Buying and holding BTC without mining..

[spazzdla]

Is like buying a gold mine and not having guards.

You have zero say in what happens to the coins you own. 

[pedrog]

What do you mean?

Like if you let the coins stay in exchanges?

[Amph]

the difference is that, you will not increase your total bitcoin, by holding only, while with mining, if you manage to reach the roi point, you can earn more bitcoin than the amount you started with

[spazzdla]

What do you mean?

Like if you let the coins stay in exchanges?

No, I mean if you are not mining you are not protecting the network.  You are letting it become more and more centralized and in time allow the mining farms to decide the Bitcoin Protocol.

Black listed coins..
More than 21 million supply..

[ebliever]

What do you mean?

Like if you let the coins stay in exchanges?

No, I mean if you are not mining you are not protecting the network.  You are letting it become more and more centralized and in time allow the mining farms to decide the Bitcoin Protocol.

Black listed coins..
More than 21 million supply..

Explain in detail how you expect them to pull that off. Let's say some mining farms collude to introduce a hard ford and expand the supply of bitcoin beyond 21 million coins. How do they do that without tanking the price horribly, destroying their own multi-million dollar investments? While honest players stick with the honest fork until it regains traction as everyone flocks away from the destroyed false fork.

[pedrog]

What do you mean?

Like if you let the coins stay in exchanges?

No, I mean if you are not mining you are not protecting the network.  You are letting it become more and more centralized and in time allow the mining farms to decide the Bitcoin Protocol.

Black listed coins..
More than 21 million supply..

In that case you should start worrying about the development, I assume you're also not participating in that...

[1Referee]

What do you mean?

Like if you let the coins stay in exchanges?

No, I mean if you are not mining you are not protecting the network.  You are letting it become more and more centralized and in time allow the mining farms to decide the Bitcoin Protocol.

Black listed coins..
More than 21 million supply..

Explain in detail how you expect them to pull that off. Let's say some mining farms collude to introduce a hard ford and expand the supply of bitcoin beyond 21 million coins. How do they do that without tanking the price horribly, destroying their own multi-million dollar investments? While honest players stick with the honest fork until it regains traction as everyone flocks away from the destroyed false fork.

You got that right, they are heavily invested in Bitcoin mining for a reason. Simply to make profit.

Taking China as example, China currently has a huge percentrage of the total network, and it's only increasing. It would be suicide for their investment if they were trying to harm Bitcoin.

They want to sell their coins for top dollar, which is only possible if the Bitcoin network and the market is in good condition.

[SpanishSoldier]

Is like buying a gold mine and not having guards.

You have zero say in what happens to the coins you own. 

The network is secured by the nodes, not miners. That is why people are generally encouraged to run a full node.

[brokenchair]

Terrible analogy; I get what you are trying to say, but it makes no sense.

I own gold, silver, etc......  I don't try to mine gold in my yard because it is unprofitable and I would never get anything.  If I started digging up my yard, would I somehow have control over the gold markets?

If I start mining bitcoin on my computer (never getting a block), would I somehow have control over the bitcoin? 

If all it took to have say over an asset is attempting to control it, I'd be the most powerful man alive. 

[Mr. Burns]

the "guards" are the cryptographic algorithm.

basically like the cops that killed that kevin today

[wildguess]

I am new to this concept but based on my understanding about the cryptocurrencies, I can say that it's a good investment and holding will give better returns.

[Stedsm]

the difference is that, you will not increase your total bitcoin, by holding only, while with mining, if you manage to reach the roi point, you can earn more bitcoin than the amount you started with

If that's the case, then why not trade and make them?
I have seen people talking all the time to buy on rumors and sell on news, and if an average joe gets a good command on that, he might make a good living with BTC.

[Q7]

Well your amount of bitcoin is definitely not going to change if you don't do anything to it but its value has the potential to go up in years to come. As long as you maintain it in cold wallet, generally it should be safe. So by itself just holding onto bitcoin is already considered an investment.

[tokeweed]

What do you mean?

Like if you let the coins stay in exchanges?

No, I mean if you are not mining you are not protecting the network.  You are letting it become more and more centralized and in time allow the mining farms to decide the Bitcoin Protocol.

Black listed coins..
More than 21 million supply..

So what...  You want everyone to set up a bitcoin farm? 

[Mehek]

as the title says buy and hold btc without mining....that a pritty good policy but its a time consuming method..a miner can earn a lot from mining riges.hence it is quite a less profitable method

[crazyivan]

Is like buying a gold mine and not having guards.

You have zero say in what happens to the coins you own. 

Well, yes, this is a viable option. BTC s often referred as "digial gold".

But this gold you can easily move, split, sell, invest and store. Not to mention that it WILL go up big time. I m sure of that.

[Amph]

the difference is that, you will not increase your total bitcoin, by holding only, while with mining, if you manage to reach the roi point, you can earn more bitcoin than the amount you started with

If that's the case, then why not trade and make them?
I have seen people talking all the time to buy on rumors and sell on news, and if an average joe gets a good command on that, he might make a good living with BTC.

trading is more risky, instead mining can generate a guaranteed return in the end, if you have very cheap electricity and you paid a low amount for your miner

[yeponlyone]

the difference is that, you will not increase your total bitcoin, by holding only, while with mining, if you manage to reach the roi point, you can earn more bitcoin than the amount you started with

If that's the case, then why not trade and make them?
I have seen people talking all the time to buy on rumors and sell on news, and if an average joe gets a good command on that, he might make a good living with BTC.

trading is more risky, instead mining can generate a guaranteed return in the end, if you have very cheap electricity and you paid a low amount for your miner

mining is equally risky. you have to take care of the management and the risk of hardware failures. bfl and gawminer has shown us how reliable mining manufacturers are. even if you have cheap electricity, the difficulty increase is unpredictable and you would still have chances of not getting roi thus making no profits.

[Lauda]

No, I mean if you are not mining you are not protecting the network.  You are letting it become more and more centralized and in time allow the mining farms to decide the Bitcoin Protocol.

Black listed coins..
More than 21 million supply..

There are things that you can do. For example run a node via a small device. That's pretty simple and help decentralization.
You can't do anything about mining. It's a competitive race on a industrial scale.

The two ideas that you've mentioned are very bad. That solves nothing.

[Kprawn]

People contribute to Bitcoin and it's success in many different ways... :

1. Some people mine on a farm scale... {Solo mining is not viable anymore and would gain nothing}
2. Some people run nodes.
3. Some people use the currency and contribute fees to fund the miners.
4. Some people trade on exchanges to determine the price. {fake or real}
5. Some people store their BTC and this drive up the demand for it. {Bitcoin Whales}

You do not have to take part in everything to be a true Bitcoiner.