i am not looking to make a huge profit, just modest gains and minimal chance of loss. Any altcoins?

Everybody says, Crypto is the future and we must believe in it. Apart from losses due to hacking and vulnerability, do you think there are any other negatives of this market?

It just intrigues me since, anything that is projected as 'only good' seems, too good to be true. Or I am just overwhelmed?

There is this widespread notion that Bitcoin mining is detrimental to the environment, because of all the electricity it consumes. At a quick superficial glance, it seems logical. But in reality, it is not exactly the case.

Who mines Bitcoin and what kind of electricity is used for Bitcoin mining?

Currently, China accounts for about 71% of the mining hash power in the world. The mining farms are based in Western China. But why there?

Hydro power plants have been created in the past for the production of aluminium. Electricity is 60% of the cost to aluminium production through smelting. The aluminium market is oversaturated for years now and China, being a top producer, has cut the production. So they have a huge surplus of hydro energy that is not utilized. For simplicity, imagine a hydro power plant in the fields, surrounded by nothing else. And hydro energy is clean energy. It doesn’t kill trees.

However, the technological infrastructure for transporting the energy to regions that actually need it, is lacking. This overcapacity of energy can’t just be sent to China’s bustling urban centers. Actually it can, but electricity will have to travel long distances, which equals huge losses. Therefore, it would be more economical for a power consumer to be closer to the source of the power. This is where the mining farms and their warehouses have been built. Right next to the close-to-useless hydro power plants. So the majority of miners are using failed energy projects and not investing in new ones.

In order to mine Bitcoin, all you need is mining hardware, internet connection and a simple software and now the unutilized energy is used towards creating a decentralized blockchain system. Unused clean hydro energy is entering the global economy. This is the real mining! At the core of it, we have a Chinese river allowing a rural farmer in Africa get paid for the cotton he produces through the Bitcoin network. The Chinese rivers help a Filipino immigrant in USA to send his payroll to his relatives in the Philippines for cents of a dollar, rather than for a 40% commission fee via Western Union.

But Bitmain and the other pools are making so much money out of it. Is it fair?

Well, gold diggers and oil rigs are also making tons of money. Is it fair? Traditionally, the resource mining business has always been one of the most lucrative. It is at the top of the supply chain. In order for us to go to a gas station and fuel our car tank, someone had to drill that oil first. Gas has value for us as end users. We travel faster than on horses. In order for the gas station to make profit on retail prices, they need to buy that gas from someone first and so on. There is value for everyone in the chain, provided that the product or resource is actually needed.

The value exchange is pretty simple

Unutilized clean energy coming from rivers that doesn’t pollute the air on one hand. And the maintaining of a global decentralized payment system on the other.

So the real question is: “Is a decentralized, open, alternative, state-free monetary system needed?” For the average citizen in a developed country, it may still not be. But for billions underbanked that is life-changing.

A system that allows for 24/7 payments with no borders and close to zero fees. An alternative system to fiat money, that allows people in countries like Venezuela to protect their money and assets in rough times. A system that provides banking for billions in regions where there is no banks.

Conclusion

Unutilized clean hydro energy is being transformed into a global, borderless, open, decentralized, alternative financial system. The air is not being polluted. But the annual profits of banks are! And they will keep pondering how detrimental Bitcoin mining for humanity is. Is this the truth? Decide for yourself.

I would be happy to hear your thoughts on the subject...

This is my new article, I am posting it here for discussion, thx for your comments. original article medium link is https://medium.com/@paul.fabozzi/what-makes-bitcoin-so-special-6734b54f689

What Makes Bitcoin So Special
And why a “better” version of Bitcoin won’t replace it so easily

Bitcoin, an invention by the anonymous cypherpunk Satoshi Nakamoto is the worlds first successful cryptocurrency. Prior to Bitcoin it wasn’t possible to pay anyone on the internet without having intermediaries or middle men involved. Shortly after its introduction many variants of it arrived on the scene called altcoins, with promises of faster confirmations, better scaling, better privacy features, and with more robust smart contract support. However Bitcoin holds far more value than any of the newcomers. Where does this value come from, and why do so many consider Bitcoin far superior? This article will explore some of the properties of bitcoin and how they come together to make something truly unique, and not very easy to duplicate.

Decentralization

There would be nothing special about Bitcoin if it were not decentralized. Its that its decentralized that gives it such appeal, nobody is in control, and that’s good. Its natural to want to solve problems by centralizing the solution, but as you do this you create centralized power, which is basically what bitcoin was invented to replace. Bitcoin was invented to be the peoples money, not a crypto PayPal.

Decentralization is not always black and white, or yes/no. It’s a scale, and this scale is always under constant pressure. Sometimes centralization attempts are hidden from view, disguised as scaling upgrades. Bitcoin has resisted these well-coordinated attacks on the network successfully.

Bitcoin was born in the wild of the cypherpunk internet back corners, and has grown decentralized from there organically. Its, still anonymous inventor (Satoshi Nakamoto) disappeared shortly after starting up the network, and since then the software that runs the nodes are developed and maintained by thousands of volunteers and contributors. Even its development is the most decentralized.

Decentralization also means there is nobody to ask permission to use it, nobody who can sensor it, no way to keep transactions inside real world borders, nobody who has ability to seize funds or reverse transactions, nobody to ask permission to start a new application or startup on it. These qualities are all features, not bugs.

Bitcoin has the highest overall level of decentralization among all cryptocurrencies.

Immutability

One of Bitcoins most valuable properties is the immutability of its blockchain. To be immutable means it cannot be changed, and having an unchangeable ledger is something that has never been possible before bitcoin. This is where bitcoin and all of the other coins are different, none of the other coins or altcoins can claim to have a truly immutable ledger or blockchain. Bitcoins consensus algorithm is what regulates and controls how bitcoin works, and it’s very difficult to change consensus without all the interested parties agreeing. There is no president or founder who can wave their magic wand and force consensus changes upon the network like all the other altcoins have. There is no one person, or group of people who are in control of bitcoin, and that’s good.

A certain level of inertia in regards to the consensus algorithm exists in bitcoin that is beneficial to its immutability. You generally don’t want to have a system that can be changed very quickly on a whim containing Billions of USD worth of value. For instance, if it was decided by the miners that the mining reward needed to be doubled, such a proposal would be met with great resistance from the other interested parties, and would fail. (*Bitcoins interested parties include bitcoin holders, wallet software developers, miners, developers, merchants, application developers, and others. )

As a side effect, while bitcoin adoption grows it will be harder and harder to get network upgrades into consensus to support increased scaling, and improved privacy features that are on the developers roadmap. Eventually it will be impossible to change the consensus algorithm and it will be locked in stone.

· Bitcoin miners provide the processing power that secures the Bitcoin blockchain with 50,599,447,508,000,000(as of this writing) SHA256 Hashes Per Second. This hashing power significantly contributes to the security and immutability of the Bitcoin blockchain.

· To be able to keep a secure global immutable ledger without having any intermediaries involved is a tremendous advancement in modern financial technology.

· Participants in such a network should also expect reduced counter-party risk exposure.

Antifragility

Antifragility is a property of systems that increase in capability, resilience, or robustness as a result of stressors, shocks, volatility, noise, mistakes, faults, attacks, or failures. — Wikipedia.org

Bitcoin has been under constant attack ever since its early days. A network that, as of this writing, holds $110 billion in value makes for a big honeypot. As a result bitcoin has developed a certain immune system that continues to improve into the future.

• One of the early fixes to the early bitcoin protocol was to make the script language turing incomplete, which means you cannot write very complex smart contracts on its blockchain. This was removed from the bitcoin protocol because it introduced a broad attack surface. The removal of turing complete scripts from bitcoin hardened it and protected it from many possible attacks. It was decided early in Bitcoins development that it would favor safety and security over flexibility. Many other adjustments have been enacted along the way in response to the constant barrage of attacks.

To say that bitcoin has survived and thrived in this environment is an understatement. Bitcoin has never once suffered a hack to its protocol, not once has an invalid transaction been included into the blockchain, not once has a transaction been reversed after suitably being recorded onto the blockchain. Sure, many have had there bitcoin hacked, but its important to know that all of those cases are of people being sloppy with their private keys. Bitcoin was not hacked, your keys were stolen. If you are sloppy with the combination to your safe, don’t be upset when you find it empty. Not your keys, not your bitcoin.

I expect that bitcoin will continue to adapt and evolve in response to future threats.

Scarcity

Bitcoin could possibly be the most scarce asset on earth. There will only ever be barely 21 million bitcoin in existence. Taking into account its decentralized nature, and its immutability, and the inert nature of its protocol development its hard to see this ever changing. With over 7 billion humans on earth, there are not many to go around. fortunately each of those bitcoin can be broken into 100,000,000 units called Satoshi.

Unlike gold when the demand for bitcoin quickly rises, the miners cannot just increase the supply in response to increased demand. There is no way to just mine more bitcoin in response to demand. This dynamic along with bitcoins schedule of diminishing mining rewards will contribute to its rarity as adoption grows. This could produce a market cap many multiples of where we are today in a short period of time.

Many of the altcoins have no coin cap, or have such weak security model that the cap can be changed by decree.

These properties are conducive to the bitcoin network being a great store of value outside the traditional monetary system.

The lightning Network

In early 2018 a second layer network on top of bitcoin began to run, the Lightning Network. This new network promises to solve many of the scaling challenges that are inherent with recording every single global transaction onto the blockchain. The Lightning Network basically allows for many off-chain transactions to take place that are periodically settled on-chain.

The Lightning Network also easily allows for micro transactions, streaming money applications, and a new kind of transaction called atomic swaps, swap Bitcoin for Litecoin without an exchange in a trustless environment. Many other applications are being built on top of the lightning network, many more still have not been thought up yet.

Further when making lightning transactions there is never a need to wait 10 minutes for transactions to confirm into a block, like you would when making regular on-chain bitcoin transactions.

With a good lightning wallet, and a few bucks worth of bitcoin in a payment channel you (And everyone else on earth) will be able to get that allusive cup of coffee every morning with bitcoin and not break the network.

The Lightning Network is just one of many possible layer 2 networks.There are also plans for a second layer network www.rsk.co that will support rich ethereum style smart contracts (turing complete) with bitcoin(BTC) as the token. With all the new capabilities made possible by the 2017 segregated witness upgrade to bitcoin, its possible that many nich cryptocurrency applications could be handled on a second layer using bitcoin as its token.

In Conclusion

In modern-day times its natural to think that if something is brand new, just wait and a better, faster, cheaper version will be out soon enough. This is certainly a contributing factor to the allure of altcoins. However Bitcoin has developed in a way that may be impossible for it to be replaced. It seems that the really important properties don’t come along when its copied.

Bitcoin is an independent Cryptocurrency that no other third party takes advantage of transactions from two sides. This is a peer to peer transaction conducted by sellers and buyers only. Cryptocurrency transactions do not need to be identified or verified by the recipient of the funds when the funds are sent, that is what makes many people choose to use bitcoin.

Does the government mix in managing transactions for each user?

If the government mixes in managing transactions, will they take advantage of every transaction

What is your opinion.?

Money is what the society accepts to be money. Human history has seen so many transformations when it comes to the subject of money.From barter trade to fiat money and now digital currency. But some nations are so rigid to change.well they will all regret soon because no country can stop cryptocurrency.

I am reading somewhere that Bitcoin and other crypto currencies illegal in India as per Indian central bank announcement. In some other place i am seeing  RBI advises caution on its use, bitcoin is not illegal in India. Which one is true ?? Any clarification about this?

Price manipulation is done by using many ways.Publishing speculative news in favour of boosting bullish trend is a way.Here on the below link,we could see that news sites continuously release news that bitcoin price is to boom.If we see such moves,we should be cautious about investing otherwise we may get fooled and we might have to regret for our wrong investment.Don't let news media to decide your fortune.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/9dimq2/headlines_two_days_ago_this_is_how_market/

I reflect on the fact that lack of regulation in the field of crypto currency, gives wide opportunities for scam projects. And it will not be possible to regulate the cryptocurrency, no matter how much the goverments want to do it. In the fact that in the world of crypto, lots of scammers and they remain unpunished, I see one big plus.

People will be forced to learn to be more insightful, calculating and rational or will be scammed. Protection from the state decrease our instinct of self-preservation and slowed our development.

Crypto currency will make the next generation of people smarter.

Let's discuss this topic.

 

Because even tho i got just $4 dollars he felt really good because i know if I could get any money out this, it means it can only get better and I could probably get thousands of dollars from it

Hello everyone,

Recently we see a big panic about Bitcoin, people do not know anything beyond this cryptocurrency and follow the herd.
Very soon people will realize that the future of money is a blockchain but no a Bitcoin.

Bitcoin has many drawbacks, slow transactions, high transfer fees, most of the funds are held by legal authorities such as FBI and Interpol and governments such as China and others.
These are just a few of the disadvantages that Bitcoin has.

This does not mean that the Bitcoin currency will stop rising in the near future, but not for long future.

What about the long term?

- Litecoin will not exceed the $1000
- Etherum will rise up to $10,000 - $15,000
- Dashcoin - will rise up to $5,000
- Ripple - a great project, but will not exceed the $5
- Monero - will rise up to $5,000-$12,000
- Monaco (Tokens) - a very good project will pass the $100

For any new suggestions, You can write here.

Bitcoin is a revolution currency but bitcoin is a fairly inefficient payment network. The latter is a perfectly fine consequence of the former. If people turn this on its head and try to market bitcoin as a payment rail where the currency is an unfortunate requirement, it would be immediately out competed in the market by better payment systems which are fundamentally more scalable than the decentralized Bitcoin system or which don't require costly and unpredictable currency conversion.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/57zhd2/another_ridiculous_claim_from_lukejr_in_the/d8wb4hl

One year ago Bitcoin's network was consuming as much energy as Ireland. Now it has apparently doubled and now it is consuming 1% of the world's total electricity consumption.

https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption

This, in a time when the world is trying to reduce carbon footprints to avoid or slow down global warming.
Is Bitcoin sustainable as it is?
I don't think so - in fact I'm sure it is not. There is a limit to insanity.
More data here:

https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption

What is likely to happen next? Which are your thoughts?

Here's how I have been able to change people's opinion from being haters of Bitcoin to thinking about buying some and even some actually buying some.

I follow these 3 steps/rules that I made:

1. Don't get aggressive:

A lot of bitcoin denier get VERY aggressive about how bitcoin is a scam, don't get aggressive. If they are too aggressive and mad, just change the subject for the moment. No need to waste time.

2. Make them doubt their convictions.


Make them doubt that bitcoin is a scam or doomed to fail. A couple of examples that I use are:

      - This is comparable to when people wouldn't want to use their credit cards online because they were scared of fraud.
   
      - Bitcoin is far from reaching it's full potential, mass adoption takes a lot of time. This is comparable to when Amazon just sold books or Google was nothing compared to Yahoo.. remember Yahoo? (laughs)

      - Crypto currencies are the next steps in the evolution of payment : Barter -> Precious Metals -> Paper Money -> Plastic Cards -> Digital Money

3. Mention the Coinbase $10 when you buy $100 in Bitcoin and then let it simmer...

Let them think about it, they will so their research or ask around. Most will come back to you to get your code for the referral bonus.

Do you have other arguments that you use? I'd love to know.



BTC: 3LcmdDp52oShwv9UTy55vX69JxEibEoKrw
ETH: 0xe822Dc108cb78C9137BF2D92429449B97F1415E0

A decade ago when bitcoin was introduced was like a alien technology as it was very hard to digest for all the people that how could one currency be so beneficial then they started calling it a Ponzi scheme or scam and then there were very few people who believed on it and now they are the bitcoin billionaires so now there are many people who are in bitcoin for money only but they need to change their attitude towards bitcoin as bitcoin is the game of patience and wisdom and the money minded could not be patience.

My suggestion to everyone would be to be calmed, don't be greedy, have a patience in everything. Success will definitely touch your feet, never ever quit. Bitcoin's price is always volatile, as we see it's dump price and the market is red, never lose hope.




Always remember this one " He who quits does not succeed, he who succeeds does not quit".

90% of those who are talking about death of bitcoin are the same people who are trying so hard to buy bitcoin when it drops a small 5% so that they can accumulate a tiny bit more.
The rest 10% are the newbies who fall for the 90% FUD and are scared of the situation.

Bitcoin is digital currency revolutionizing the finance Industry which many predict to be the currency of the future.

We live in global village that comprises of the educated ( Digital age) and the uneducated(stone age ) .the stone age is the era of the early men who are still alive and also practicing old cultural ways passing it from generation till date ,they have not been privileged to read and write .
The Digital age  have maximize the useful of the Bitcoin technology for easy and trans border transaction etc but the stone age  have not been able  to reap this benefit Bitcoin have to offer  due to their poor background in education . Let's take a proper example in the Africa continent we have more than 50% who where not eligible to go to school due to lack of funding and infrastructures within their territory.

The worst senero is that they can't read or write which makes it difficult for them to operate the internet since Bitcoin transactions are done on the on internet.they prefer to use the traditional paper currency  they feel it is comfortable  for them.
This is the major reason why Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency is yet to be adopted by the masses.

How can these set of population be carry along to use the Bitcoin as mode of financial transaction if Bitcoin is the said "future currency"?

There is no project on the crypto space to address this unforeseen challenges.

Deliberations and ideas are welcome on how the group of personal can be integrated in the system.

Today I read this article.....

https://www.ccn.com/bitcoins-electricity-usage-could-power-all-of-austria-in-the-future/

It says in 2018 Bitcoin mining may consume 0.5% of world’s electricity in 2018.
I think this is because the mechanism "PoW" of Bitcoin. It costs a lot of power. And it looks like this statistics only includes Bitcoin, but there are still other coins can be mined.
I am sure for some people this is not environment-friendly and this could be used as the reason to restrict Bitcoin.

Will this affect the future of Bitcoin? or will there be any new energy-saving mining method for Bitcoin or other coins? How do you think about this?

What is your  opinion as per  Warren buffet statement, he is a wealthy giant globally he told CNBC on Wednesday the recent craze over bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies won't end well. "In terms of cryptocurrencies, generally, I can say with almost certainty that they will come to a bad ending,"
Am really scared hope the end is not near. I want to hear from knowledgeable individual what the future holds.