Excuse me to rush in and question the hype!

[Beeranha]

Sorry, Gals and Guys, to jump new into the BTC community and question the hype. All I'm reading everywhere is how great BTC and the like are. And there are, of course, the forces against it who spread all the negatives...

But, being extremely positiv about BTC, so far, I feel like the BTC community is quite ignorant about the not so great attributes of BTC.

I got interested in BTC by accident. Ever since (04-16), BTC fascinated me.

I own some BTC and some BCH.

I believe in BTC. I see chances in BCH.

But, and this is a very big but, I feel like the whole BTC community just feeds the hype and tries very hard ignoring all of the very many downfalls, which first need to be overcome, i.o. for BTC to become a long term success:

1) The distribution of BTC sucks (phew, even if those distribution tables might be extremely inaccurate, this is something to consider; also huge amounts of BTC might be irretrivably lost, but still...). Thus, the 99 story continues with BTC, nothing will change; hard news for some hopeless world changing hopers like me...

2) The slowness of transactions, unless you put a hefty fee to it (what happened to cheap and fast transactions, the original idea [I know, but still, this NEEDS to be solved IMMEDIATELY somehow - it will not happen in the very near and probably also not in the far future.])?  BCH shows the way. Is BCH the way? I don't know. Anyway, in spite of all the efforts, BTC is still way too slow/or way too expensive)

3) It is still way to complicated for the common public to become (real) BTC owners

4) Most people in the world still have no clue about BTC, partly by lack of information, interest, it needs too much thinking… And hey, we are definitively not in the high time of human reflection and thinking business. But the very biggest part: Never heard of Blockchain, BTC and the like.

5) In a world of speed, in a world of IT, can BTC, an IT product (!) with it's snail performance on transactions (see 2) survive? Even if transaction speed was improved 1000-fold and fees reduced, considerably so, - and we are fare from there -, it still will be way too slow!

6)  I cannot understand that the BTC community seems to feels so cool about the high fees, something which will not be solved soon. If BTC becomes the world focus, transactions and exchanges need to execute in Milliseconds in order for BTC to become world dominating. Fees need to be low, otherwise BTC will not be used by everybody (original idea?) and it will hold a niche position forever. Financial products trade at lightning speeds, if BTC does it in seconds, it will still be slow, and we are lightyears away from that, probably even impossible to reach...

6) At last, I will hold onto my BTC and BCH and hope, great things will happen, who knows!

7) But I'm very doubtful about the long term success, less doubtful about the near future performance, see above.

I don't know much and I am very excited to hear people proving me wrong!

Cheers,
Beeranha (no, in case you wonder)

[hasmukh_rawal]

You may be right in the last point of its long term success but I do believe in Bitcoin as it has a great number of followers and most of them also believe it to be the king of cryptos. You say BTC is not known by many people but then how do you think its rising so fast. With the price at $4400 per BTC people are still buying it and its just not those who are already in it but also those who are new in the market. BTC is being adopted world wide heavily and is going to be spread out through out the world and that is the reason why it is going to be successful crypto currency in the long term.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

Dude, we're not ignorant of these issues.   If you search back you'll see topics--many of them--about these issues and more.  Spend some time here and read.  Nowadays there's nothing but shitposts, with the good threads buried way underneath, but I don't think it was as bad before 2015 or so.  In fact, a thread about the drawbacks pops up every now and then.

Your points are valid but for those of us who love bitcoin, ehhh.  Nothing is perfect, and we make do with what we've got.

[pooya87]

I own some BTC and some BCH.
I believe in BTC. I see chances in BCH.

we all own bitcoin as our primary thing and then own a lot of shitcoins because we see chances in them to make more bitcoin out their pumps.

1) The distribution of BTC sucks (phew, even if those distribution tables might be extremely inaccurate, this is something to consider; also huge amounts of BTC might be irretrivably lost, but still...). Thus, the 99 story continues with BTC, nothing will change; hard news for some hopeless world changing hopers like me...

it may suck for you but it is fair. it sucks for you because when others were seeing the potential back in the days of cheap coins or easy mining days, you were either listening to the FUD calling bitcoin Ponzi,... or were ignorant. and now you are blaming others for believing and using their heads sooner than you.

2) The slowness of transactions, unless you put a hefty fee to it (what happened to cheap and fast transactions, the original idea [I know, but still, this NEEDS to be solved IMMEDIATELY somehow - it will not happen in the very near and probably also not in the far future.])?  BCH shows the way. Is BCH the way? I don't know. Anyway, in spite of all the efforts, BTC is still way too slow/or way too expensive)

majority of the transactions that i have made so far, have been with 0 fee. they all confirmed in less than a day.
the rest of my transactions had never have any more than 5000 satoshi as fee. and they have always been confirmed fast.

BCH is currently like an unused altcoin. they are also fast with empty blocks. imagine a highway. that highway has 3 lanes. bitcoin's highway has 300,000 cars passing through it every day. BCH highway has 24 lanes but every day only 50 cars pass through it. this is the "way" that you see and think it is better.

3) It is still way to complicated for the common public to become (real) BTC owners

no it is not.

4) Most people in the world still have no clue about BTC, partly by lack of information, interest, it needs too much thinking… And hey, we are definitively not in the high time of human reflection and thinking business. But the very biggest part: Never heard of Blockchain, BTC and the like.

and what is your point?

5) In a world of speed, in a world of IT, can BTC, an IT product (!) with it's snail performance on transactions (see 2) survive? Even if transaction speed was improved 1000-fold and fees reduced, considerably so, - and we are fare from there -, it still will be way too slow!

when you broadcast a tranasction it takes approximately 5 seconds to propagate through the decentralized, spread-across-the-world node network.
as for confirmation/block times, as i said a lot of times, everything comes at a cost. this so far is the best we can hope for. anything more will cause a lot more issues than it can solve.

6)  I cannot understand that the BTC community seems to feels so cool about the high fees, something which will not be solved soon. If BTC becomes the world focus, transactions and exchanges need to execute in Milliseconds in order for BTC to become world dominating. Fees need to be low, otherwise BTC will not be used by everybody (original idea?) and it will hold a niche position forever. Financial products trade at lightning speeds, if BTC does it in seconds, it will still be slow, and we are lightyears away from that, probably even impossible to reach...

high fees is something that those who want to pump BCH keep repeating or those newbies who got involved with bitcoin a couple of days.
for 8+ years fees were as low as it gets. in this 8+ years only a couple of months fees went up and stayed up and that was because of spam attack (something that all blockchains are susceptible to). so you take 3% of the lifetime of bitcoin and call it "high fees".

6) At last, I will hold onto my BTC and BCH and hope, great things will happen, who knows!

hold on to your altcoins as much as you like, just don't get caught up into their lies. make sure to dump when they get pumped or be left holding bags.

7) But I'm very doubtful about the long term success, less doubtful about the near future performance, see above.

when in doubt, sell. there are many others who will willingly and happily take bitcoin out of your hands.

[lucifochrome]

Is it as you have said, there seems to be a lot of downfalls, but that will not stop us from patronizing bitcoin, some articles here tackles about the negatives and it is good to read about it. As for the payment regarding the transaction, it is not that high really. If you compare it with the bank you still have to pay plus the bank to bank transfer will take a couple of days before you receive the money (If its a huge amount) here it is that easy, i just think that the pay is necessary because with the price of bitcoin today, more and more people got interested and countries already legalizing bitcoin so the more transaction the more the system will be processing, and with that an upgrade is necessary so an increase in payment is also necessary.
Just hold to your bitcoin but if you feel the need to sell it then by all means sell it. i will gladly buy LOL.

[NorrisK]

I think you raise some valid points about bitcoin and its current problems, but it is not something the community is ignoring. Solutions are being worked on, but only a small percentage of the community has the capacity to contribute to this.

The biggest and most visible population here is those that want to earn a quick buck. They only care about earning money and this is why you may think this community is only feeding on the positive news (ie. they try to use positive news to pump).

[jseverson]

You raise some very good points. Anyone is free to question the hype, but you do have to keep in mind that this community is made up of Bitcoin holders -- the same people whose success is anchored on Bitcoin's success.

But yeah, in my opinion, this is the most pressing and urgent problem:

4) Most people in the world still have no clue about BTC, partly by lack of information, interest, it needs too much thinking… And hey, we are definitively not in the high time of human reflection and thinking business. But the very biggest part: Never heard of Blockchain, BTC and the like.

The way I see it, there is currently no demand to revolutionize the system because there are too few users. As you have said, most just don't mind the long confirmation times and the high fees because pretty much all everyone does is hold. Once Bitcoin is accepted by the mainstream, I expect that its value will stabilize, and in turn, give no real incentives to people hoarding mass amounts. It will actually be used for daily purchases and thus, steps will be taken along the way to lower the fees and speed up the confirmation times. The prospect might be shaky, but I choose to believe in it. Cheers!

[Beeranha]

Thanks so much for all the comments.

@pooya87: Point 4) That BTC is not popular enough (yet)
Must try with low fee (no fee, really?); so far when I tried that, usually after a day or so, I had to add fee (Electrum) to get the transaction to confirm...

Another issue is buying goods with BTC: The increasing price of BTC makes it very unatractiv to pay for goods with bitcoin, unless they are replenished immediately. Had I purchased goods with 1 BTC in April 2016, I could now buy almost 10 times the same goods, had I kept the bitcoin and paid with $. Thus, making purchases with BTC is not a good idea.

[pyedpyper]

You may be right in the last point of its long term success but I do believe in Bitcoin as it has a great number of followers and most of them also believe it to be the king of cryptos. You say BTC is not known by many people but then how do you think its rising so fast. With the price at $4400 per BTC people are still buying it and its just not those who are already in it but also those who are new in the market. BTC is being adopted world wide heavily and is going to be spread out through out the world and that is the reason why it is going to be successful crypto currency in the long term.

I also believe in bitcoin because the value of bitcoin is so high and there many follower who believe in bitcoin .now this time bitcoin is real king of all crypto currency and people want to buy bitcoin people are crazy for bitcoin now this time everyone talk about in his price I also need more bitcoin.

[bitart]

Thanks so much for all the comments.

@pooya87: Point 4) That BTC is not popular enough (yet)
Must try with low fee (no fee, really?); so far when I tried that, usually after a day or so, I had to add fee (Electrum) to get the transaction to confirm...

Another issue is buying goods with BTC: The increasing price of BTC makes it very unatractiv to pay for goods with bitcoin, unless they are replenished immediately. Had I purchased goods with 1 BTC in April 2016, I could now buy almost 10 times the same goods, had I kept the bitcoin and paid with $. Thus, making purchases with BTC is not a good idea.

This is why most of the people are holding their coins (HODLers) but because of this, merchants are just not rushing to accept bitcoin, because only a few people are willing to pay with it others are holding.
It's like trap of 22, to get more merchants on board, to accept bitcoin, you need to use it, you need to buy. But, because there are only a few merchants available to accept, you don't use it. If you don't use it, there will be no more merchants

[odolvlobo]

Everyone agrees that Bitcoin needs a lot more work, but the current problems can all be solved and people are optimistic about the future.

1) Distribution doesn't mean anything. The distribution of every currency in the world is lop-sided. How many Swedish krona do you own? I bet more than 99% of the people in the world own 0. Is that a problem? Anyway, if someone wants bitcoins, they can buy as many as they want.

2) Bitcoin itself is not designed for instant transactions. For many types of transactions, that is not a problem. Either way, Bitcoin transactions may be very fast in the future with a Lightning Network, or something like that.

3) Yes, it is complicated now, but so is writing a check or using a credit card for someone that has never done it before. It will become easier with better software in the future.

4) As adoption increases, so will awareness. Bitcoin has not yet hit critical mass, but it may eventually.

5) See #2. Also, did you know that sending money from an account in one bank to an account in another takes 3 - 5 days in the U.S.? Bitcoin is so much faster than that. I wonder if banks will survive.

6) High fees are a problem right now, but they haven't always been high and they might not be high in the future. If the fees are too high, then someone will figure out a way to lower them.

7) There is no guarantee that Bitcoin will succeed, survive, and thrive. I give it a 50% chance. Even if Bitcoin itself fails, something else will probably take its place.

[2double0]

1) The distribution of BTC sucks (phew, even if those distribution tables might be extremely inaccurate, this is something to consider; also huge amounts of BTC might be irretrivably lost, but still...). Thus, the 99 story continues with BTC, nothing will change; hard news for some hopeless world changing hopers like me...

Distribution sucks? I don think the way you do. Because the less the coins will be, the more they will be valued (and this includes those that are burnt or lost). It's already changing the thinking of the world now, where are you?

2) The slowness of transactions, unless you put a hefty fee to it (what happened to cheap and fast transactions, the original idea [I know, but still, this NEEDS to be solved IMMEDIATELY somehow - it will not happen in the very near and probably also not in the far future.])?  BCH shows the way. Is BCH the way? I don't know. Anyway, in spite of all the efforts, BTC is still way too slow/or way too expensive)

Transactions are slow? After SegWit came into existence and implemented, it proved to be way better than the speed used to be few months back.

3) It is still way to complicated for the common public to become (real) BTC owners

Well, it's their fault they didn't get in before. Or the fault of medium that used to negate Bitcoins in front of everyone, and after Bitcoins reaching skies, the same media changed their tune!

4) Most people in the world still have no clue about BTC, partly by lack of information, interest, it needs too much thinking… And hey, we are definitively not in the high time of human reflection and thinking business. But the very biggest part: Never heard of Blockchain, BTC and the like.

It's still relatively new, not even a decade old. See my post above for the reply that applies to this too.

5) In a world of speed, in a world of IT, can BTC, an IT product (!) with it's snail performance on transactions (see 2) survive? Even if transaction speed was improved 1000-fold and fees reduced, considerably so, - and we are fare from there -, it still will be way too slow!

If considering current speeds slow and fees higher, then I think that just like a well that always remain thirsty, even upgrades that take further will be slow only for you.

6)  I cannot understand that the BTC community seems to feels so cool about the high fees, something which will not be solved soon. If BTC becomes the world focus, transactions and exchanges need to execute in Milliseconds in order for BTC to become world dominating. Fees need to be low, otherwise BTC will not be used by everybody (original idea?) and it will hold a niche position forever. Financial products trade at lightning speeds, if BTC does it in seconds, it will still be slow, and we are lightyears away from that, probably even impossible to reach...

BTC is infant, and will adhere too many upgrades. Compare the current user base to what it was in 2010, the number is impressive. And the transactions are still being confirmed in max an hour. When you have a website where you can check what's the best amount of sats per byte as well as how many transactions are remaining to be confirmed in various sats per byte slabs (bitcoinfees.21.co), why don't you take advantage of such service?

6) At last, I will hold onto my BTC and BCH and hope, great things will happen, who knows!

It shouldn't be "Will happen", it's already happening.

7) But I'm very doubtful about the long term success, less doubtful about the near future performance, see above.

Everybody thought this won't be a long term success, but then, why does it still exist even after surpassing more than 7 years?

8 ) I don't know much and I am very excited to hear people proving me wrong!

Last but not least, we are not here to put down each other but to help, so nobody is going to prove you wrong, but will "correct" you!
Don't mind, but I think that you are just trying to appreciate BCH over BTC.

[P4ndoraBox]

I think if we go back in the time and we see the first people who invents ''money'' instead of trading good for another was a stupid idea, same as using a card instead of real money, and look at today.

Bitcoin is 9 years old, still new.

Everything is going fine, let it grow.

[Jonsnowstark]

Thanks so much for all the comments.

@pooya87: Point 4) That BTC is not popular enough (yet)
Must try with low fee (no fee, really?); so far when I tried that, usually after a day or so, I had to add fee (Electrum) to get the transaction to confirm...

Another issue is buying goods with BTC: The increasing price of BTC makes it very unatractiv to pay for goods with bitcoin, unless they are replenished immediately. Had I purchased goods with 1 BTC in April 2016, I could now buy almost 10 times the same goods, had I kept the bitcoin and paid with $. Thus, making purchases with BTC is not a good idea.

I agree. Not many people would want to sell their coins because we know that the value will increase. We obly sell if we don't have enough money to cover for emergency expenses.

[mikki14]

Wow! You just generalized btc community and called us ignorant?
You didn't even know everyone of us personally. I don't know why but I don't feel the need to explain or argue with what you stated.
I just want to give 2double0 a slow clap!