Bitcoin Forum

I'm now 21, and I have about 99.9% of my wealth in Bitcoin, I started to accumulate since 2013 till today, almost going to buy every time there's a dip (consolidation).

Many people have same goal/dream like me, hoping that Bitcoin will grant them earlier retirement or luxury life, but what could go wrong?

What's the possible scenario that could render Bitcoin into worthless, and what're the probabilities of that happening?

Don't get me wrong, I love Bitcoin, and I like how it makes us able to afford luxurious stuff, but I also wanted to be mentally prepared for the worst possible scenario.

Hi (funny username :))
You are a smart man if you accumulated BTC since 2013, I wish I did.
IMO the worst that could happen is that all the countries in the world decide that Bitcoin is illegal. This is very unlikely IMO but it would make the price crash. Bitcoin would'nt disappear in such a scenario, but the value of it would return to what it was long time ago.
For me this is the highest risk.
Personal risks for you is to be hacked, of course, but you probably know how to make your bitcoins safe.

I totally agree with this! There are lots of countries which not accepts Bitcoin. The worst case scenario that I can think of is majority of the countries around the world will ban Bitcoin or at least will try to regulate it. If that will happen, many people will be afraid to use it and it will lead to price drop. Bitcoin can lose its value in the future if that will happen. I suggest that you diversify your wealth and not focus purely on Bitcoin.

Here you go: Bitcoin can lose 99.9% if it's value. Done.
[/sarcasm]

Why would you prepare "mentally", if you can prepare by spreading your investment? All eggs in one basket is a very risky strategy, it's great as long as it goes up, but you're literally risking everything.

If crypto taught me one thing, it's that everything is possible. Most Bitcoins are still in the hands of a few people with very strong hands, but if they start panic-selling, the market gets flooded with cheap coins.
It can also go up 10x or more. I'm betting on that, but I don't risk everything. In retrospect, I could have had 20 times more now if I would have gone all-in when I started with crypto.

There is a lot governments can do. For example all those stores , websites and everything, that has that "We accept Bitcoin" sticker. Well that would be illegal. Wallet apps may also become illegal and ordered to delist from App stores. Only a rumor of that would floor the price to under $2000.
Now, decentralized stores and exchanges. That would make it a lot harder for them.  Whatever they do i doubt it will pass without a legal fight.
Dont forget, every goverement did not disregard or burn all the seized BTC from illegal activities, but they sold it on the same market that we use.

You are a smart guy with good foresight  to invest in BTC when you were 17, how I wish I have invested in 2013.

IMO, BTC lost its value when no one believe in it anymore and dump all their BTC for fiat or altcoins. One example could be all governments ban BTC strictly.

Talk shit dude!

No, he talks smart. Smart investors always prepare themselves for the worst.
I do agree though with LoyceV when he says "all eggs in one basket" is not the best thing to do.

The worst thing that could happen would be if the vast majority of miners decided to mine some stupid fork, leaving the Bitcoin chain unprotected. But there are no economic incentives for this to happen

The biggest threat to Bitcoin is an altcoin.

NEM, Dash, Monero, PIVX, Zcash all have superior features to Bitcoin, such as privacy.  However, Bitcoin has the brand, first mover advantage and name recognition.

Nobody knows which aspects will win out.

You love bitcoin and you have 99.9% of your wealth and asking this thing? You don't discourage yourself by this way and instead of thinking negative you are seeing the proper progress of bitcoin. Keep cheering up I don't see a thing that bitcoin could go wrong unless the whole world will stop it's popularity and growth. You are preparing yourself mentally if something goes wrong but are you prepared to become a millionaire with bitcoin?

I think the worst that could happen is losing bitcoin, the forum itself. Many people depend on this forum and almost half or maybe gain money for themselves. Not only luxurious but their needs.

A lot of people do. I think it's a mistake. Nobody knows what is the future of all cryptocurrency. So I'm glad that there are altcoins. If you keep some of your money in altcoins part in bitcoin and in Fiat then you ever will not lose. Greed makes people abandon Fiat but insurance. Better to earn less but not losing everything.

I don't wish any bad luck to my prime investment .i.e. BTC but it can go a heavy correction in 2018, as per some big bankers BTC has moved a hell lot upward in 2017 and it will surely go down to at least half before it rises again, don't know when it will start but will happen for sure.

If you are gathering bitcoins from 2013, you should have a good stack of them by now. If you are so worried about a possible crash, maybe you should spread your investments on other assets as well (gold is always a good option). As for what it could go wrong, it's hard to tell. Governments could go against bitcoin. They can't ban it for good, we would have to trade them underground, so the value would probably drop, because a lot of investors would get out from bitcoin, but I don't think you would ever lose all your wealth.
The worst scenario would be bitcoin being surpassed by another coin, and everyone would switch to that, and in that case, BTC would become useless. I don't think this will happen though, there is plenty of space for more coins, and bitcoin still has a lot of potencial.
Finally a chain split on a hard fork could also destroy bitcoin. I don't know what it would take for this to happen though, but I trust the devs working on the network, so we should be fine.

If the countries didn't ban bitcoin so far, why would they do it now? It's obvious that Bitcoin was the enemy of every government when it appeared. Why didn't they destroy it then when nobody cared? Maybe that scenario is no longer a possibility?

I cannot think of reasons that could possibly go wrong with bitcoins.  Everything is in its proper place and it was intricately structured.  Bitcoin has been here for a long time now and if there is something that would stop it, it should be started since then.  I will and cannot accept any reason if ever there will gone wrong with it.

The main risk is that if bitcoin may get banned in future,especially in your country,then you would have to go and search for another country to make your living with bitcoin.

Also,if bitcoin price crashes by any critical event,then your life would be in a huge risk.

Also,even if bitcoin does not gets banned and its value does not crash,still in future,if quantum computers gets introduced,they may become a serious threat to bitcoins in your wallet since quantum computers would be able to read private keys of a wallet with its public key itself.

Worst case scenerio could be much based on the current events of things but being prepared for is what matter. The only thing that could make bitcoin worthless I can think of is someone or government having the capacity to either hack the blockchain or destroy it all together. This is something that is likely impossible based on the readings and comments in the past.

Another threat is not able to spend your bitcoin that have been accumulated over the years because of the restrictions by government for the fear of bitcoin dominance. However, this is something that can be surmounted but the amount to cash out at once will only be limited considerably not to attract attention from the law enforcement agencies. Aside those two things in my opinion, there are no other serious threats that could bring bitcoin to its knee.

This man has made the best out of bitcoin when everyone still have doesn’t know bitcoin at all. But living too dependently on cryptocurrency alone is not healthy at all. The best thing he must done since he got wealthy with it is putting up a business and take bitcoin as of now as an investment or second way of earnings. But if he does with those he earned is traveling and leisure would be just unpractical enough.

To answer does bitcoin be gone? is as impossible as the internet will be cut off.

all smart investors prepares themselves for the worst and does something about it before it happens. There should be signs, as a smart investor you should be able to read and anticipate these signs and work your way of of it. I dont see the worst happening to bitcoin in the near future though so you’re good.

Anything could happen with btc or any other coin. There is something powerful that we cant control. It could be people or groups of people..

To answer your questions, mainly it's because as I said I'm 21 this year, I still have a lot of time to recover almost any lost, most people at my years only have debt, thus my risk-tolerance level is high.
I do understand the benefits of diversification as a finance major, and I did plan to do so in near future, but not until Bitcoin hit my target price.

Another way of saying is, put all my eggs in one basket and watch them carefully, I'm so far devoted almost all my time in Bitcoin, I trade Bitcoin as my full-time income source, so I watching Bitcoin really closely.

I'm more interested to know what could go wrong with Bitcoin, instead of my investment approach.

sometimes i get scared too, sometimes i feel its gonna die and some other coin gonna go high

I believe most people misunderstood what I try to discuss here, I'm not talking about the investment approach or my portfolio structure that's concentrated with Bitcoin.

I wanted to discuss, specifically "What could be gone wrong with Bitcoin, that could render it into worthless"

So far these are what someone pointed out, and my opinion:


1. When the government of countries started to ban Bitcoin, making it illegal to use.
My opinion is this is very very unlikely to happen, governments of countries can't even work together on solving a single problem such as global warming, or eradicating poverty from less developed countries, so if we're talking about governments reach consensus to ban Bitcoin together is not likely to happen, think of what's the benefits they can all share? What about a few top influencing countries banning Bitcoin? Look at China, does it work?

2. When people stop using it.
Very unlikely to happen as well, it's like saying when people will stop using FIAT?

3. When miners switch to other altcoins
Not likely to happen there's a lot of huge mining company or individuals has invested lots into Bitcoin, and it's mining operation, simply switching into some other altcoin is just going to harm them financially, look at those who switched to BCC then switch it back to BTC.

4. Being replace by altcoins / forked coin of  BTC
This could happen but it's not likely to "replace" but work parallel with Bitcoin, it's like we have Gold, silver, platinum in real world, so it could happen in Cryptocurrencies world, forked coin is fine then, as I would be having forked coin and the original Bitcoin

5. Stronger computing technology like quantum computing
I've been thinking more into the code of Bitcoin, however, I wasn't a programmer, won't be able to understand as much as possible, but from what know is, Bitcoin can be upgraded, updated, so it doesn't sound like a major problem as well.


Everything being said above is just my opinion, especially point 5, I'm not a programmer and wasn't good a reading code, so correct me if I'm wrong or share your experience? Thanks


hope we can make this a good discussions

Here is my quick list of reasons for which Bitcoin might disappear (going in the order of probability):
1.   Regulatory ban: majority of countries decide Bitcoin is a shady parallel economy that cannot be controlled and better just prohibited; e.g. closing down exchanges, closing gates between fiat and crypto worlds...
2.   Government hack: destroying the system with some kind of brute force (51% attack) or new technology (quantum computers) for which only a few countries in the world have enough resources and knowledge (e.g. China, Russia, maybe USA).
3.   Regular hack: a hacker exploits the systems and tries to use it for own good or just destroy it for fun and accolades (remember Ethereum...)
4.   Technological failure: one of those BIPs goes terribly wrong…
5.   Competition: other currencies do the job much better (faster and cheaper transactions etc.)
6.   Other: no more marketing, people get tired of it, new technology comes, too many frauds, the impractical volatility, no use in the real economy etc.

To be prepared for these situations you should split your investment. Don't put all your money in bitcoin. I advise you to have an investment in real life to afford bitcoin dumps and uncomfortable situations.

I admire you. A young man with a good eye. I started investing when I was 18 years old. When I was my age, I only knew how to watch movies and spend money traveling everywhere

Yes, actually reason 4. is a one that would make me worry (a bit), Bitcoin is the big name, that's why it attracts so many investors.
But then it is a very hard thing to predict.
What I know for sure, is, when you are the first one to enter in a specific industry (so here, cryptos), your competitors will need to work much harder to overtake you. I will still trust Bitcoin to adapt to all "competition" it faces, like I said, it is still had the big advantage of being "the big name", the name that now everyone has heard of, even those who say "I do not understand anything about cryptocurrencies :)

Yeah, you pointed out something I didn't mention in the list, the BIPs that might be gone wrong and open an exploit for abuse.
Another thing is, the debate between developers/users with conflicting interest could make the progress of Bitcoin future upgrade become stagnant as well.

About the brute force attack is very unlikely to happen, it's simply not worth the attack at least at this moment

Choosing the bitcoin and accumulating it is the right thing to do and in the future it will be more potential so don't be too think about negative things.

when someone thinks about what makes a bitcoin fall or thinks something is wrong with bitcoin,
this is a foolish thought.
and it's true you do not think negative about bitcoin.
because bitcoin is a valuable asset that will never die.
and whenever time permits,
there is nothing too late about learning to use bitcoin

True, I think you are right about such attack - for the moment. I compiled this list really quickly so I am sure I missed many things. However I think what might need more emphasis is the usage by the real economy - which you have actually mentioned in your point 2 (you posted your list just shortly before I posted mine).

Somehow I find it hard to imagine that BTC will stick around even where there is no actual widespread usage in the real economy (e.g. payments, remittances etc.). I am not sure that it can keep up as a mere store of value. Well again, its just my hunch, not based on any hard data. :)

However it would be great if this debate would get more different opinions to see other reasons as well.

Yeah , I agree with you because here no chance to get loss in the bitcoin . If you have fear or already faced any loss in the bitcoin then surely you have not much experience in this field Because a small knowledge and understanding can explain us that how we can handle the flcutuations in the price and how with the down and up in the price we can make profit .
Here we need only a perfect understanding that how the system works .
If you will try to see the negative things then ofcourse you will see negative only but if you will see toward the positive things then surely you will find lots of opportunities to make profit and profit  and new new ideas to generate business  .

I do not like one moment in bitcoin, that miners control the network and ordinary users do not have any influence. They decide whether to be an upcoming hardphone with a hard fork or not

Only thing that can go wrong is government all over the world placing a ban on it thereby making bitcoin worthless..this is unlikely to happen though as countries are adopting bitcoin transactions daily..

Hi.. Never be worry about bitcoin as it's unbreakable. Keep looking never settle.

The only thing that could go wrong in bitcoin is the market, if the correction will come then it will hit hard on us for sure because the price jump is too big and the correction will become big also. Overall, there is nothing to worry because corrections and dumps are just normal for a decentralized currency so just keep calm and be smart in managing your emotion and bitcoins.

The worst case scenario is that all the countries in the world ban all crypto currencies. This won't happen though as the support from the community is large enough. If this happens then the market will crash instantly and the value of all coins will come down drastically. I have started holding BTC recently when it was $4000. The goal is to collect as much BTC as possible and hold it for as long as possible. Will sell them if any worst case scenarios come to be real.

It's great that you started saving bitcoin from 2013. That was a really wise decision. But I am no sure if it is wise if you invest almost 99% of your wealth in bitcoin?! You can diversify your investments because every investment option is associated with many risks and Bitcoin is also not an exception from it.

As long as you are watching the bitcoin market closely and are able to react quickly you are safe. Because bitcoin price can change heavily with time both for beter and for worse so it's important that you can take actions not to lose your money. Having 90% of your funds and assets in bitcoin is very brave but risky and personaly I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't feel secure if my retirement funds are based only on bitcoin.

The point is I think it's depends on ourselves, and I am still convinced that bitcoin can still providing good hope for the future, and even be used for future savings. Do your best and avoid misuse of bitcoin, bitcoin is very special and is very worthy to be earned until can be gain high profits. There is nothing wrong with bitcoin, remain optimistic on bitcoin while learning more about bitcoin that can benefits and trying to be a successful people from the ways to have done. I'm sure Bitcoin will continue alive up to the future, because its superiority will be more sought after by many people (young people, old people).

There is nothing wrong with Bitcoin .. because we are here to play trading and can invest .. we can sell and buy .. all that there is nothing wrong in the world buying and selling the market, sometimes can go up and sometimes can go down .. it also depends on the enthusiast Bitcoin itself

the worst scenario is when government wants to be involved in bitcoins. it is either dissaprove bitcoins and make it illegal or accept bitcoins and collect big taxes from it. that scenario will affect the price of the bitcoins for sure.

I think that the greatest threat too bitcoin will come from those with the most to loose.  These are the financially elite of the elite.   Loosely you can say the controllers of big banks.   Banks have been around for 400 years and the wealth only flows one way with them.    They will not give up their position of power and untold wealth without a fight.

The problem with bitcoin will come from them though I cannot say in what guise.   IMO an example maybe the loosely organised attack by bitcoin cash combined with segwit2x.  I don't think this will succeed but I also don't think the trojan horse will be so easy to spot next time.  Satoshi wrote on the genesis block something about the bank bailouts of 2008.  IMO the largest robbery in history!

A better question might be "how to preserve bitcoin?"

To answer this I would say first and foremost is "decentralisation and beyond censorship or control by a small group of people".  Without this, the genius of bitcoin is erased.  We must be vigilant to put this first before any other factors.

A far second would be "security".  If there is a big fuck up we may loose some money but the community can repair it. We (bitcoin community) get a second chance.

Thirdly "fungibility".  How easy it is to use the money.  Bitcoin is only 9 years old - it will get there in the end.




 

Majority countries will recognize bitcoin formally in their countries and will be treated as a legal currency almost in future. Currently many countries are in thinking process to announce bitcoin a legal currency and most probably they will take a decision about bitcoin legalization in 2018. Why the people will stop business in bitcoin if they are earning a huge amount from it. I don’t think so that people will stop buying bitcoin because they know that future is based on new digital financial system and bitcoin is the mother currency of digital financial system.

I think competition is rising quickly with many alts improving their technology while Bitcoin is taking too long to scale. I think btc will eventually head down the right path but i'd rather see it sooner than later...

     Bitcoin is growing. There is nothing going wrong. However, if a few large countries completely prohibit the purchase and sale of Bitcoin, the countries of the rest of the world can do the same,  in this case People don't want to invest in Bitcoin. But it is very unlikely this  happen.

the worst case scenario is if each country makes their own cryptocurrency, of course the use of bitcoin will decrease around the world and will affect the price movement is very slow, unlike today. But, today, I see bitcoin almost mostly used as an investment facility, rather than a tool for transactions. Therefore, that possibility could be denied because of its use.

Interesting topic.. I haven't even really considered that. Nice reading other opinions on this.

What worries me most about the future of bitcoin are some technologies that are yet to come, like quantum computing
that in fact, one day may be able to break cryptography SHA256.
But fortunately, there are already studies on how to adapt the cryptography to a post-quantum scenario

until now I have not found the error of bitcoin ... maybe later every what happened there is nothing perfect but until now there has been no error from bitcoin ... hopefully all goes smoothly until the future ...

While I understand the concept of having all your money converted to bitcoin and so far it is proven to be the best possible investing solution.
I also want to tell you to never underestimate the power of diversification - in case something drastic happen to bitcoin you will be covered.
At this point in time, there is no one who will tell you what can go wrong with bitcoin in the long run. Most likely it will be internal problems that will bring BTC down.
We have some conspiracy theories and prophets of negativity, scaremongers around though - don't listen to them :)

Well, I think the worst thing that could possibly happen is that governments and banks together would create a strategy to remove all of the coins from the market and stop people creating new ones or creating themselves a single powerful one wich all of the people are going to use. Even though it is pretty hard to happen we have to take in consideration that it is possible

The second thing that could happen, hypothetically speaking is that one of the greatest hacker would break into bitcoin security and stole more than 80% out of all wallets. Dont get me wrong, it is super hard to break into a bitcoin wallet but if someone could break into NASA, FBI, US ARMY and absolutely any other great company like Paypal, Google, Visa he could 100% surely hack bitcoin.

Keep all your savings in bitcoin, this is a very big risk. If you consider the crypto currency, then a certain part of the funds in any case should be stored in promising altcoyins. It's even better to keep some of the money in ordinary money on deposits. So you can protect yourself from various accidents. Investing in bitcoin now raises the risks associated with the fact that in fact it grows like a financial bubble and as soon as it reaches its price peak, I think it will quickly lose demand and depreciate. He too tore himself away from his real value, and one day he would fall down vseravno. Therefore, this development of events should be prepared well in advance.

Many people think that when they come to bitcoin, they will earn a lot of money. That is absolutely wrong. Bitcoin can convert real money, but no company can intervene and run it. So you have to be very careful before you decide to "play" and invest in BitCon. Remember, no investment is successful without effort and luck.

"What could go wrong with Bitcoin?"

1. Become a Tulip bubble
2. Bankers pump en dump
3. Fees go stupid
4. Won't scale as it has been designed wrong and is not DNA
5. Banking is built into the network to charge interest on moving money
6. Speed is slow, errors always blamed on other people (See unallocated transaction lists)

Well I have six ticks in my boxes without even trying.

Absolutely,I agree with you. You use bitcoin in a long time, I really admire you for owning much more wealth of bitcoin, it’s great. But you still haven’t built experience for yourself, you always keep afraid of some prediction about bitcoin. I think you should keep your thought in the positive way in using bitcoin. I believe that you have both experience and knowledge, thus don’t let your  fear make you lose what you have. It’ also better for you to prepare for the worst ,but you may get more concern and maybe you control your benefits in bitcoin.

Im 21 as well. how did you go about living expenses with "99% of wealth" on btc?

if government want to dissaprove bitcoin and make it illegal im sure its just for a real trade with goods. like what just happened in my country.
the government just dissaprove for real trade with goods stuff, currently for trading with BTC-FIAT itself in exchangers its still allowed

We should be though! being prepared is always a must is an era of which we can't be sure of what's going to happen in the near future! We can't tell really what is it but, for now, all we can do is taste its possibility to earn and keep safe!

I think the worst result should be the global ban on bitcoin trading, but I think this is impossible, because now there are countries that allow the use of bitcoin in real terms.