Bitcoin Forum

Sorry for my ignorance, but I really don't understand how Bitcoin can fail.
If there is a limit of 21 million Bitcoins that will ever be made won't it just increase as people can't get it anyway else than trading?
From how I see it, the worst thing that can happen is that it gets the same standards as gold.

Please tell me what you think :)

I don't really understand your question. 21 million total is not a limit, coins are divisible.

Price will increase if people do want it and trade/buy it but that's not something certain. If another crypto or technology succeeds instead then BTC could fail of course.

We will know only after reaching 2140 . Before that it will not be of that rarity.

Ok, but what if nobody wants it...

Have anyone considered the security of Ethereum?

Think about all the computing power used to power bitcoin, if these miners turned there computing power onto disrupting Ethereum wouldn't that cause a problem?

Bitcoiners will have an incentive to disrupt the Etherum system.

Also, you can get Etherum secured by Bitcoin via counterparty (its a meta-coin not alt-coin)

Yeah as long as people keep using it, it probably won't fail. If it gets replaced or abandoned, then it wouldn't be useful any longer.

It can fail if suddenly everybody thinks that it is not important anymore and decides to leave. Such as condition on emergence of new altcoin better in technology, collapse of the network due to attacks, anyway it is unlikely to happen. Or that is how I look at it as it is based on community support and acceptance

Its not a matter of how but when. With the attitude of the developers and a lot of the development lovers in this forum you will see they neither care nor understand the importance of a damand. no one is doing what they need to do to secure bitcoins future. instead they just keep working on a wallet core that is used by a very small portion of bitcoin users.

As the profitablity of bitcoin decreases and the difficulty rises, the mining aspect opf bitcoins becomes much harder to achieve. the diff is around 40 billion right now, and the reward is 25 BTC, not bad right, well what happens when bTC is worth 40 bucks, the reward is 1 BTC and difficulty is in the trillions? ahh yes FAIL thats what happens.

No one mining bitcoins means no transactions are being processed, if no transactions are processed bitcoin fails pure and simple. And ole JP morgan and Goldman Sachs are waiting , anticipating and excited for that day to come.

It fails if doesn't get adopted at a considerable scale, there's been a lot of investment in bitcoin start-ups with the anticipation of mass adoption, if adoption doesn't increase companies will bankrupt.

Another reason other than new Altcoin.. someone or a group find a loophole in the Bitcoin code. They attack the network.. making the network not working and thus.. bitcoin will fail.

This.  This.  And this some more.

Unfortunately this programmable money we have isn't evolving fast enough.  Lighthouse was supposed to be the holy grail to bring on more Bitcoin developers and help Bitcoin evolve faster.  How's that coming guys?  Any new developers after 2 months?  I realize modifying Bitcoin is not easy.  But its possible and imperative that things get moving a shit ton faster than they're moving now.  This is 2015 tech industry.  You can't have a tech that sits stagnant for 2 years like this.  You cant have a tech that sits stagnant for 2 months.  

Priorities / arguing / opinions I suppose?  I don't know.  Shouldn't the path for Bitcoin development features and fixes be decided by a decentralized concensus of its *users* ?  By the *industry* ? Not a core group of developers who have zero experience in the field?  

Shouldn't there be a corevote website that allows hundreds of thousands of people around the world to vote on what features come next, and what priorities are first?  With obvious exceptions that are limited by the technology, etc.  And shouldn't the development team be adhering to those demands?  

There is literally zero input from the consumer public about bitcoin development and that concerns me.  Core developers learn about what the industry wants via osmosis.  Browsing Reddit, or hearing chatter around the water cooler.  That isn't how projects are executed.  I have been a project manager for 15 years, and the first rule I can tell you:  You dont let developers make product development decisions.  No offense to developers.  But coders are not marketers, sales people, or industry experts.  They are coders.  They implement what the market decrees.  They don't come up with the product development process or priorities.  They dont decide "yes" or "no" on things, unless its a limitation of the technology.  Ever.  If they do, then you end up with a product that no end-user can use, and wont use.

-B-

Thats why Maidsafe is a better project than Ethereum, because it doesnt depend on a blockchain.

If you shutdown entire internet then it fails ;D

OR;

You can slow down bitcoin network; Hardfork it; Make blocks orphan etc.

But you need lots of computers/clients to do it. How can it be done?
 
If you really want to shutdown bitcoin network here's an idea:

DDoS Major Pools! (~%70 of network) Then you secure that "new blocks can't be found or it takes really too long".

There's not a known cure for DDoS yet. But you need a really strong botnet (at least 1 million clients) to do it.

It is too soon to say that bitcoin is going to fail. At current standing there is an ever increasing bitcoin mass adoption. And bitcoin is just starting to gain some grounds through mass media. Some exchanges will shutdown due to hacking, we have seen that through mtgox, but still BTC remains to stay.

We are still in early stage but after few years Bitcoin survives whole lot of crap so i think it is here to stay.

Opinion Discarded

No, you're wrong. 21 million IS A LIMIT. But divisibility means we can potentially trade 1/10¹⁰ of a bitcoin.

bitcoin could fail due to being banned by a major country like USA, or generally hostile regulation/criminalization.

it could also fail due to massive farming (51%) attack by powerful government or bank.

around 80% of BTC are already mined by now.

And I think 90%+ will be until 2020.

Scarcity will be an issue way before 2140

you are not considering the numbers after decimal point. if the price goes up 1 satoshi will worth more than what it does now, so it really is more than 21 million btc

if more and more people lose interest it will be worth less and less.  even at a nominal small value each, its still a success. 

 1/10⁸, actually. But thanks, now I know how to do superscripts   8)

21 million bitcoins are divisible into fractions of bitcoins but the most that will ever be available are 21 bitcoins (or 42 half bitcoins or some insanely larger number of satoshis!)

The value of bitcoin can go down if fewer and fewer people want to use it (and therefore buy it).

I have already used BTC to buy goods.

The total coins ever made will be 21 mil
that's won't fail as you can even have 0.00000001 bitcoin so it is quite alot ;)

No. 1/10¹⁰. The point is that we are adding decimal places (for a hypothetical reason).

Imho Bitcoin can't be fought and beaten from the outside ( governments, ect. ).

It could fail just because of some implosion: for example mega dump and consequent complete lack of interest by its users, stop of mining, ect.
Or it could fail after the launch of a better cryptocoin... and in this case Bitcoin will become simply an altcoin, among the others...

I can see Bitcoin failing if players like Paycoin and the likes continue to tarnish Bitcoin's reputation by directly associating themselves with Bitcoin.

Another possibility I can see is that it will be considered a compromise/middle ground to accept Bitcoin as an idea but not as THE cryptocurrency. Politicians may use this dialogue to convince the people of a centralized cryptocurrency with a publically verifiable blockchain.

Bitcoin can fail if it falls to Zero $0, miners stop mining due to losses, nodes stop broadcasting the chain, and developers abandon ship....

I think that pretty much covers it.

Edit: Obviously 51% attack, fork gone wrong, or a discovered malicious bug in the code, etc..

Currently, the Bitcoin community has begun to mature and responsible Cryptocurrency where they got. The lesson we can learn is the time still believe with Bitcoin, then Bitcoin not die. Although many disasters that struck the potential for Bitcoin does not mean every way. Bitcoin, so far, is the first technology that can change the financial world a better, cheaper, and anti-politicization place.

may be somebody sell big bitcoin amount in currency exchanges thats why bitcoin price fall now

Like privious time i still remember a big fall from 300$ to 200$

We are currently showing transaction figures of +/- 100 000 transactions per day... If Bitcoin goes mainstream, this figure will increase and miners fees will increase too.

The miners fees will supplement the block bonus loss, so that would not be such a big problem in the future.

Individual Satoshi's will have a bigger value too... as the demand for Bitcoin increase. { A few years ago 1 Bitcoin, was valued below $1 and we would not have imagined that it would increase in value towards the $1000+ value it did reach} ---> What if the same thing, happens with a Satoshi? .... Who knows? The price of 1 Satoshi could be valued at $0.01 or even $1 ..... that would make the 1000 Satoshi paid out for free at most faucets, a VERY good investment over time.  ;D ;D 

Bitcoin will never be failed since it already succeeded.  Only way people stop using it is if it is proven to be hacked at will and nothing was safe or secure.

Bitcoin as technology will fail only if "all the miners" shutdown their machine. It is not probable but if the price will not rise after 2-3 block reward halving we can start to "think" about this theory. Instead if the price will rise and the miners will not turn off their machines the bitcoin ecosystem will grow and stay in life.

Without electricity, Bitcoin would fail.  Otherwise, as long as there is demand for it, it will last as long as the market allows.

Just as a curiosity, though, I often wonder what number of BTC have been lost from the market forever due to things like misplaced keys, hardware failures, etc.?  If enough BTC were lost, maybe that would have an effect, too.

I think the only way Bitcoin fails is if development just outright stops and people stop using it (venture capitalists pull their money, etc). But I'm sure Satoshi is really impressed by how far it has come. It'll be a success when real stakes/money is won through your video game console or MMORPG and gamers won't be able to cheat with mining bots. So then, you're highscore or leaderboard will actually have value attached. And then viewers can bet on or tip their favorite pro gamer, etc, etc. Assuming game consoles don't use their own currency like they are right now with Microsoft Points or Nintendo credits or whatever.

I also like the idea of abstracting Bitcoin mining into a MMORGP similar to Minecraft or something. You have to give people an abstraction otherwise they don't get that all this mining is a bunch of computers crunching numbers. Maybe hook up Minecraft or we create our own game and depict "real virtual mining" so people can get real Bitcoins.

You could give people careers as pro gamers. Toss them Bitcoins as pay.

Well the last part is pretty obvious but I think we have to look at the reasons why people would stop using it. Will something better come along? Will the price crashing to next to zero cause people to flee? Will an error or bug be found? Will governments ban or heavily regulate it to the point of breaking? Personally the biggest threat to bitcoin is a better successor arriving in my opinion. That could cause it to collapse very quickly imo.

Video tapes like Betamax didn't fail. Laserdiscs didn't fail. 8-track tapes didn't fail. All of them worked as expected and promised. They all have one thing in common, a better technology came along and stole their user base. The archaic system of imposing value on metal tokens and pieces of paper only survives because governments have the ability to force their continued use. Private technologies have no force of law behind them compelling their use beyond their inherent usefulness. Bitcoin will eventually go the way of the 8-track tape because something new will prove to be more useful. Most of us call that progress; however, Bitcoin can never fail because currently it's working as expected and promised even if it's eventually replaced.

The government part is not very logical. It is very hard or probably impossible for governments to regulate it tightly. They may be able to regulate exchanges but real life exchanges will still take place. Banning bitcoin completely is not possible unless the whole internet is shut down.
The only way for Bitcoin to fail is for everyone to delete their copy of blockchain or simply don't relay it to other nodes. This can only destroy Bitcoin if every single node dies. If there is 100 nodes with up to date blockchain, Bitcoin will not die.

That doesn't make any sense, and you don't know what you're talking about.

If the difficulty was in the trillions, then it would cost thousands of dollars in electricity to mine 1 BTC.  No miner will spend $2000 to mine 1BTC and then sell it for $40.  If miners can't pay their electricity with BTC, then some of them will stop mining, and the remaining miners will become profitable again. 

Plus, the price could never reach $40, because if the price ever hit $100 then I would borrow every penny I could get and spend it all on bitcoin.  And so would a lot of other people.



"No one mining bitcoins" would mean that half this forum died in a disaster, and the rest of the world magically started hating money.

In your imagination, when no one is mining bitcoins, what happened to me and all my computers and all these piles of video cards?

If no one was mining bitcoins, then we could go back to mining with old laptops.  It's not like every asic farm in the world will simultaneously stop, so any downward trend would happen over time and the difficulty would slowly adjust. 

Mass adoption will only occur if there are plenty of tools and exchanges, if a governments ban bitcoin or even make impossible for exchanges to do business it would be enough to jeopardize bitcoin's future, price will collapse and with it the ecosystem.

The network might still be up, and a few trades between trusted parties, but nothing like mass adoption will occur.

Bitcoin is too BIG to fail.
Oops, wait....
Bitcoin is off to a great start!  :)

I was thinking along the same lines. It is already a success, I don't see it failing ever now.

What if bitcoin becomes what is needed as the fix..

wohoho bitcoin will fail? no i guess bitcoin never fail enough

As I told in my previous post, the bitcoin can die if all the miners shut down their machines (but there are also another option, a massive dump, etc... ).
However I don't think all the "miners" shut down their machines instantly in the same "moment".

As long as demand is present, there is no way that bitcoin will fail. And also, if the miners shut down their miners at the same moment, transactions cannot be processed, and thus disabling the network as a whole.

Hard to imagine that bitcoin may fail. But from what I've been reading on this topic it seems that this can indeed come to pass.

If it does, how will it be ???

The Bitcoin Foundation is in position to do some damage, but I don't think Satoshi's original creation will fail.

People invested too much already in bitcoin to let it fall. Bitcoin price may be volatile but I do not think it will reach zero - and thus ultimately die.

Exactly. If for some reason an altcoin replaces BTC (god forbid), BTC would die.

That's what even I was thinking, that if all of a sudden, all the miners shutdown their miners and the txns stop processing, won't it be considered as failure to the whole BTC network as what will make it run if the difficulty suddenly decreases and (not at all possible but) reaches to 0? How will the Blockchain work? Is there any backup by the Foundation?

What if all the stores in the world stopped accepting U.S. Dollars all at the same time? 

Even if everyone around the world stopped mining Bitcoin at the same time, which is impossible under any normal circumstances, the major problem would be waiting for the difficulty to adjust.  Other than that, it wouldn't be a problem at all.  We could all just go back to mining on laptops.

Failure to process transactions also means failure of the coin itself. Well if the damage that's been done is beyond repair, then we might consider it as a failure and may be forced to accept the fact that bitcoin is indeed in its last steps.

But I don't think it will happen sooner or later. Why would miners do that in the first place, simultaneously?

It can help because when the above situation happens, the difficulty will drastically decrease, which means we can go mine by our laptops and pcs to move transactions in the network. But you're correct. Under any normal circumstances, it is impossible to happen.

Well, I definitely know one miner who won't shut down operations. :)
Number of miners coming down will increase the chances of a 51% attack, but definitely won't mean the end of Bitcoin.

bitcoin will never End its Endless Now  btc is still at 250$ from last night

Problem with PayPal and Credit Cards is that they are running with companies which sets the rules. Rules which are defined by goverments and themself. You need to accept it and this can cause a problem. I did not count how many times PayPal force me to accept new terms.
Bitcoins can be send without such oblications.

I don't think it will ever fail. It has a big userbase, and people are all the time creating new uses and applications for Bitcoin.

Even if one miners don't shutdown, if 50% of the network shuts down, a 51% is more likely and transactions would process slowly as the difficulty is too high. Also, difficulty change would take lots of time since difficulty changes every 2016 blocks.

You mean it ain't going to reflect to anything related to BTC if the mining gets shutdown?

Blocks will be slower till 2016 blocks later when the difficulty is adjusted appropriately. I highly doubt 50% of the network would shutdown. Someone is bound to keep on mining to contribute to the network.

If Bitcoin isn't important enough for a lot of people to mine, then it won't be important enough for anyone to try a 51% attack.

You shouldn't think like this with the it's too big to fail line. That's what they said about the banks. If bitcoin was too big to fail the price would likely not be so low as it is now. If bitcoin kept falling it would be too expensive to support so it'd fail if all the miners left or moved on to something better so bitcoin can always fail though I sincerely hope it doesn't.