Let's say you were the 2nd person to mine bitcoins besides Satoshi himself. Every time someone else mined bitcoins besides you and Satoshi you bought them. The going rate back in 2009 to January 2010 was $1 for 1400 so let's say you bought every bitcoin besides your own mined and Satoshi's from January 3rd 2009 ( the first mined bitcoin by Satoshi ) to February 2010 and then kept buying for the few months every time someone mined bitcoins you asked if you could buy them. Then when Laszlo did the pizza deal, you would've bought him a lot of pizzas, then when SmokeTooMuch tried to sell 10,000 for $50 and another guy tried to sell 22,000 bitcoins for like $70-$80 you would've bought that... basically every time it came available. You'd probably have about $500-$1000 into bitcoin by now... and you'd own like 5 million bitcoins... no one else would bother to mine them then, you'd own all the rest of the bitcoins besides Satoshi's who disappears in 2010 and then you disappear in 2011 with your 5 million, no one remembers what bitcoin is and you'd have a net worth of 0! yay

I've been in and out of the bitcoin community since early 2013 when prices were just $58 per coin and I own some btc as well as read about it daily. I'm an investor at heart and there are still too many obstacles for bitcoin to overcome to ever become anything besides speculation, and this is why the price will ultimately fall, I can easily see bitcoin falling to prices under $300 again or smaller. Why do I say that?

Bitcoin fees. As the blockchain reward gets smaller and smaller and more transactions keep coming in the fees will keep rising. Right now for me to send any amount of bitcoin on coinbase it's over $11.41 to do so, of course there are other wallets like blockchain with smaller fees. But right now the system is so back logged the main ones being sent through are priority. To break this down a bit better, there are very very few people using bitcoin at the moment compared to the world. I meet people on a daily basis that never heard of it, and I meet a few that have heard of it but have no idea what it really is. The majority of the people I do come across couldn't tell you the first thing about bitcoin. That's just the start of the issue, if bitcoin is having such a backlog right now, what if it was as widespread as Visa or mastercard? I read that bitcoin can barely do 12 transactions per second, while visa handles around 2,000 per second. Even if the 2mb segwitx2 came into play, it still couldn't handle a fraction of what Visa handles.

I personally run a business where I buy and sell products online. The warehouse that I purchase from luckily takes credit cards for online payments, which brings me to my next point. I have a travel rewards card, and I earn over $150-$180 a month buying items for my business. Not only do I use this for my business, but I use it for my day to day needs from groceries, gas, everything. There are many times when I am at the store and my bill will come to $110 for example, even if I have $200 in cash in my wallet, I won't touch it. I'll get my rewards card and then use the cash to pay the rewards card down. Why would I make a purchase at all using cash when I have a rewards card that actually gives me money back and free traveling? Bitcoin can never offer this. I've already earned over $850 dollars, which will pay for my plane ticket to Asia early next year. All this because I was shopping.

Fees and wait time. Let's say I decided I will stop trying to earn free rewards and I am going to just go ahead and start buying my items in bitcoin because free traveling doesn't sound appealing anymore. Let's say I am at Walmart and I want to check out immediately, I transfer my money to Walmarts wallet, now not only am I losing any rewards, but now I am the one responsible for paying the fee to transfer to them, and if there is a delay in the system I may be asked to wait for an hour... or two... or three? until my transaction is confirmed? no thanks, why are we speculating on this for our future?

So what if the roles are we reversed and we asked Walmart to pay our transfer fees to them to make transactions. First, we have to truly understand how retail works. If you were to go to a big company like Pepsi or Nabisco and say "hey I have a great new design for the oreo's you sell but it costs 0.05 cents more than what you're paying now" you'll be leaving without a sale. Because in retail half a cent in production means everything, you're talking billions of costumers and 0.05 cents adds up, quick. Walmart would never agree to pay the fees associated with bitcoin, they must come down to match the fees of visa and mastercard, and frankly, that is never going to happen. They could not even come close. Not only is Visa destroying Bitcoin on a transaction speed level, but their fees are very very small compared to bitcoin, even if a transaction fee was reduced to say 45 cents, it is still less on average than what it costs to take a debt/credit card. And the sad reality is, the opposite is going to happen as miners need to make up more money by charging higher fees as the mining reward gets cut in half again. The thing is with bitcoin is everyone is looking to get rich, and they're looking to get rich in USD ( or their fiat currency ) not in bitcoin, and human greed is a funny thing. It can't be controlled. People always want more. Companies are the same way but governments control that they are not price gouging and have set max fees allowable to be charged to the retailer to avoid that greed. Something governments couldn't put in place on decentralized human greed.

So now you have higher fees, longer wait times, no customer service if an issue occurs, loss of money if you are hacked, or if another exchange closes down... let's look at the scale of bitcoin and we can see that it is not a currency and never will be used as one. People will always use cash, or rewards credit cards. Plus the people that can't even figure it out, I mentioned in my last article how my dad can't even turn on a computer much less figure out how to actually buy a bitcoin and use it. That's a good portion of adults 50+

Environment concerns. As most of us read recently Bitcoin uses more electricity in mining, than the entire country of Nigeria, and puts out more carbon dioxide than Ecuador. Again, we look at how small bitcoin actually is, and we must see if it does keep growing, there will be environmentalist going crazy over the actual harm it is doing to our planet. Even on this small level of bitcoin, we're probably removing years off our planet as it is. When you think we're using more energy than entire countries just to mine what? bitcoin? what is it and is it really worth hurting our planet over? our planet is probably already going to be destroyed in the next 1000 years, are we not thinking about our future generations and just worrying about getting some fake internet currency that we're willing to risk our future generations over it by destroying our planet sooner than we already are? Something has to be done, and something will be done. If bitcoin keeps growing, if governments aren't worried about bitcoin taking over their currency as it is, they will see it as hurting our planet and stop it so it stops the carbon footprint.

Many say governments have no control over bitcoin, and the reality is they do. Most people are law abiding citizens and won't want to risk going to jail or being fined for dealing in cryptocurrencies. I have heard the argument many times that if a country bans it, it will only fuel the fire more. But the case is not true, I personally would not be holding bitcoins at all if it were illegal, and many others wouldn't either. There are tons of ways to make money, and if the speculation is gone that this is the way of the future, so goes the price as well. Retailers would never accept it, and you could truly do nothing with it, and at the end of the day you're holding a piece of air that doesn't even give you dividends.

Last piece of this article - Jamie Dimon and others are not "scared" of bitcoin and it doesn't mean you're onto something when a high financial person disses it. I will say Jamie came on a little too strong by calling it a fraud. I don't think bitcoin is a fraud or a ponzi-scheme, but there is really no threat to the financial system with bitcoin. The fact is, we're a regulated world, bitcoin is not regulated, therefore there are no employees, no one to help you with when you have questions, and no help, period. Meaning you and your wife want to buy a house, but the banks are all gone because of bitcoin (let's pretend) where do you go to get a mortgage to buy this house? or car? you see, banks make a good portion of their money on the interest you pay on your loans. The majority of people will not accept bitcoin for their homes, assuming you own enough bitcoin to even buy a house without getting a mortgage. ( which isn't most of you ) So now this automatically brings banks back into the picture, because the reality is, we need loans. Personal loans, mortgages, car loans, etc. The average person just doesn't make enough money to buy a house, and while a few did get rich enough to buy homes off of bitcoin, that reality will come to an end eventually. ( if it hasn't already ) So Jamie probably isn't fearing bitcoin because he knows people will always need loans. I don't see the bitcoin bank loaning me any money. But if anyone gets a hold of Satoshi and finds out how I can apply for a loan, please reply

In this article, I'm trying not to mention all the downsides to bitcoin, like all the criminals it inspired and all the other things that are bad with bitcoin I mentioned in my last article. I'm just trying to be realistic. I want people to open their eyes and realize that this is not going to be revolutionary, it's interesting, I also find some of the things interesting like who really is Satoshi and Laszlo doing 10,000 bitcoin pizza deals. The old days were interesting and I've read over all the old articles just for fun. But as interesting as it is, it's not revolutionary, it's not the next big currency and it's definitely not an investment tool.

Thanks for reading. Your comments and opinions will all be read and highly appreciated.

Hi, I've been studying Bitcoin for a very long time. The pros and cons, the things I like and dislike about it. The things that make bitcoin what it is today. I'll say that I have been interested by Bitcoin for a very long time. I used to chat heavily in a site called Wireclub. I spent probably way too much time there, I saw someone mention a cool new currency called bitcoin back in 2013. Everyone pretty much ignored what the guy said but me. I'm curious by nature about anything and when he said "new currency" I decided I had to check into this. Given, by 2013 it was already over 4 years old. But the price was at $58 or so I believe. I remember thinking that seems quite high for one coin.

I decided to do a lot of research about it, I told my wife at the time about it, she had no interest and told me I was wasting my time. I read and read for 3 days straight, trying to figure out how it worked and what it was. I thought about buying a mining machine off eBay and starting to mine it, then I decided that probably wouldn't be a good idea because I couldn't get any certain answer to how many coins a machine would mine in a month. I decided in the end that Bitcoin was a fad and it wouldn't last and that the price was ridiculous at $58 a coin... and of course looking back now compared to today, the spike is nowhere near as high as it is now, but if you put a coin at $14 a coin in January and $58 by March, that's a pretty big spike and I thought it was too risky to invest at that price. I researched how you got no dividends from it ( as if you invested in stocks you would receive dividends ) and that basically it was not a stable coin.

After those 3 days I would do periodic checkups on bitcoin and of course I saw when it hit over $1,000 and remembered when it was $58 a coin and kicking myself for not investing, then of course it fell again back down to the $200-400 range again by 2015 and I thought the peak had come and gone and nothing would ever happen, so again I refused to invest at a $200-$400 per coin valuation. I just thought it was beyond ridiculous.

Skip forward to today, I see no potential in Bitcoin's future. I have followed it and read a lot about it over the years from 2013, and I see it more as a fad that will go away in the future. Everyone praises the fact that it's decentralized and that the blockchain technology, my answer to that is "so?" it's kind of ridiculous that anyone would put their money into this long term. There are so many downsides to bitcoin and so many scammers looking to steal your coins. You have bitcoin hackers, you have eBay hackers...

eBay? so I decided with this crazy 4k plus valuation I'd buy some and sell it on eBay, I sell on there all the time anyway and never have any issues. So I first started with this great deal someone was trying to sell 1 bitcoin for $3,000 so I bought it but the ad said "do not pay, contact me first" I decided to listen and he told me to buy $3,000 worth of iTune gift cards and give him the codes and he'd give me 1 bitcoin. Of course the man had over 2,000 feedbacks and 100% and I knew he had been hacked immediately, so I reported it. I got a message from eBay confirming it. Then I decided to sell bitcoin on eBay since I saw others doing it, I bought 0.1 Satoshi and decided I'd sell it and make some profit when/if it goes up, and it did. So I listed it and 3 times I had buyers buy from me and all 3 had been eBay members since 2000-2001 and very broken disgusting English. All 3 had been hacked and I had to refund all 3 their money. I was contacted by all 3 and was told "Sorry I was hacked, I didn't order any Bitcoin" of course I required them to show me an ID before I sent any anyway. Plus does anyone need to be reminded about Silk road?

Okay, before I ramble on anymore about stories of why bitcoin is terrible and my history with bitcoin over the years

1. I think the currency is too volatile to be considered a currency - I've seen it jump $200 in any direction in less than one hour. I can't go to a car dealership and purchase a car for $50,000 and then by the time it comes to transfer the BTC the guy tells me "oh Bitcoin dropped $200 bucks a coin while you're in here, you have to pay more now..." "uh?" If I go in with USD $50,000 I'll never have to worry about my $50,000 USD fluctuating that much.

2. Nothing should be worth 0.001 USD in 2009-2010 and be worth $4,xxx in 2017... no stock has ever performed that great, and with stock you OWN a piece of the company. I can get dividends, I get reports, less volatile. I hate Amazon wholeheartedly. I think the company is ridiculous and overpriced, and do I have an issue with their valuation on stock? yes I do but at least you own a piece of the company when you buy it, you have something that matters. If you own enough stock in the company, you can even make decisions for the company. You will never have a say in Bitcoin no matter how many you own, which is why things like forks in the system happen with the new and improved Bitcoin cash, which is also a fake currency fighting with this fake currency.

3. The only thing people can say about Bitcoin is it's decentralized and the blockchain... that's all you got? Decentralized is a bad thing, it means the moment the government ( which controls you btw ) decides eh... we don't want bitcoin anymore, banned! ( it happened in Bolivia, Bangladesh etc ) and it could happen in the USA or other countries if they started to feel threatened by it. It's not safe to have too much invested in it. What is backing it anyway? gold? and what is a bitcoin worth and what is gold worth? it's only worth what a consumer is willing to pay for it and if people come to realize Bitcoin is worthless ( it'll happen, just when is the question ) it'll come crashing down and the people that paid $4,000-($10x,xxx?) a coin will feel the pain when they lose everything.

4. Who really knows about Bitcoin? If it wasn't for me 90% of my friends would have never heard of it. My mom wouldn't have, my girlfriend... most people still do not know about Bitcoin in 2017 and the majority that DO know about it don't even understand how it works. You're trying to take a mindset of the AVERAGE person and make them understand something that's quite complex and difficult to learn to the average persons mind. Most people I know are tech savvy yet couldn't tell me the first thing on how to buy a bitcoin or even what a bitcoin is. What about the ones with the most money in the world? the baby boomers? Hal Finney was a rare case my friends, the average baby boomer knows nothing about BTC and how to operate a smartphone for that matter. I consider myself a highly intelligent person but I think it'd be difficult to pay for my groceries or restaurant bill with it. Especially since it's not like a credit/debit card. If my food/service is trash and I want a refund? It's not as simple as just pulling my debit card out or even better, handing me cash back. I just don't understand how it would be easier for me to pay with Bitcoin than it would be swiping a debit card.

5. Debit/credit card is always gonna win. I wanted to get a furnace installed in one of my rental properties a year ago, the man told me it'd be $1,500 dollars but he wanted $1,000 upfront. I was very leery about spending that kind of money upfront but he had a trusted company from reviews I read online, so I asked if he took credit, he said yes. I paid and he said he'd have it in within 3 days. 3 days later he's like "hey uh something came up, I need $250 more... can you do cash? I said no I can do $250 on credit though" he goes "okay that works" So now I have $1,250 invested in this guy. He never calls me again, I called many times no answer. I called my credit card company after a week of not hearing from him and they refunded me all $1,250. If he had asked for me to do it in Bitcoin I would be out my money. There is no way to get my money back

6. What if I send to the wrong Bitcoin address by accident? ( it happens btw ) my money where does it go? it's gone. How can something SO GREAT be so flawed? And what if I was really stupid and those 3 people that ordered my 0.01 BTC from me got me and I sent 0.01 to each? Could I call Satoshi Nakamoto and be like "hey, they got me! lol can you refund me since those scammers did that?... oh wait what Satoshi... you're gone? where did you go?!?!" Exactly, no customer support. PayPal was the one that helped my buyers out from the scammers. PayPal had me covered and them covered. If I mess up with Bitcoin it's gone.

7. Bitcoin isn't as anonymous as you think. I read an article earlier this year that stated the main things that attracted people to Bitcoin in general were not even in place anymore... no fees? gone. Not only gone, but as the prices go up, the fees will rise. Anonymous? not as much as it used to be. There were other things that changed as well, I forget now. I'm sure many of you know though

8. People still compare this to real money, because in the end 95% of people invested in bitcoin aren't in it for the long haul, they're in it so the price will jump a few hundred USD and they'll cash out with their profits. Of course that works great if you bought in at $1,000 and bought 20 coins and then it jumped to $2,500 and you cashed out and made $30,000 profit.. but that's the point, you made $30,000 USD profit. You can now use that $30,000 to buy a car or put a down payment on a nice house somewhere. Not with your bitcoin. I am a real estate investor and I mainly focus on buying foreclosures. I have to show my checking account with proof of funds every time I want to buy a property. I can't say "I have $30,000 USD and 15.2 bitcoins, will the bank take that? no.. what? why!!!! this is crazy!" The bank wants to see what I have in USD, hell they'd even accept euro probably. As long as it's a real currency. The majority of people don't accept Bitcoin as real currency, just because YOU do and everyone on this forum does, doesn't mean IT IS. I can call bottle caps real currency, and in Fallout New Vegas, they are... and will they be if a Fallout happens? who knows, but I know right now Walmart won't accept my bottle caps even if I call it currency, but they won't accept my Bitcoin either, go figure.

9. Hackers - people break into people's wallets and steal bitcoins all the time, and of course you have the big names that got robbed like last year Bitfinix, MtGox and many more to come. Of course there are issues anywhere online. Hackers exist either way you look at it. But if I am hacked and someone steals $50,000 from my bank account, I can get that back after I prove it was stolen and it was not me. If someone hacks my Bitcoin wallet and steals 10 coins? well... you're out of luck! Good luck though!

So in reality, most people that use Bitcoin are scammers, of course you have the investors looking to get rich quick, and many did thanks to this boom. I am NOT saying this is a bad short term investment. I did buy 0.1 BTC because I am trying to make a few bucks off this. I buy stock, real estate. I'm an investor by heart and I've watched it go from early this years under $1,000 price to over $4,000 in a HUGE spike that is obviously a bubble if I've ever seen it. I really think the beginnings of Bitcoin were cool, I find it mysterious and cool how Satoshi Nakamoto just disappeared. But that's my natural being, I always like mysterious. I find the beginnings with SmokeTooMuch and his postings, and Laszlo's pizza deal to be interesting. I think it's cool how Theymos sold 15,000 at 0.003 cents each and Gavin's 5 BTC faucet. I'm not saying all Bitcoin is bad, I'm not against it, but I do see it falling, and falling hard. People are only in it now to get rich quick and they want to get rich quick in USD not in bitcoin, the average person only sees their currency grow in USD, no one buys Wal-mart stock to just own it, they buy it because of the potential they can make in USD, the potential dividends ( which bitcoin doesn't have ) the potential profits they can make in general, but all in USD. All in government backed currency.

I am sure I will think of many more reasons why I don't think Bitcoin is investable for long term, but I want to kind of cut this as short as possible.

Thanks for reading!

"There's certainly a lot of bullishness about bitcoin and cryptocurrency, and that's the case with bubbles in general. The psychology of bubbles fuels it. You just become more convinced that it's going to work. And the higher the price goes, the more convinced you become that you're right. But it's not going up because it's going to work. It's going up because of speculation." In other words, bitcoin’s upward momentum ­– even the price more than doubling within 90 days ­– may be a kind of self-fulfilling pipe dream.