It may seem stupid now, but at the time people didn't know that bitcoin would be as valuable as it is today. Honestly, the first time I heard about Bitcoin I was thinking "Ponzi scheme" in the back of my mind.

I would be honored to join your delightful campaign. 

Btctalk name:                                TheGodson
Rank:                                            Jr. Member
Current post count:                        57
BTC Address:                                 16tUY3kpYc5kpnRat3Kc6mdX3u5e1NDmmF
Wear appropriate signature:            Absolutely!

Some of you guys seem to doubt OP, but he may actually have $500,000. It isn't unrealistic for a young person to inherit a lot of money and want to know what to do with it. Other scenarios are possible as well. OP is probably young though because someone with that kind of money would have thought about that kind of thing years ago. If OP is old, well, you always have to start somewhere. Since OP wasn't specific, I will assume that the $500,000 is his entire net worth in addition to a house that OP lives in and he has paid off completely. If I am wrong then correct me. If you do have any debts then it would be prudent to eliminate those first.

If I were you I'd invest from $62,500 to $125,000 in Bitcoin. You are on a Bitcoin forum so I'm assuming you probably know a thing or two about Bitcoin and how it works. Since you are asking about investing I wouldn't recommend investing in altcoins or trading. If you want to you probably could look into it at least and see if it is for you, but be careful lots of people probably lose money or win less than if they just bought and held.

The rest of your money I wouldn't even put into cryptocurrency at all. While it may be awesome to be super rich it would suck 100 times more to lose everything on one investment. I believe Bitcoin will be profitable so I definitely put like 12.5% of my net worth in it. However, sometimes life can be a bitch and unexpected things happen.

If you haven't started a Roth IRA you should probably do it. Super cool way to collect capital gains with 0% tax. You should also consider a health savings account or 401K if you have a source of income and assuming you are in a higher tax bracket.

With $200,000ish I would put that into a brokerage account and put a majority of it into something safe such as S&P 500 or Dow Jones. There are some pretty cool ETFs you can find out there. With that $200,000 alone it is safe to say you can make anywhere between $14,000 to $20,000 a year on average which is enough to live comfortably assuming you have a house.

With the remaining $175,000 I would invest in some more risky things such as stocks, possibly some real estate, collectibles, be an angel investor, or start a business. You could even be generous and give some to me if you'd like. 

There are a lot of things you can do with that kind of money. The sky is the limit! 

However, if there aren't people that will spend bitcoin then it has no true value in the world. So overall, it is good to have people that will spend their bitcoin.

In the future I hope bitcoin will advance and find ways to make their transactions cheaper and more efficient.

Regardless of whether bitcoin is to blame it still effects its image. The fact that Bitcoin is used in crime is a bad thing for the world, but actually a good thing for the price. In the future bitcoin will hopefully used more for good rather than evil.

The question or statement in your title doesn't match the subject of what you typed about. I thought you were going to explain why bitcoin is better than other currencies or possibly ask why other people thought that way. To answer the actual question in the subject, I'd say buy and hold.

The grammar nazi in me can't resist. The title should read "Why the future of bitcoin is brighter than any other currency in the world."

I consider my Roth IRA to be my safe form of investment. If you were to invest in Bitcoin I would recommend only doing a small amount. If you are going to be doing a lot of trading while in a low tax bracket it could make sense. You could trade bitcoin on your roth while holding your long term investments in a separate brokerage account. Long term capital gains is 0% if you are on the low end. Meanwhile trading on your roth would be short gains, but those aren't taxed anyway since that is the purpose of a roth. So that would be 0% as well. Basically you get to move money around and pay 0% in taxes.

After a couple of years when you enter a higher tax bracket or/and when bitcoin stabilizes you can switch it around and hold more bitcoin in your brokerage and then have some other investment type in your roth. Some ETFs could be good.

I hope OP is right. I don't think $100,000 will happen in the near future, but I can imagine $5,000 easily. I'm hopeful, but I want to keep things realistic too.

I'm so happy that I bought before August 1. I kept reading in the forums that people were going to sell and rebuy after August 1st and so I decided to get in the action early and boy did it pay off. Was thinking it would and it did. 

Bitcoin is exhilarating and I'm happy to have gotten in on all the fun!

It appears that even among the Bitcoin Cash community they can't decide on the acronym. I use to see BCC. Now I'm seeing BCH and BCC. Google says they are the same thing.

I disagree with OP. I don't think Bitcoin Cash is going anywhere, because it doesn't have the same support Bitcoin has. Only time will tell for sure though. So far it isn't looking good for Bitcoin Cash since it is going down. Bitcoin went up roughly 15% in a single day just recently.

I expect a lot of problems with transactions fees and speeds will be solved over time. I was on vacation for an entire week before the split. I had bought at $2,200ish and looked today and am psyched! 

Bitcoin is going strong and the developers are amazing. Bitcoin Cash probably isn't going anywhere.

You can make a game that has in store purchases using bitcoin. Making a game that has people win bitcoin would be highly illegal. That is how it is for people that live in the US at least. If you live in another country it may or may not be legal.

You could argue that your game is a skill game, but even then it is a dangerous route to tread on.

Oh yeah you're right. I forgot that very important part. You only pay taxes on the gains. Little Caesar's pizzas are worth $6.35 per pizza. 31,500 of them is roughly about $200,000. So you are selling your house for a 400,000 - 200,000 = $200,000 profit and therefore need to pay the capital gains tax on only that $200,000.


I'm thinking that at this time we should enjoy bitcoin as an asset. If it becomes very popular it will probably be recognized as a currency, making income tax come into play instead of the lovely capital gains tax. Enjoy it while you can.

The whole amount counting on the actual rate.

If I traded 31,500 Little Caesar's pizzas for a house of $200,000 and sold it many years later at $400,000? I would have to pay taxes on the house for the $400,000. So for BTC, you would pay the current rate for when you sold it. Since you've held it for years that would be at a long term capital gains rate.

Bitcoin is considered an asset, which means you pay capital gains tax on the earnings. If you hold for more than a year it is considered a long term capital gain. If you trade it regularly it is considered a short term capital gain.

Long term capital gains tax are a much lower rate than short term capital gains tax. Short term capital gains tax is the same as your income tax. Long term capital gains tax is much better. If you make less than $37,950 ($50,800 if you are head of your household) like me then you are taxed at a rate of 0%. That's right 0%. Yeah! Go long term capital gains!

Also, don't forget. If you lose money you can claim it as a deductible for up to $3,500 as a capital loss.

If the amount were 25% per year it certainly wouldn't be static like that. As time goes on other investors would recognize its ability to grow and would buy as well driving up the price to a much lower ROI equilibrium. There is no way that in 20 years it will still be generating 25% returns.

John McAffee is a future eunuch. People that say what he is are living in a fairytale dream world. I'm sorry, they just are. Things like that just don't happen. Too many people on board at this point for that to be a conceivable reality.

So people on here are constantly talking about trading altcoins, bitcoins, and cash. Buying and selling. Selling and buying. Are you guys actually making more money than if you just bought some bitcoin and held?

Be honest.

Do you guys not pay short term capital gains tax?

$148,643.63ish

I give Bitcoin a 21% return on average for 10 years, because I'm optimistic.

1,000,000/(1.21^10) = 148,643.63


For people saying 1 BTC will be worth $500,000. I think they are wayyyy too optimistic. That would be too good to be true. Satoshi himself would have $500,000,000,000. That's 5.56 times Bill Gate's networth. Bitcoins total market cap would be 10.5 trillion dollars. That is how much dollar is in circulation right now! If it is too good to be true, then it is only that way for other people. Since I'm involved in Bitcoin it won't be. (Yeah, that is superstitious. I'm mostly kidding, but a small part of me isn't.)  

You need about 60 bitcoin right now in order to be a millionaire in 10 years.


This is all speculation of course and after all, I'm just a newbie so take my approximation for what it is... an approximation.  

Bitcoin Magazine just posted the breaking news. Here is the link with the video:

http://www.bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/donald-trump-is-satoshi-nakamoto1/



Here is the transcript of that video for those whose flash doesn't work properly>>>


Mark: Greetings Mr. President it was nice of you to join us today for this interview.

Trump: Yes, yes it is. I've been looking forward to this moment for a long time.

Mark: So the word on the block is that you have claimed to be the famous Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of Bitcoin.

Trump: Not claimed, proved. I have proven that I am the creator of Bitcoin. It was a great project. A great thing. And a lot of people weren't expecting it to be such a huge success but it was. We've really come a long way and now a lot of people love Bitcoin.

M: This recent news has shocked quite a few people out there including some influential people in the bitcoin community that have questioned your claims.

T: Well, yeah. A lot of people have underestimated me and now they are probably regretting it. Look Mark, people can either trust these so called "influential" people of the bitcoin community or they can trust me, the founder. I don't even know who or where these "influential" people are. Do they even exist? I think a lot of these people online aren't even real people or they are claiming things that aren't true. If we really get down to it all, it doesn't matter. I created Bitcoin and it was a really needed thing. It was a great idea.

M: Tell me more about what inspired you to create Bitcoin.

T: Hey, I have a lot of money, okay. I mean, I can pretty much buy anything there is. The problem is, is that the government has done things in the past that wasn't so friendly with people's money. People were saying "where's my money?" "where is it going?". They needed something new and Bitcoin was the answer. At first I wanted to name it Trumpcoin, but some of my advisors... Let me tell you, some of my advisors are top men. Like really top men. The best top men you can find... They told me that naming the currency with my name in it could be bad for legal reasons. I did not need that risk at the time. I also had to remain anonymous to keep myself out of trouble.

M: Was that difficult keeping it a secret... and for so long?

T: Absolutely, absolutely. It was very hard. I like being noticed for my achievements, but I had to be smart. The smart thing to do was to be quiet.

M: Some of the viewers might not completely understand Bitcoin and the blockchain technology. Can you explain it for all to understand?

T: It is very simple. Money is electronic and encrypted. People send it to each other to buy things. It travels in an encrypted form on an encrypted platform. The money has to go through these blocks that are chained together to form lots of blocks. These blocks can really stack creating a block chain. They are all encrypted too. I have sent money on so many blocks and they are fast. Nothing is faster than these Bitcoin. The technology is very highly advanced and it is greatly encrypted.

M: What do you think is the best thing about bitcoin?

T: Well, it is very highly encrypted. I think that is just about the best thing there is.

(Equipment falls over in the back of the room making crashing noises. Completely wasted Craig Wright enters the room interrupting the interview).

Craig: I really don't want any more attention or fame. I do not deserve a special honor. I don't want a medal. I don't want glory. I just want to be left alone in my own quiet humble lifestyle. I've only come on camera once again to let you all know this. I am the true inventor of bitcoin and Trump is an imposter. Please world, don't worship me. I'm only a mere mortal like all of you.

T: Why is this man here? I don't understand why he gets to be here. He needs to go. Somebody remove him.

C: I'm here because I F@cking want to be here! I choose to be here at my own will! My reason is my own reason and it is nobody else's d@mn business!

T: You are a pimple dick. What a pimple dick? Am I right Mark? He's a pimple dick.

M: (mumbles incoherently).

(body guards remove Craig.)

M: I'm sorry about that.

T: Yeah, that was pretty embarrassing for you. I don't even know why you let him in the building. That guy was such a pimple dick.

M: It won't be happening again... Before we finish up here, I'd like to ask about how you proved you were the founder of bitcoin?

T: I had the first block.

M: You had the...

T: ...I had the first block. If you have the first block then you have the main one. I have the first block. No other blocks can be made without the first block, because they are encrypted off of the first block. That block is mine. A lot of people have been agreeing with my proof. They've said it is the best proof they've seen. These are from some highly informative people too that understand encryption. These people are the most highly regarded.

M: Thank you for your time Mr. President, it was an honor having you on our show.

T: You're welcome. I really enjoyed it. You've done a great job on this show Mark. Your ratings have been definitely improving and it is a really great thing. It was great to be here. I had fun here.

 

I'd move it into a paper wallet. They are the most secure. Don't lose It though. Another option is to move it to an offline wallet stored on your computer. I'm paranoid though and went with the safest which is the paper wallet route.