOU trade your lunch money and be in awe when you see 50k block go through.

The fact that there is no specific reason to use BTC. There is the MT GOX Stock Market Game. But that's only based on the popularity of BTC. So there's nothing to base my decisions on except other people's opinions.

Now, if there was some official use for it, other than a shaky gambling game, I would invest.

Liquidity is there, but daily withdrawal limits are there as well  ;D

Are you sure you don't work for the communist party of China?

It's illegal to access Facebok, Youtube, Twitter, IMDb and Wikileaks. Really, you can go to prison for attempting to proxy your way into these sites.

Maybe they will also add Bitcoin to the list.
Doesn't mean anything is wrong with those services; Nor that the majority of the world will stop using them even if some board of fat old men in suits decides they are a 'turmoil to the people'.

I'm not an anarchist by any means. Probably right-wing if anything. I just don't see why BTC being made illegal somewhere would make it's use condemnable.

Online poker is banned in the USA because they hate losing tax revenue;
Doesn't mean it's not being played 24/7 in all the other countries of the world. Doesn't mean americans now condemn online poker as a game.

I agree in principle, but I think the banking industry is not equivalent to the music industry.  I'm personally not willing to take the risk of transacting in BTC if it could land me in prison.  I'm not a 14-yr-old gamer, I have a respectable life I don't want to lose.  I think there are many others like me.

You're correct, in reality illegality will deter widespread adaption, at least in the country in which it's been made illegal in.

North Koreans are using tons of smuggled black market US dollars and Chinese Yuans for regular purchases like rice and other food items.
Even though they can face labor camps or the death penalty if caught.

Their own currency (devalued in 2009 and inflating rapidly) is more or less useless so they are willing to take the risk rather than starve or commit robberies.

People in western countries still have relatively stable currencies so gold, bitcoins and other stores of value have no wide appeal yet
(except in Greece which seems to be collapsing soon and might be expulsed from the Euro currency, people are hoarding silver & gold bullion)

I'd also imagine other states with failed currencies (like Zimbabwe with their 500 trillion dollar bills) could be interested in bitcoins regardless of legal status.
Not at a state level but among the part of the population with internet access

My goal is to pay off a sweet computer by mining.  It would be much easier if the difficulty didn't keep going up, but it doesn't bother me too much because I get free electricity at my apartment complex.  When I'm all done I'll probably sell the graphics cards and purchase some more reasonably priced ones.  Investing in the coins as a currency play seems too speculative for me to take a big position.  I already own some stocks that could be huge or the next bust.  I don't really need anymore risk. 

I don't have a ton of money.

Thanks for bumping.
But please read the startpost before posting.

"(The fact that you cannot afford it not included ofcourse)"

If a four-digit sum is what you call "a ton of money", I did do that.

Only I sold again when price was higher than what I thought reasonable expectations. It now appears that wasn't a bad idea. Now I'm waiting for the mania to cool down, so I can analyze the outcome.

You know, a chance to get rich isn't all that valuable, if one can lose all as well. There are many other things a ton of money is good for. Speculations with a high failure probability come with a lot of trouble, personally as well as mathematically. I don't consider Bitcoin price super low anymore, since it rose a lot while fundamentals did not change. Thus, I'm reluctant to push in money again.

I'm still lying in wait for some day trading though, and if I ever think it's undervalued again, I'll be there to jump right in. Just don't expect me to go "ZOMG price dropped half a Dollar BUY BUY BUY" or something. It's about the fundamental quality of the Bitcoin project and markets, and that's just not looking *that* great yet.

We don't have a "Visa" or "Mastercard" for bitcoin, so transfers are not instantaneous. We need that for shops, restaurants etc to use bitcoin.

Very much so.  Imagine buying something in bitcoin at a cash register: "Please wait sir, I need at least 5 confirmations on your transaction.  It will only be another 5 minutes..."

It's a reasonably common theme on bitcoin forums for someone to state they get free electricity because they're on a fixed contract, or that power is charged per building and not apartment therefore if one person consumes enormous amounts of power it doesn't matter.

Someone, somewhere, has to pay for that power.  If the building manager notices the power bill increasing then he or she will amend your rent to pay for that power.  It might even happen long after you stop mining.  Power is never free.

You mean 50 minutes.

Instantaneous BTC transfers wont be happening, just as instant wire transfers from one bank to another wont. Both need time to be confirmed to be genuine.

That's what payment processors are for.
The "Paypal" of BTC could be backed by bitcoins instead of fiat currency.

The important thing is that the funds can be debited from one account and credited to another in a split second.

There's pretty much no infrastructure right now, using it is extremely difficult, and it seems like trends are flatlining right now

Excited about the new exchange opening Tuesday but another exchange is not the problem

If there were more infrastructure, the price of Bitcoins would be higher.

Yup

But so far it's not very viable, although I think it will be

But at 15.50/coin I just don't see why it'll go up significantly near term

You either jump in now, or you missed the boat, so far there was when it was less then a buck and hit 30 bux, now its at 14 to 15 where we buy and dont miss the second boat.  Its just do you want to risk it failing?  Its a risk, I see more shops accepting it, I see a super bright future in this type of virtual currency, but ya can only invest what u plan to lose, but I think if you didnt invest at 1 buck, you better jump in now.

"What is holding you from investing tons of money in this?"

-- Tons of money.

That's another thing, I got in at a buck and made pretty decent scratch. Hard to give that up when it's semi life-altering amounts

Its hard to wrap my brain now at the idea of $15 per investment

Whats holding me back from investing tons of money?  The fact that the market is being completely manipulated.  Its as simple as that. 

I would not invest tons of money because right now it's still pretty risky and I'm not a gambler.


I would invest a few hundred $ if it would be easier to actually purchase coin. Anything more complicated than :

Step 1 - insert credit card number and bitcoin adress
Step 2 - get the coin

is too complicated. 

For me it's also a way to evaluate the chance of bitcoin catching on... as long as getting coin is hard, I don't think they have much chance of going mainstream and so it's not a wise investment.

The few bitcent I get from minning are my only "investment". I don't plan on cashing them out.