Bitcoin is NOT a investment

[Valle]

Remember:

Bitcoin is still in beta.

Remember - "beta" status is meaningless in software engineering. A software can be published for public or not. That's it. It is not possible to fix all bugs in a project.

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[yatsey87]

I've put money in to it, so I'm calling it an investment. I could lose money, but I've still invested it in BTC.

[taltamir]

any sort of investment is pretty much a "Transfer of wealth" one way or the other

No, if that was the case then we would all still be living in caves.
Wealth can be created, it can be destroyed, and it can be transferred.

when you're buying real-estate, gold, silver , etc etc if you are defining things this way it's all gambling as the price can go up or crash down.

If you spend your money to start a company that manufactures something then your investment has created something, that is producing wealth. If you hire contractors to build a house where none existed before, you created wealth. When you write software you create wealth. A farmer growing corn is creating wealth.

If a city is bombed or burned down then wealth is destroyed. A car or a tracktor wearing down over the years of use is wealth being destroyed, a house rotting away over the years is wealth being destroyed. A HDD failure making you lose the sourcecode for your software is wealth being destroyed. A person eating corn is destroying wealth.

Speculation is buy low sell high... or at least attempting to. Everything you gain by buying low and selling high, someone else lost by buying high and selling low.

Usually speculation doesn't occur in a vacuum and is married to production. They finance the creation of new wealth (company that sold the stock has more capital to invest in machinery or raw materials), but they also facilitate the transfer of wealth between individuals (value swings on the stock market).

In bitcoin terms:
mining = create wealth as new coins are created
destroying a wallet containing coins = destroy wealth (well, lose it, probably permanently)
buying low selling high & vice versa = transfer of wealth. For every $ you make on buy low sell high, someone has lost exactly the same amount of dollars buy selling low and buying high.

PS. I do not support the op's notion that speculation isn't an investment. Nor do I think that the existence of speculation is bad. Since people who speculate inadvertently also finance wealth creation

[RoadToHell]

You definitely can invest in USD/Euro. That is what people do on forex...

No, you don't invest in USD/EUR pair, you speculate. Forex trading is a zero sum game. My point is that Bitcoin does not reliably produce wealth, it is a currency, similar to speculating on forex. At some point, user numbers will reach saturation, and Bitcoin will no longer produce any returns (except maybe due to deflation).

The bolded part is key.  Right now people are investing (call it speculating if you want) in the prospect that bitcoin is not at its saturation point and that it will continue to climb to some saturation point.  That is an investment as surely as is someone putting money into a startup company.  It is a high-risk investment, but an investment just the same.  When bitcoin does in fact get near and/or reach that saturation point, then your comparison to trading USD/EUR will be accurate.

[tvbcof]

I suspect that using Bitcoin in the manner that the OP prescribes/demands/dictates/whatever would probably kill it (as a interesting an promising solution adhering to some modicum of decentralization) faster than any realistic attack.

In the mean time, it's proven quite an attractive and lucrative vehicle for high risk speculation.  And doing so (and thus acting as a buffer of sorts for in the highly volatile market space) has at least the potential to facilitate a better distribution.  Happy days!

[fitbobcat]

It is an investment. (Some) Users buy bitcoins to see the value go up and sell them. Thus investing in them. Please see the definition below. Thank

the action or process of investing money for profit or material result.

Rainbow Text Created at http://freebitcoinfaucet.com/bbcode/

[joinmicah]

This is the kind of stuff People need to do with the various
Cryptocoins I believe they each have their own Value
and we need to let the World Market decide exactly
what that value is.

I believe if we went to our local Grocery Store, Hardware
Store, Computer Store, etc... to Invite them to learn more
about People that are using their computers to create Money,
Commodities, Equities,

I am the Owner of ADSactly and my Plans are to put together
a Scam Free Environment where we can all work together to
Take Down the Bankers One Day at as Time. By Providing
Ultimate Products and Services that help anybody create
a business online.




I got this Article from Road To Roota which
I am a Private Road Subscriber!

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The REAL value in Bitcoin is not in the price speculation, get rich quick schemes or trading the crazy price volatility but rather in its value as a MONETARY UTILITY in the exchange of goods and services.
 
With the annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the world above $70 Trillion fiat dollars I would think there is plenty of room for a few competing currencies like Gold, Silver and of course for online transactions...Bitcoin!
 
Apparently so does Overstock.com as they just announced that they will start accepting Bitcoin...
 
Overstock.com Will Start Taking Bitcoin Next Year
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/overstock-com-start-taking-bitcoin-191550579.html
 
So in the 2nd quarter of 2014 I will be able to buy any of the 984,000 items that Overstock.com offers...with a click of a mouse paying no transaction fees to the banksters!
 
Hmmm...
 
I wonder how long before Amazon, eBay, Google, Facebook, etc figure out that accepting Bitcoin can increase their market share, add to their revenues and drastically decrease their banking expenses?
 
The battle to retake our financial system is in full view of the world now.
 
In 2014 EVERYTHING WILL CHANGE!

[Chaoskampf]

Bitcoin is memory:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=234731.0