Bitcoin Forum

Couldn't really formulate it properly in the title, I guess storing wealth in intangible goods is stupid to begin with be it USD, BTC or Euros, it is much better to invest into real estate, businesses etc and only keep "change".

But would you make the switch to completely close off all your bank accounts and store all that "change" in BTC?

I have just closed my bank account and made the switch, pretty worried but would prefer to cut my nuts off rather than go back and open one.

I still use my bank account for all the crap like bill's, council tax and all that.  But I have closed my savings and ISA and store in coins.  Gets a little bumpy with the ups and downs but I feel that I will get more from BTC than base 1% savings rate before tax.

How do you pay taxes?

I wouldn't close my bank accounts just yet. I still need them for paying bills and getting my wages.

Besides... my bank pays me for moving money fiat currency around the few accounts I have with them, as long as I don't overdraw. My credit card pays me interest on the amount I owe them as long as I pay on time.

It's like Homer Simpson and the devil's donut, as long as you don't take the last bite....  ;D

Of course, none of the above is effective against the level of inflation we are experiencing. Who am I fooling....

At the moment, I hold 50% of my purchasing power in crypto. 40% BTC 58% LTC ~2% other alts.

All my wealth is in Bitcoin, though all of it has come from mining and trading.  For the past two years I have been living in a dirt cheap apartment, eating noodles, and barely going out.  I'm extremely fiat poor but have resisted any temptation to sell my coins.

I'm now trying to decide how I'd like to retire.

God bless, sound like me.

It's the "all-in club thread" .... i luv it.

It has come up before but i imagine the membership is growing.

Swing for the fences!

All-in.

i would not.

Hell no... As soon as I get a significant amount of bitcoin, I cash out to precious metals...

But that's just me..lol I respect bitcoin, I just don't trust myself not losing it somehow.

I do like to gamble....  ::)

Everything I get in crypto stays in crypto and everything I get in fiat stays in fiat - tend not to convert between the 2 - but that's just me.

Its never a good idea to keep all your eggs in one basket.

yes..

but high risk, high profit.   :)

Sometimes. Hence the risk.

Keeping all your wealth in anything is a bad idea really. .

Exactly, I would never trust all assets in any one investment vehicle. Especially one as young as Bitcoin. At this stage Bitcoin is like investing in a junk bond.

No

I'm also in the all-in-bitcoin, living cheaply, planning retirement camp.

I live cheaply (or as I'd like to call it: cost efficiently) but I wouldn't make a full switch anytime soon. There are still many advantages for me to use fiat. My bank accounts help me stay above inflation and my "bonuses" (credit cards with points, etc.) have permitted me to go on multiple trips these past couple of years.

Once more businesses accept Bitcoin, I may make more of a switch but right now I can't see myself being "all in". It's too early for that, in my opinion.

wow... the delusion is astounding.  You fools should be taking 20% of profits every year to improve your life.  You move forward and have less regret if it fails.  Life is not a binary game of all or nothing.  Learn to balance and move forward in steps.

The value system of a dirty neck beard in his parents basement doesn't go well with instant wealth.  People binge, and they they end up where they started.

Take some profits now, and improve yourself:

buy some nice fucking clothes so you don't look like a dirty slob
buy a usd 7000 car (not one fucking cent more), you don't need a Porsche or a BMW, but you shouldn't be driving your 1998 pontiac anymore either
buy a nice shaving kit

life is never an all or nothing game.  move forward in increments.

Of course not...I also wouldn't store all my money in USD in a savings account.

Diversification is imperative.

Everything I have in crypto now is "extra". So, ... um, because I don't exactly have any fiat wealth anyway.

i think btc is  safer than the hyper-inflation thats coming so i keep a lot of my wealth in coins
i still use fiat notes to spend becaise i live in thailand and AFAIK there are no stores accepting
btc yet even though most people have a smartphone by now including schoolchildren :D

This ^^^^

and buy some precious metals... people compare to bitcoin to gold. Don't you think you ought to have both?

that's so reckless to put all your wealth into BTC. as far as we know,  there is a 50/50 chance that BTC will even make it. no one really knows what's going to happen. it's fine to be for the bitcoin movement, but you could easily end up losing almost everything.

I use my bank accounts to receive my paycheck and pay my mortgage. The rest I send to the exchange to convert to real money.

I wouldn't store all in BTC but definitely some and some more in other coins and some in banks. Just for security.

I have a ridiculous amount stored in bitcoin (about 70%) but would *never* have it all, nor anyone with half a brain should, at least not until it somewhat stabilizes.

I don't think that this is the time to ask about all our wealth...
These days the question is if you are going to store even a single dollar in  BTC :-[

YES!

I save about 10-15% of my income every month. It used to be in UK investment trusts, but it's now all going to bitcoin. I have played with the idea of maybe investing some in gold coins, but I don't trust the government to not confiscate it when the economy implodes because of the massive national debt burden and a time when treasury prices go no-bid. Having said that, predatory governments could say "Give me your bitcoin or go to jail", but I think that's unlikely.

I am now wondering if I should cash out a good portion of my investment trusts and convert to bitcoin. Not sure yet.

its harder for them to prove you have any BTC   " or go to jail "
even if they can prove you bought some ,you could have accidently deleted your wallet.dat or had a hdd crash ;)
a lot safer than silver /gold in that respect

47% of all bitcoin trades were being done in Yuan - that has almost disappeared overnight and bitcoins value has halved. If the USA were to attempt a similar move it would remove 45% of the remaining market - leaving only European currencies and a few others to trade with. That would really be a death knell for Bitcoins mass adoption. You would be foolish to put anything more than a speculative amount that you could afford to lose into bitcoins. A balanced portfolio including property, stocks, shares, commodities and cash would be a much more sensible idea and give you room for manoeuvre should circumstances change.

I believe bitcoin is NWO's coin and it will succeed.
So, it could be a smooth move.

I wouldn't because:
1) I need fiat to pay my bills and buy food
2) BTC may never become mainstream
3) you don't put all egs in one basket

the future will tell. if bitcoin or any other coin will be widely accepted and I can buy my loaf of bread with it in a supermarket, then I won't mind putting a bigger portion of my wealth in it.

There is a 50/50 chance that BTC will make it but there is a 0% chance that USD would make it, if BTC crushes you would still have your farm land, real estate, businesses, investments etc since you only keep "change" in BTC, I am amazed at how many people didn't ready the original post.

will bitcoin hold up when fiat currency fails?

I have thought about gold and silver too, but it is much harder to prove they are what they are when you buy or sell, than crypto. This is reflected in the overhead involved.

1)It is harder to convince a buyer a random lump of gold or silver is real and as pure as you claim, than a gold or silver bar/coin engraved with company names and serial numbers, in a sealed case, so there goes the fungibility. Even different make fetches different prices.
2)There are horror stories of people finding tungsten bars in their gold, even in gold from reputable companies like pamp suisse, serial numbered. So you have to do things like ultra sound scanning to check it. If you melt it down, see 1).
3)There is no way to verify whether physical pm backing paper pm instruments are really really there. So for all we know paper could be dragging physical price down. (paper gold inflation)

With a bitcoin, you know what you have is 100% pure and its all bitcoin inside.
I am sticking to crypto for now.

I'd balance it out, even with some in Peercoins as a backup. That said, would rather pay off my fiat debts first before converting larger sums of money into BTC and others, though I might also grab a few gold coins for good measure in case I need something tangible if something like a disaster strikes and I need to trade them if fiat money is not enough.

there was a flood of those gold plated tungsten bars in NYC  and they looked so professionally made people rumoured
that a government might be behind it rather than a gang of criminals (to put people off the idea of hoarding gold etc )

at least my encrypted bitcoins can go on a micro sd card,laptop ,usb stick ,on a piece of paper ,cd or dvd ,cloud storage , etc etc  ,if i changed them to gold id have to have  a bulletproof truck to follow me around or pay for space in a bank vault to store it all which kinda defeats the purpose of "easier money " and whats to say the bank will never deny me access to  my gold if something terrible happens the economy as many analysts predict

i agree with you and i also  with be sticking with my bitcoins 

Something terrible could happen to the internet like an solar flare knocking out half of the worlds computer systems - there is still a place for traditional commodities. A wise man would have a mix of investments - a balanced portfolio as it were.

It was the same thing that I suggested in the original post though! Please read it as well as the title, also if there was a solar flare you could wipe your ass with dollar bills and only fools would accept them in exchange for real world goods, however I would use the opportunity to hoard some BTC as soon as the interwebz is up if that ever happens.

I'm not rich, but I have physical silver in about 4 locations, some gold, I purchased a very small amount of palladium and platinum,saved 100% copper pennies, I save all nickles I get as change, I have some BTC,LTC,PPC,QRK,DVC, I try to keep some cash on hand, a tiny amount in checking, I've got well off relatives, and my signifigant other ownes her house outright, has a lot in stocks, has lots of cash and credit and a wealthy, elderly dad.  Also, I have almost zero debt.

All your wealth means 100% and no I woudn't store 100% of it in there.

when the solar flare hits your fiat atms are not going to be working either
if it takes out the internet and power on your continent it will take out the regular banking as well
(atms and debit cards  wont be much use without their network to connect to so no benefits over btc )

you think high street banks are going to let people withdraw if they cant turn on their  computers to see how much  ? :D

any natural disaster that could wipe out the bitcoins coud wipe out fiat currency  equally well since all money
its pretty much digitally controlled  anyway

unless you have a bedroom full of cash youre going to be screwed  either way

Not only no, but hell no.  I have a diversified portfolio and bitcoin is part of that diversification.

Oh! Come on! Who will risk all his money on Bitcoin? If you are a hard core BTC enthusiast, then 20% should be the maximum limit. That doesn't man that I don't have faith in Bitcoin. But rather, I have quite a bit of bad experience with various HYIPs.

Even if you did decide to do it - it would be a really bad idea to put it all in at once. If you use a principle called pound/dollar cost averaging - and move your money into bitcoins in chunks over time - you can reduce the effects of volatility - on days when bitcoin is up and you can buy less with your fiat currency - you are benefiting from the capital growth you have made on your existing holdings. On days when it is down - you can benefit from buying bitcoins at a reduced price.

If I did decide to put all my eggs into the bitcoin basket - I would do it this way - over maybe 5 years. If over time I noticed the general trend in bitcoin prices was downward - I would abandon my investment strategy and look for something that worked better.

Cash under my bed
Bitcoin in my head


Nah, actually I'm not that paranoid, yet. I buy a small amount of BTC (around 1) every couple of months, but to me it's still more of a hobby than a serious investment. I'm currently saving for a house, and I'm using fiat for that.

I am a true believer though. I think BTC definitely has a real future, which is why I'm keeping my BTC as BTC and won't be cashing out in the forseable future.

Nope.

Only few will be in BTC for the time being.

No, because putting all the wealth in just one pot increases the danger of a total loss.

Judging by the replies I don't think a single person has read the actual post...

No I can't think of reason why I would keep all my wealth in bitcoin. But more than money, one of the best things you have is yourself. By that I mean your skills and your relationships.

I think they have. I think everyone assumes by "change" you mean disposable income. I wouldn't keep all of my disposable assets in any one form. I hold a few different forms like Bitcoin, gold, shares of common stock, IRA etc.

It's always preferable to diversify. Concentrating your assets is a recipe for failure.

Bitcoin is a wealth token  ;D

I wouldn't originally, when I started with Bitcoin, not yet. But nowadays more than 95% of my total net worth is in BTC, and I have no intention to change that :)

I think it depnds on what the future of all currencies will be. a total paradigm shift could occur - the nerds will now be the op 1%?

i wouldn't have any wealth it wasn't for bitcoin and litecoin so its kind of hard for me to branch out at all.i do have pretty nice silver coin collection so i guess that would count too, but its insignificant compared to crypto, really just a way to deal with impulse spending.

I find it unlikely that the 1% will just hand over their wealth to the nerds. Be prepared for a fight.

i'm pretty much all in on btc.  swings are pretty massive but idc.

.... this is one thing the 1% pretty much have the same vote as everybody else ... if no-one is using your crap money, it doesn't matter how much of it you have.

Bitcoin is about non-violence.

current problem is almost  100% of the world uses the "crap" money
its harder for the 0.1% who have a better solution to make a btc  economy
when 99.9% are stuck on the old system .....at least in the early days

... no-one said it would be easy, but that is why early adopters deserve bigger payout because the odds are smaller the smaller the usage, in equal proportion to the risk that it will become widespread.

Btw, everytime one of the 1% buys some bitcoin they are indeed handing over their wealth to nerds ... and pure greed will just about ensure that they keep doing it more and more even though it is probably not in their long term interests, we'll see how much those grand money holding 'elite' truly understand money won't we, I guess?

The funny thing is that there are nearly no people that would store all of their "change" in BTC yet people keep complaining about early adopters being rewarded disproportionately...

It would be stupid to do so... I have 98% of my wealth in buildings and 2% in bitcoins.

Then you have 100% of your change in bitcoins, as per my original post.

I have most of my wealth in Bitcoin  and other altcoins. But that's so, because I am a student and have not much wealth. In a few month I will hopefully earn a good income and will invest in other things like Bitcoin. But I am confident. Maybe I put half or one third in crypto currencies (let's talk in one year again).




I think the austrian economics predict the end of the dollar for 50 years and more. I like austrian economics, but the USD does surprisingly well the last couple of years.



I hope you have not much BTC. I imagine a man with 1000btc but lives like a homeless man, because he does not want to change his bitcoin in USD to buy something nice. Then with the last breathe of life I send you a cake with "Was it worth it?".

if he waits until 2014 or even 2016 he might be able to buy something much much nicer !
everyones got differnnt ideas ,some folks  may think the best strategy is to  live in a box and eat dog food for a year 
or two while holding loads of btc lol

i  trade them for goods  whenever i can but have never cashed any yet and i have a strong belief in this technology

I'm getting the impression here that lots of people on this site have no existing wealth.

I have all of my wealth in StableCoin.

Maybe it wasn't a good idea, as it dropped a bit, but I have faith in the future of cryptos in general. Especially with news like this:

>The International Monetary Fund Lays The Groundwork For Global Wealth Confiscation
http://www.forbes.com/sites/billfrezza/2013/10/15/the-international-monetary-fund-lays-the-groundwork-for-global-wealth-confiscation/

>Federal Reserve's Tarullo details plans to counter bank runs
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101222045

>IMF report, pages 50, and 59, detail a plan for a 10% levy on all assets of all homes with a positive income:
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fm/2013/02/pdf/fm1302.pdf

>Target cyber breach hits 40 million credit and debit cards at holiday peak
http://news.yahoo.com/target-stores-39-customers-hit-major-credit-card-013358444--sector.html

>Millions of Target shoppers face new DEBIT card limits
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/21/us-target-jpmorgan-idUSBRE9BK0D020131221

Yeah, too young. When they've fought for 20-30 years to accumulate wealth their attitudes will change. Why would I ever have have an IRA when I can always invest it all in Beanie Babies. lol

not all but a larger part :D

Or Crypto Beanie Babies - not them old fashioned fiat beanie babies issues by a central authority.......

I have a friend whom I am trying to convince to buy a few bitcoins but ... oh no ... he doesn't like he fact that early adopters get higher returns!!!!
Foolish him!

I have a friend whom I also tried to convince to try and get a few bitcoins but he wouldn't because a "whole bitcoin was just too expensive". That was when it was going from $800, then $900, then 1100. Now he probably thinks I am dodgy.

I won't put all I have in bitcoin. But I won't mind putting around 25% of my wealth in bitcoin.

The idea that you have to buy an amount that is an integer is misguided - its about direction not price.

I still have some reasons to have bank accounts.

But I have never established any links to or from those accounts and Bitcoins.

I also do not establish any links to or from bank accounts and gold coins.

If you buy and sell gold coins you need a digital scale, and a way to measure diameter and thickness.

This works
http://www.goldcoinbalance.com/ $24

or
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41KDIkzVUNL._AA160_.jpg $25
and
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41A-I%2ByhTQL._AA160_.jpg $17

Archimedes displaced water didn't he - that would save me $17. Nice bit of spam. 

If you are comfortable using water to measure the specific volume of coins, go for it.  Watch out for errors caused by surface tension.  And don't get the computers wet.

http://www.renzamusings.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/haveadrink.png

I don't have any affiliation with the link I provided, but I have used it in the field, and it works.

But the digital scale and digital micrometer communicate that you are precise and careful.

My bad - sorry for accusing you of spamming - it just seemed very off topic - and self promoting.

The idea of putting all of your eggs into one basket is a scary one. A diverse portfolio has always worked well in the past for investors for various reasons.

My all time favourite portfolio item will likely always be physical gold and silver (actually holding the currency, not on paper).

Gold is a good storage medium of wealth, but Bitcoin is superior when transferring wealth between different countries.  

You probably don't want to ever show up at an airport security checkpoint with a suitcase containing gold coins or having them taped to your body.

And most (or all) people still need fiat currency for purchases, and banks for documented income and expenses.

So diversification is useful.

madmadmax I would love to store my wealth in bitcoins as they may earn me huge profits. In fact I already own large proportion of my wealth in bitcoins and never sell in panic when prices fall but instead buy more bitcoins as I know it shall bounce back soon. 

Of course not, I prefer having productive assets. I hope investing bitcoins becomes easier in the future. BTC stock exchanges are a joke now, I don't know how many no longer even exist.

I won't make the switch because I just couldn't live without bank accounts and credit cards. I may have a busy lifestyle, but there are things I need that BTC simply can't provide.

How to buy a flight ticket without a credit card?
How to rent a car abroad without a credit card?
How to get paid without a bank account?
How to buy stocks without a bank account?

I still think it's great that some people believe so much in BTC that they choose it as their main currency, but they will have a hell of a life.

yes

yes, all of it  ;D

You can buy plane tickets, buy (some) stocks and receive payment in BTC.

There aren't many stocks to buy (just some mining companies and casinos), and it's quite difficult and insecure. I hope more businesses make investing as easy as for example Just Dice.

I have seriously considered cashing out my 401k, taking the tax hit in the process, and put it all in Bitcoin (well over six figures), but that chance of BTC going to zero is a real possibility. I can't gamble my retirement on it. I may not be rich when I retire, but I will have something to maintain my lifestyle…. at least until the dollar crashes, then all bets off :)