What is holding you from investing tons of money in this?

[Grouver (BtcBalance)]

Like the thread title says.
I bet alot of people are still strugling with if they should invest in bitcoins or not.
I am not really talking about $10 or $100 but really invest $1000 or more in this whole thing. (this may be in the form of a mining rig or just pure USD/EURO money)

What is your main reason you do not invest in BTC with huge amounts of money?

(The fact that you cannot afford it not included ofcourse)

My top 3 is:

#1 I still do not understand the system good enough. I cannot answer each question about Bitcoin with a legit answer. Wich makes me doubt about it.
#2 I do not know if everything that is being said about bitcoin is true. And I cannot research myself since all information out here that i can base logic on can always be false. You never know.
#3 Like the stock market, this whole thing can collapse in a matter of days cause of some major development within the system.
 

[adaman]

First i see bitcoin as a currency not an investment. Do i invest in USD? No.

I use it to trade, bying something. And what is left is my investment 

[Philj]

I have dropped about $3000 into mining gear and a dedicated AC unit for them. I've made back about $2400 so far and value the equipment at $1500 used. I feel that ive already made my investment back and continue to bring in more. Now that I've mostly paid back the initial expenses I'm looking at using BTC for other uses like some of the Double Trouble threads and other game sites. It's fun and in my opinion a good use case for BTC.

Regardless of what you do, don't invest what you can't afford to lose

[TiagoTiago]

Having tons of money to start with.


That and having to go to physical bank agencies in order to buy BTC (i only got a savings account, and with my bank the webbanking is significantly limited in reach for savings accounts when compared to regular accounts; what keeps me like this is i don't need to pay anything to have a savings account, only a bigger fee for withdrawing/transfering money from the account, but since i don't do that often i save more than i spend with them)

[TKE406]

1) Paranoia - some founded and others a bit more quirky. For example, it is clear that BitCoin highly favors the early-adopters. How can you know there is not someone out there with 500,000BTC at their disposal, ready to pump and dump whenever they want. Also, given that this is considered "high-tech," there is always the problem of online security.
1.1) Scams - There is inadequate information flow. For Mt Gox, there isn't even any other form of contact except through a single e-mail. Something that handles $Millions should not be this primitive.

2) Government - I fear that government(s) may try to introduce legislation that are unfavorable to BitCoin, if not attempt to eradicate it completely.

3) Volatility - Though I'm not proud of this, I am one of the rather recent newcomers to BitCoin. I unfortunately bought a little bit during the massive spike ($26 per BTC), and this taught me a good lesson. However, something that can double in value, and then the next day one-third in value is not very appealing at the moment. Even though I am not a speculator, I am in it long-term, this troubles me because it means the values are wildly fluctuating, so it is hard to price anything consistently.

[imperi]

What is your main reason you do not invest in BTC with huge amounts of money?

Nothing. I already invested some. It's a gamble, but I think it's a greater than 50% chance I'll see long-term profits.

[Swishercutter]

Actually having more money...spent it all on mining rigs.  I know I could have made more investing...I have my reasons for mining.

[Jack of Diamonds]

Nothing. I already poured literally tons in "this".

Then again it's paid off a long time ago thanks to the sudden price increases around May.

[Babylon]

poverty

[blogospheroid]

Clayton Christensen has written that it is not the first innovator who wins but the next few guys who learn from the old ones. Though BTC being an open source project have  a lot of advantages over corporations as learning organisms.

We don't know what other characteristics of crypto currencies are needed or are missing right now. Bitcoin is an awesome awesome concept, but it is very new and very vulnerable.

[frutza]

Look at what just happened on MtGox, and you will understand why people are a bit cautious spending their life savings on bitcoins...

[hypsterj]

Look at what just happened on MtGox, and you will understand why people are a bit cautious spending their life savings on bitcoins...

Agreed. It's not even that it crashed in price, but that the major market making service seems to be a total clusterfuck of manipulation and technical errors. Does not exactly inspire confidence. I'm willing to risk losses on my poor judgement. I have no interest in losing money on someone else's fuckup.

[Oldminer]

I dont have tonnes of money - yet.

[Justsomeforumuser]

What is your main reason you do not invest in BTC with huge amounts of money?

Other than BTC(as well as all related exchanges and accounts) not being insured, backed(neither by an economy nor central bank or any other instance whatsoever) or regulated by anything and thus being worth as much as a seashell, it's a perfectly fine system!

By the way, that's "price is capable of going to 0.01 within minutes", thanks to literally no real depth or liquidity existing in the market, not days.

We've just done that exercise, it's no longer a thought experiment.

How this has not shown people what's what is truly, truly amazing.

[Gameover]

#1 I still do not understand the system good enough. I cannot answer each question about Bitcoin with a legit answer. Wich makes me doubt about it.
#2 I do not know if everything that is being said about bitcoin is true. And I cannot research myself since all information out here that i can base logic on can always be false. You never know.
#3 Like the stock market, this whole thing can collapse in a matter of days cause of some major development within the system.

1) what questions?  read the faq.  unlike other markets you actually are able to understand everything.
2) again the faq, all info should be able to be looked up.
3) bitcoin is NOTHING like the stock market, stocks are shares of actual companies with actual income, capital, and cash that back them, bitcoins are backed by nothing except peoples perception its worth something.  buy a share in a company is an investment, buying a bitcoin is exactly the same as pulling the lever on a slot machine.

reasons holding me from investing:
#1 volatility - the value may be $0.01 $1 or $100 a week from now, there is absolutely no stability or sound forces behind the market of bitcoin, its 100% speculation.
#2 hackers - with all of the money to be made the market is going to be plagued with hackers, the 2 recent events of half a million stolen and mtgox are only the beginning.  its a hackers wet dream.
#3 getting USD into or out of bitcoin is ridiculously slow and inefficient and at the whim of gatekeepers (ask anyone wanting their money right now held at mtgox)
#4 intrinsic value of bitcoin is 0

I follow bitcoin because its entertaining seeing a 'market' evolve and its something unique.

[Capitan]

Rational thought.

[unixdude]

Like the thread title says.
I bet alot of people are still strugling with if they should invest in bitcoins or not.
I am not really talking about $10 or $100 but really invest $1000 or more in this whole thing. (this may be in the form of a mining rig or just pure USD/EURO money)

What is your main reason you do not invest in BTC with huge amounts of money?

(The fact that you cannot afford it not included ofcourse)

My top 3 is:

#1 I still do not understand the system good enough. I cannot answer each question about Bitcoin with a legit answer. Wich makes me doubt about it.
#2 I do not know if everything that is being said about bitcoin is true. And I cannot research myself since all information out here that i can base logic on can always be false. You never know.
#3 Like the stock market, this whole thing can collapse in a matter of days cause of some major development within the system.
 

I'm not going to invest anything substantial in this simply because the exchanges aren't secure. They don't do enough to mitigate the risk against any sort of attack. I very much doubt they have any sort of security policies or adequate security practices in place. In short I will only invest what I can afford to lose if the exchanges are compromised. The MT. GOX affair should have alarm bells ringing because it was a computer of "an auditor" that got compromised which still had access to the database. That just leaves a lot of questions unanswered such as:

Why was the account on the database not removed or disabled and why was it active ?
 
Is this auditor from an actual security firm or an employee?

What sort of attack was carried out on his machine?

What other systems did this person have access to which could potentially be compromised?

How is my personal data secured?

Who has access to my personal data?

Do they have a security policy in place?

Are they audited by third parties if so who?

Until there are a set of data security guide lines  in place for the exchanges to adhere to and the exchanges are audited by independent security firms, I class them as a "Mickey Mouse" operations and everyone should be careful with what they do with their BTC's and their Fiat currencies and their personal data - unless you deem the risk vs reward worth it.

[Bitcoin_Silver_Supply]

Unix covers the logical concerns well and this thread probably would have had significantly more sway before today's fiasco. I think most people are cautiously waiting to see how volatile the price remains over the next few months and it goes without saying that the MtGox hack is not going to do anything to create stability.

That said, I think Bitcoin holds an incredible amount of promise and if security issues can be resolved people will likely start investing more modestly.

[westkybitcoins]

What is your main reason you do not invest in BTC with huge amounts of money?

Well, if by invest you mean "buy and hold bitcoins," that's really more speculation (not that speculation can't technically be investing.) I'm not that big on speculative investing, which is partly why I don't buy stocks, etc. in the hope of selling them for higher prices later. So there's no way I'd put huge amounts of money into buying bitcoins. That said, if I see something that looks solid, I'll "invest" a little... so yeah, I am sitting on some bitcoins for that reason.

As far as investing by creating a bitcoin-oriented business, that can be more difficult and require more time, effort and expense for a lot of folks (although I see no reason why most of us here can't buy a few extra bitcoins, stash a little extra cash, and advertise that we're exchanging bitcoins: buying from and selling to others locally. The market can use the extra liquidity.)

[triforcelink]

i see bitcoin as a currency not an investment.

If i expect it to go up in value, and i park my money there, its an investment. sure, once it stops growing, then it might only be a currency.