biggest criticism of Bitcoin

[Silberman]

Hello!

I would be interested to know what you think is the biggest criticism of Bitcoin or where you see the biggest weakness?

And what would you respond to this criticism if you were confronted with it in a conversation?

Thank you for your critical thinking!

Yours, DrHodler59

The biggest criticism that I have seen growing over the recent years are the concerns over the energy being spent mining bitcoin, however as we know those numbers have been exaggerated just to try to get the young, which are environmental conscious, to not adopt bitcoin, however the biggest weakness for the average user is the confirmation speed and the fees, as even people like us sometimes have problems getting a confirmation when we want to move our coins, and we may have to refrain from sending any transaction at the time as the fees are higher than the amount of bitcoin we want to send.

[m2017]

I would be interested to know what you think is the biggest criticism of Bitcoin or where you see the biggest weakness?

Nothing is perfect. Despite some weaknesses, bitcoin still provides many financial opportunities.

I would criticize bitcoin for being unfriendly to newcomers and the majority of the population. For such a financial product to be truly widespread and global, bitcoin had to be easier to use (without losing benefits) by all members of society, and not just tech geeks (I would like to watch you teach your grandma to use bitcoin ).

And what would you respond to this criticism if you were confronted with it in a conversation?

I would answer that if you simplify bitcoin, it will get rid of all the advantages.

[Onyeeze]

Hello!

I would be interested to know what you think is the biggest criticism of Bitcoin or where you see the biggest weakness?

And what would you respond to this criticism if you were confronted with it in a conversation?

Thank you for your critical thinking!

Yours, DrHodler59

before I know what is Bitcoin I have experienced many castigation people condemn Bitcoin how do they say to my hearing that the objective of Bitcoin is for scam and since bitcoin is into existence I have not seen anyone who has been defrauded with Bitcoin and what people are saying concerning bitcoin is that it is used for money laundering and I think that should be one of the reasons why government is against the existence of Bitcoin today so if you base on the condemnation or criticism of people concerning Bitcoin I don't think that you  will have the mindset to invest in Bitcoin

[d5000]

A point which has not been mentioned still (I think) is the relation between volatility, static supply and value proposition.

Bitcoin's value proposition is heavly tied to be a decentralized currency and store of value. If we continue to see so heavy price swings like in Bitcoin's history, then it's difficult for Bitcoin to become a currency which can be used as an "unit of account". The (a little bit less ambitious) "store of value" concept works currently in the long term but not in the short/middle term. You can still not be safe to not lose 10 or more % in a single week.

Static supply (21 million coins cap) on a first glance is the underlying reason: if supply is static (or grows slowly) then the price depends largely on demand swings.

I don't consider this problem unsolvable though, even without protocol changes. Because the "technical" Bitcoin supply (all Bitcoins in circulation) is not all available "on the markets" and thus probably doesn't necessarily drive the price down. So it's a challenge where solutions should be found by creative businesses, service providers and programmers.

One possible version of the challenge is: how can you convince people that in times with lower demand for BTC it's better to reduce the available supply at markets? For example you could imagine models where you "park" your coins somewhere, for example locking them and getting interest like in the "staking" concept but only in bear markets. Now imagine that in a non-custodial way. As for example options can be designed with atomic swap technology, perhaps more complex models can be designed with Bitcoin Script too.

The other possible way is simply using it more as a currency to boost liquidity and make it less vulnerable to price swings, but that depends on scalability and on L2 development.

The unsustainability of mining due to halvings, two more halvings and it's over if nothing is changed.

I'm still waiting for a coherent response on what I wrote in the thread about Ordinals. In general I think your view of the mining industry is too static, there's a lot going on which will counter the problems you enumerate, from miner diversification to surplus energy mining. If there was a good moment to attack Bitcoin it was the 2021 Chinese exodus.

@DrHodler59: It would be cool if you'd participate in the threads you create :p

[Rengga Jati]

Is this based on personal opinion or opinions that are often circulated?
Hmmm, the problem is that many people believe in some negative things about Bitcoin which always become ongoing criticism. No matter how well we explain it, it will become another criticism at some future opportunity.

Hmmm, actually what hasn't been achieved is related to the original purpose of Bitcoin being created. Yes, indeed in some areas or occasions, it has been quite successful. But unfortunately, it is really limited to several parties and countries because it collides with regulations. Even though Bitcoin was created to decentralize things and to avoid various controls such as fiat and banks, in reality, it does not run smoothly because the country will always intervene in various things to still be able to limit Bitcoin and its use.

And as for other criticisms, perhaps some of them are related:
- Volatility (although on the other hand, this is something that is very useful and beneficial for several parties to gain profits)
- Mining Bitcoin (often linked to the issue of global warming)
- high fees (the more crowded, the higher the fees and this is often complained about.

However, even though there are many criticisms, why do we still believe in Bitcoin?
The answer is yes because, it's Bitcoin. We fall in love in Bitcoin. And Bitcoin actually has answers to these criticisms, and that also depends on how we respond to them. Because of some of these criticisms, we can actually get all the benefits.

[Viscore]

Hello!

I would be interested to know what you think is the biggest criticism of Bitcoin or where you see the biggest weakness?

And what would you respond to this criticism if you were confronted with it in a conversation?

Thank you for your critical thinking!

Yours, DrHodler59

I will not go far but I guess Bitcoin will always be criticized as a get rich quick scheme because the government always supported that accusation. Now asking how to defend that, I would not actually go in details but always tell the people to do their own research. I think that's the best favor I can do for bitcoin, not easily believing on lies but learn to verify those criticisms through in-depth research first.

[Assface16678]

Well, I think the biggest criticism that I know and hated the most if people mentioned is that bitcoin is a scam, I mean they are not doing bitcoin stuff and just getting their idea of bitcoin from being scam to does people who also doesnt have knowledge or idea about bitcoin or to those who are just wanting to bad mount bitcoin as they cant enter in the market early and the chain reaction comes in, I dont get those people that's why instead of fighting them or lecturing them I'm letting them say what they want atleast I know how great and helpful bitcoin to many of us, in my mind I'm just thinking that they are missing a good opportunity, instead of knowing and accepting bitcoin or crypto currency they choose to bad mouth bitcoin without getting any benefits from it. I just view them as small-minded, and I just laugh about them when they say those things. We can't really please all people.

[kryptqnick]

There are some reasonable avenues of concern with Bitcoin. Mining does take a lot of energy, and energy can sometimes be scarce and also often come from very ecologically harmful sources. Bitcoin can also be very volatile, which can make some people, who are more used to fiat, very nervous. But the biggest challenge, I believe, is scalability. Once there's more adoption, the network gets congested, the fees spike, and transactions get stuck. That's a big problem if we want mass adoption of Bitcoin. As for a response, there are centralized solutions offering 'instant' transactions if that's what one's looking for, and some middle ground solutions like the Lightning Network, although I'm not sure how efficient it is these days.

[BitGoba]

Hello!

I would be interested to know what you think is the biggest criticism of Bitcoin or where you see the biggest weakness?

And what would you respond to this criticism if you were confronted with it in a conversation?

Thank you for your critical thinking!

Yours, DrHodler59

I think one of the biggest criticism of Bitcoin which comes with the very inherent flaw of it. I believe it was never designed in a way to be used by so many people. So the biggest problem it faces is the scalability issues, the moment you see a lot of on chain traffic immediately you will see the fees skyrocketing up, you will see slower transactions. Apart from this obviously the environmental impact of the Pow consensus is also a big criticism which a lot of pro environmentalists pose on bitcoin. So obviously the PoS or the hybrid solutions are becoming much more relevant to the overall situation in cryptos right now. and honestly I don't have any proper answers to the question on the scalability issues.

Bitcoin Layer 1 is like Fedwire. Fedwire is an electronic funds transfer system managed by the Federal Reserve, used to settle large-value transactions between financial institutions in the U.S., such as banks. Unlike Fedwire, which is only available to banks, Bitcoin is available to everyone. Anyone can be their own bank and settle large-value transactions. Thus, Layer 1 will be used for large-value settlements because it offers immense security and decentralization. Meanwhile, layers 2, 3, and 4 will be developed for micro-payments. For example, the Bitcoin Lightning Network is currently very popular worldwide. The Bitcoin Lightning Network can perform hundreds of millions of transactions per second. In San Salvador, where Bitcoin is the official currency, it is widely used for everyday payments. Here you can see what a payment with Bitcoin Lightning looks like in McDonald's restaurants in Salvador.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/25_VkeiT4R0

Payments with Bitcoin Lightning are instant and almost fee-free. There is a website, btcmap.org, where you can see all the locations worldwide—hotels, restaurants, gyms, etc.—that accept Bitcoin Lightning and on-chain payments. On the site spend-sats.com, you can also find some online merchants that accept Lightning payments.

[MeGold666]

Bitcoin Layer 1 is like Fedwire. Fedwire is an electronic funds transfer system managed by the Federal Reserve, used to settle large-value transactions between financial institutions in the U.S., such as banks. Unlike Fedwire, which is only available to banks, Bitcoin is available to everyone. Anyone can be their own bank and settle large-value transactions. Thus, Layer 1 will be used for large-value settlements because it offers immense security and decentralization. Meanwhile, layers 2, 3, and 4 will be developed for micro-payments. For example, the Bitcoin Lightning Network is currently very popular worldwide. The Bitcoin Lightning Network can perform hundreds of millions of transactions per second. In San Salvador, where Bitcoin is the official currency, it is widely used for everyday payments. Here you can see what a payment with Bitcoin Lightning looks like in McDonald's restaurants in Salvador.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/25_VkeiT4R0

Payments with Bitcoin Lightning are instant and almost fee-free. There is a website, btcmap.org, where you can see all the locations worldwide—hotels, restaurants, gyms, etc.—that accept Bitcoin Lightning and on-chain payments. On the site spend-sats.com, you can also find some online merchants that accept Lightning payments.

Stop dreaming, El Salvador was a failure:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asmOZh-E8W0

LN is a failure on technical level and it's reflected by the usage, something around 1% of total transactions.
And it's been downhill for some time now:

https://bitcoinvisuals.com/lightning

It's becoming more and more centralized because that's the nature of the beast.

You are pushing the narration that kills Bitcoin, YOU are the problem and people like you are the reason Bitcoin is not scalable on L1.

Tell me how the F Bitcoin suppose to survive on fees and too small block reward in few years with this scenario where only big transactions are viable on L1 ?
Pushing everyone out of L1 is a good idea in your mind ?

Everything outside L1 is NOT Bitcoin, by using LN you are not using Bitcoin. You can as well use PayPal.
Or any other receipt network.

[SFR10]

or where you see the biggest weakness?

Some users might argue with what I'm about to say, but the biggest weakness has to be the manner in which most users view it as a store of value... The vast majority of people ^{[especially in the past few years]} prefer to hodl it, as opposed to actually using it!

what people are saying concerning bitcoin is that it is used for money laundering

Considering that the easiest route is through the use of traditional methods, only an insignificant portion of it involves Bitcoin ^{[some government officials exaggerate the numbers, but there have been multiple research studies with different results]}.

[ultrloa]

Hello!

I would be interested to know what you think is the biggest criticism of Bitcoin or where you see the biggest weakness?

And what would you respond to this criticism if you were confronted with it in a conversation?

Thank you for your critical thinking!

Yours, DrHodler59

The biggest criticism I see is that bitcoin is always called as scam. Then also hard to convince those people who's close minded for the things they don't know and ignore your explanation to possibly help them to learn.

And my respond to the is after I receive their declined towards learning this then I don't try to waste my time again to explain. I just show the result of the effort I spent then let them see the result what I get from by investment on bitcoin. Because its hard to push our want to people doesn't like to learn, but for once they realize that bitcoin is good then those people would come then tell that they are ready to learn. Then I am the one will avoid them since I would able to let them learn bitcoin in hard way so that they would realize that its not easy to get a knowledge about bitcoin.

[GreatArkansas]

I would be interested to know what you think is the biggest criticism of Bitcoin or where you see the biggest weakness?

And what would you respond to this criticism if you were confronted with it in a conversation?

For me, the most important to respond to this in conversion is to always acknowledge it, acknowledge the issue or concern, and not invalidate it.
Next is don't focus on the issue or negativity, showcase or highlight also the positive highlights of Bitcoin, like mentioning some positive things about Bitcoin.

[Darker45]

I guess it's Bitcoin's scalability that's the biggest problem. It simply can't handle a large number of transactions. And whenever the network is clogged, it would immediately result into exorbitant fees and very slow confirmation of transactions unless you're willing to pay ridiculously high fees.

If this is brought forward as a criticism, I probably end up citing L2 networks and sidechains and whatnot. And although I'm definitely far from being sufficiently knowledgeable on these topics, I could easily mention the likes of Lightning Network, Liquid Network, Rootstock, Stacks, among others. But the truth is that these aren't Bitcoin. They're separate networks. In which case, they're actually not solutions to the problem. An off-chain solution to an on-chain problem might not be that convincing of an answer.

[dzungmobile]

I guess it's Bitcoin's scalability that's the biggest problem. It simply can't handle a large number of transactions. And whenever the network is clogged, it would immediately result into exorbitant fees and very slow confirmation of transactions unless you're willing to pay ridiculously high fees.

If scaling up block size is simple and does not cause side effects to other things, it would have been done already. Other blockchains can have bigger block size, for example Bitcoin Cash, but demand on that blockchain is low.

Security of that blockchain is lower than Bitcoin blockchain too.
https://howmanyconfs.com/

It's really hard to attack Bitcoin network but it's more easily to do this with altcoin networks.
How many Bitcoin confirmations is enough?

If this is brought forward as a criticism, I probably end up citing L2 networks and sidechains and whatnot. And although I'm definitely far from being sufficiently knowledgeable on these topics, I could easily mention the likes of Lightning Network, Liquid Network, Rootstock, Stacks, among others. But the truth is that these aren't Bitcoin. They're separate networks.

You can continue the discussion on Bitcoin side chain in a thread created for this purpose.

Sidechain Observer - Bitcoin L2 Projects & current state of development

[Plaguedeath]

The biggest criticism I see is that bitcoin is always called as scam. Then also hard to convince those people who's close minded for the things they don't know and ignore your explanation to possibly help them to learn.

And my respond to the is after I receive their declined towards learning this then I don't try to waste my time again to explain. I just show the result of the effort I spent then let them see the result what I get from by investment on bitcoin. Because its hard to push our want to people doesn't like to learn, but for once they realize that bitcoin is good then those people would come then tell that they are ready to learn. Then I am the one will avoid them since I would able to let them learn bitcoin in hard way so that they would realize that its not easy to get a knowledge about bitcoin.

It means you convince them by showing you're making money through Bitcoin? that's bad idea to counter their criticism, they will see you as a rich person and they will become fake since they're want to get close with you. Money is everything now, that's why a lot people like to follow the rich in order to get their money.

I've seen many people are saying Bitcoin is scam, but I never get mad with that, usually I reckon their opinion and also say Bitcoin is scam. So, it will make them not know that I'm Bitcoin holder, my privacy will be fine.

[Z-tight]

The fact that there's very little privacy by default. We currently don't have a way for the normies to achieve privacy, as mixing/cj and coin control is very unfriendly for newbies.

If the network offered privacy in the protocol level, then i am sure that the U.S government would have started its attack directly on the BTC network, right now they are attacking BTC privacy solutions, like mixers and CoinJoin, imagine what they would have done if there was privacy in the BTC protocol, they would try everything they can to destroy it.

I think it is better we achieve privacy with other tools than directly on the network.

[Y3shot]

The biggest criticism that i have always come across is when people always say every year that bitcoin is a scam, that won't exist any more. People who don't also believe bitcoin,  in the bear market when the price of bitcoin falls very low they always say it is the end of bitcoin and it will never come up again.  So many criticising of bitcoin but still bitcoin is still doing well and more people are adopting. If bitcoin was an innovation that depends on people criticism would have destroyed it.

[prestige001]

The biggest criticism of bitcoin is coming from those who have less knowledge about it moreover we experienced some spams doesn't mean bitcoin is not well protected.

However something you don't have knowledge of always seems difficult but bitcoin is one of the forum that will experience rapid growth in the near by future
The experts in the house can relate.

[justdimin]

There are some reasonable avenues of concern with Bitcoin. Mining does take a lot of energy, and energy can sometimes be scarce and also often come from very ecologically harmful sources. Bitcoin can also be very volatile, which can make some people, who are more used to fiat, very nervous. But the biggest challenge, I believe, is scalability. Once there's more adoption, the network gets congested, the fees spike, and transactions get stuck. That's a big problem if we want mass adoption of Bitcoin. As for a response, there are centralized solutions offering 'instant' transactions if that's what one's looking for, and some middle ground solutions like the Lightning Network, although I'm not sure how efficient it is these days.

The thing is that energy consumption isn't what people should worry about because mining bitcoin does cover a lot of energy and yet total combined isn't as much as people think it is so that is not the real worry, we should consider that energy is something that could be made for them as well because they could use solar or wind too.

I think the biggest issue for users is the fee and timing, you send some bitcoin and the transaction costs so much and it happens sometimes as late as half an hour later, that is our biggest issue. I get that people could be looking into something different at times, but we shouldn't really be worried about it. We need to consider the fact that we should find a solution to that if we know what we are doing.