How cryptocurrency can be killed & people money lost?

[postcd]

Hello,

not sure if all cryptocurrency have same kind of "protection" against this, but im mainly interested in Ethereum and Bitcoin now.

If 20 years old person wan to use BTC and ETH cryptocurrencies to store main part of his/her life savings for next 60 years, how big risk is there the developers of the cryptrocurrency will steal his money or cryptocurrency will "bankrupt" some way so his json wallet key file will become useless?

How the cryptocurrency can be damaged so people loose 60-100% of their money saved there?

I would like to evaluate risks saving money in cryptocurrency for the term of tens of years. Thank You

[YIz]

Hello,

not sure if all cryptocurrency have same kind of "protection" against this, but im mainly interested in Ethereum and Bitcoin now.

If 20 years old person wan to use BTC and ETH cryptocurrencies to store main part of his/her life savings for next 60 years, how big risk is there the developers of the cryptrocurrency will steal his money or cryptocurrency will "bankrupt" some way so his json wallet key file will become useless?

How the cryptocurrency can be damaged so people loose 60-100% of their money saved there?

I would like to evaluate risks saving money in cryptocurrency for the term of tens of years. Thank You

The currency can just be abandoned, and lose its value. other option is breaking the algorithms the currency uses, for example by quantum computers in the distant future, but it will most likely fork and use post-quantum cryptography in this case.

[achow101]

If 20 years old person wan to use BTC and ETH cryptocurrencies to store main part of his/her life savings for next 60 years, how big risk is there the developers of the cryptrocurrency will steal his money

Very low. The developers of the reference implementation (i.e. consensus rules) cannot steal your Bitcoin without a hard fork. That hard fork would require that the miners agree to that change. If the developers did something malicious or suspicious, they would no longer be the developers of the reference implementation because the software labeled as the reference implementation would be changed.

or cryptocurrency will "bankrupt" some way so his json wallet key file will become useless?

It is entirely possible for a cryptocurrency to be abandoned and be "dead". This happens to a lot of altcoins but it is unlikely to happen to Bitcoin.

[gentlemand]

I think someone would be certifiable to park money in any crypto for tens of years. That goes for Bitcoin, Ethereum and even more so for everything else. No one knows how this is going to pan out.

It's easy to forget that this entire scene is only 7 years old. Who knows what the future holds? And as others have pointed out abandonment is probably the most obvious risk. People seem to have this idea that the whole world is using crypto and it's too big to fail. It's the total opposite. It's teensy and fragile.

I'm sure most people here have some money in the game. They're also watching developments like a hawk and would run away at any sign of faltering. I for one would not go anywhere near ETH with a long term mindset. There can't be more than a few tens of thousands of people involved and they seem worryingly cavalier about how it's operated compared to BTC.

[amaclin]

How the cryptocurrency can be damaged so people loose 60-100% of their money saved there?

By 51%-attack.
One moment miners would decide that doublespending blockchain can give them more profits in fiat currency than mining mainchain and earning 12.5 btc per block

[Wind_FURY]

Hello,

not sure if all cryptocurrency have same kind of "protection" against this, but im mainly interested in Ethereum and Bitcoin now.

If 20 years old person wan to use BTC and ETH cryptocurrencies to store main part of his/her life savings for next 60 years, how big risk is there the developers of the cryptrocurrency will steal his money or cryptocurrency will "bankrupt" some way so his json wallet key file will become useless?

How the cryptocurrency can be damaged so people loose 60-100% of their money saved there?

I would like to evaluate risks saving money in cryptocurrency for the term of tens of years. Thank You

Satoshi Nakamoto once said that he thinks in 20 years Bitcoin will have a huge daily transaction volume or none. The extremism in that quote only reflects the thoughts of a man who does not believe 100% in the viability of Bitcoin when it comes to the test of time. He is being very practical and true to us when he said that the whole experiment he started could also fail.

We are even starting to see Bitcoin's limitations right now. The core developers and contributors, as brilliant as they are, will only try to prolong the life of Bitcoin. But within 50 years it will be replaced by something better.

[dreamer81]

Imagine if you borrowed bitcoins to pay for a house. If the BTC goes up, you will have a harder time paying the mortgage - but on ther other hand, if the bitcoin collapses, you have a free house

Personally the risk is too big.

[Kakmakr]

My advice would be for people not to use online services to store bitcoins for long term, because those services might abandon their projects and you would be left stuck in the cold. If you want to store bitcoins for the long term, you would have to use paper wallets. This way, you are not dependent on any service for the future of you money.

Bitcoin developers working on the Bitcoin protocol come and go, so there will always be someone willing to fill the gaps. They can make any changes they want, but it is still up to the majority of the users to decide, if they want to run that software <changes> or not.

A big failure could result from lots of things : Regulation / Large services being hacked / Mining centralization etc..

[crypto.james]

imagine u stored 500btc in ur walled , and all btc gone because of a keylogger

[RealBitcoin]

Hello,

not sure if all cryptocurrency have same kind of "protection" against this, but im mainly interested in Ethereum and Bitcoin now.

If 20 years old person wan to use BTC and ETH cryptocurrencies to store main part of his/her life savings for next 60 years, how big risk is there the developers of the cryptrocurrency will steal his money or cryptocurrency will "bankrupt" some way so his json wallet key file will become useless?

How the cryptocurrency can be damaged so people loose 60-100% of their money saved there?

I would like to evaluate risks saving money in cryptocurrency for the term of tens of years. Thank You

Hello, let me address your question:

WALLET RISK:
- Use Electrum and have your seed phrase written down stored in safe location or stored in other safe ways. Also keep a copy of the Electrum installer and the wallet file on multiple digital devices, in case the software will be abandoned or uppgraded later, so that you dont lose the software that holds your money. Private keys will be easy to extract later if the wallet format changes, just make sure the seed is ok and you have the software. (Presumably the software will work on the new operating systems as well, otherwise keep a copy of the operating system & an old PC that will make it work in 60 years)

THEFT RISK BY HACKER:

Well just keep your wallet and passwords safe, there are many guides here how to keep your wallet safe, just read them, i am not going to explain here because its very long & complex.


HARDFORK/OBSOLESCENCE/UPPGRADE RISK:

Hopefully bitcoin won't be hardforked because its disastruous, but we might get franky1 here to tell us otherwise.

Either way, make sure you are subscribed to the Bitcoin emergency feed:
https://bitcoin.org/en/rss/alerts.rss
And the Bitcoin update feed:
https://bitcoin.org/en/rss/releases.rss

Once in a while check them to make sure you are up to date with bitcoin, these are the more important news, for everything else just use the bitcoin newsletters or this forum or the /bitcoin subreddit.


MARKET RISK:

There is always a risk that BTC goes to 0$ for whatever reason, i think its very unlikely, but you should also be up to date with the bitcoin price.

https://blockchain.info/charts/market-price

Use this link to watch the price, It should be around for a long time,and you will be able to decide if you want to keep your BTC or buy more or sell.



I think this should sum it up, of course there might be other risks too, but I just outlined here the basic ones.

If you prepare for these 4 risks, then it should be no problem storing your bitcoins for 30-60 years.

[LFC_Bitcoin]

imagine u stored 500btc in ur walled , and all btc gone because of a keylogger

Then that person would be an idiot for not splitting up that amount of coins into much smaller amounts across dozens of cold storage methods.

Minimise the risk of losing coins or being hacked by splitting up your stash.

[sasha456]

I believe that for a while cryptocurrency is stable. Even if is risky I'll better try than be the one that didn't anything to earn some more money.

[Victorycoin]

The inherent advantages of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is such that those that have for instance tested the very low transaction fees viz-a-viz the fiat currencies are never giving up on them, even some states in the U.S. have discovered that so much cost would be saved by collecting revenue in bitcoin, so there's much more hope for the cryptocurrencies especially bitcoin.

[mczarnek]

The biggest risk I see is that POW relies on large amounts of transactions to generate transaction fees to support the miners.  Bitcoin has to majorly take off or die.

The current transaction fee for BTC is over $6 per transaction. Only supported by the large amount of inflation BTC currently has.

[asse.sauga]

Today is a biggest risk technology itself and his massive improvement during the time. Blockchain and wider cryptocurrencies are only 7 years old. You see, how much internet has been changed after 2000, when it was about 7 years old. So I would suggest to wait at-least 10 years, when the blockchain field is more calm and settled, and then make a decision to where to put your life savings for 60+ years. Before that you can always play with smaller amounts. There is a bigger risk but as-well bigger changes to win a lot.

[Adamsmit556]

Also, have to remember that CC is a huge risk for banking system stability and fiat currency itself. So it's not hard to see if the governments and ECB try to regulate bitcoin at some point or make it even illegal.

[Juggy777]

Hello,

not sure if all cryptocurrency have same kind of "protection" against this, but im mainly interested in Ethereum and Bitcoin now.

If 20 years old person wan to use BTC and ETH cryptocurrencies to store main part of his/her life savings for next 60 years, how big risk is there the developers of the cryptrocurrency will steal his money or cryptocurrency will "bankrupt" some way so his json wallet key file will become useless?

How the cryptocurrency can be damaged so people loose 60-100% of their money saved there?

I would like to evaluate risks saving money in cryptocurrency for the term of tens of years. Thank You

Hacking is always a risk. Plus price reductions can happen. Life saving for 60 years is a very big thing, I will advise you to save 5-10 of your surplus cash. Keep monitoring it.

[Esphere.in]

I would like to evaluate risks saving money in cryptocurrency for the term of tens of years. Thank You

Either you have to be naive or a big time risk taker to invest everything in one basket,never ever do that, be sensible in what you do and never dream about becoming a millionaire over night,the risk reward factor is pretty high when you evaluate 10 years of investment,no one can accurately predict how bitcoin is going to be a few years from now,it might reach a time when 1 satoshi becomes $1 or vice versa of $1 for 1 BTC 

[seradj0]

the first risk i think is hacking, we all saw this happen before
also these currencies can be abandoned, and lose its value but seems not now at least

[JeffBrad12]

or cryptocurrency will "bankrupt" some way so his json wallet key file will become useless?

It is entirely possible for a cryptocurrency to be abandoned and be "dead". This happens to a lot of altcoins but it is unlikely to happen to Bitcoin.

Why is not? some alt was using the source code of bitcoin, but in your sentences, i just realized if the alt coin just like a shield for bitcoin not for directly.