What's the most complicated thing about Bitcoin?

[Abiky]

When someone starts using Bitcoin, the first thing he/she comes up with is a nice user interface (depending on the wallet used) that allows him/her to send/receive Bitcoin easily. With a little technical knowledge, the user won't need to worry about other Bitcoin features as long as he/she is able to send/receive coins in a P2P manner.

Still, there are other things that would be of benefit to the user if he/she knew about them. Batching transactions allows one to save off fees, while sending Bitcoin to a new address every time increases privacy. Most wallets don't have a straight-forward interface for the user to do this easily (as far as I know), which involves some technical knowledge to get the most out of Bitcoin.

Among the many features provided by the Bitcoin blockchain, I'm starting to wonder which one is the most complicated? In my case, I believe that it's complicated to perform offline transactions using Bitcoin core as you'd need to know certain commands (like sendrawtransaction) in order to perform said task. There are other commands that are used for creating a multi-sig address and performing batch transactions that are not easy to learn for the average user.

What's your opinion?

[1714913541]

1714913541

[1714913541]

1714913541

[1714913541]

1714913541

[Viscore]

Well I am not a technical guy so I can relate to this, I don't even know that its possible to transact bitcoin offline and I have never seen any of my friends did that. I am currently using the electrum wallet now but because I have no idea with that since I relied on exchanges where I don't really hold the key.
now, I can enjoy using electrum and I think its allowed to do transaction by batches but I haven't tried it yet.

With the advance technologies nowadays, I thin with proper research we can always do it right, there's good and youtube and this forum which can provide relevant information about what we want to know.

[pakhitheboss]

The most complicated feature is miners fee. I always recommend my friends and family member not to fiddles with the amount selected by the wallet while sending Bitcoin.

If you change or reduce the fee then the chances are that your transaction will not be confirmed by the miners, resulting in Bitcoin getting stuck within the blockchain.

The worst part is that no one knows how long it will remain stuck before falling off. Therefore always pay what your wallet says when sending Bitcoin and never reduce the fee.

[gantez]

I will just say that it is complicated when you lose your secret pin or password. This sometimes happen to me and if you are unlucky to have good number of coin there, is complicated. I understand this is same for altcoins too.

[Joel_Jantsen]

The complexity of the platform is determined by "who" is using it. Give the documentation to any Computer Science Engineer and he'll nail the command line. Give it to someone from a commerce background, they'd take ages to install the Core. Personally, I find developing smart contracts and deploying to a live chain quite complex but that again is not bitcoin but blockchain in general.

[Velkro]

Among the many features provided by the Bitcoin blockchain, I'm starting to wonder which one is the most complicated?

Im not sure its feature, but for sure security as a whole. You stated that its easy through interface to send/receive.
I agree to that, but how to keep BTC secure? Its biggest issue for now. Hardware wallets are some answer to newbie crypto users but its  not ultimate solution. I bet hardware wallets are used by less than 1% of crypto users.

[hatshepsut93]

The most complicated thing in Bitcoin is writing Bitcoin scripts from scratch - Bitcoin's Script is it's own language, and if you don't know what you are doing, there's a possibility to accidentally destroy coins or get them stolen from you. The other thing is editing or creating raw transactions - one character mistake, and you send an order of magnitude more/less coins or fees, or lock your funds for decades if you try to use time locks. But many noobs probably never even heard about those things, and it's unlikely that they will ever try them. Most mistakes are caused by simple things like fake wallets or malware.

[Duzter]

From my experience I haven't suffered much, as everything seems user friendly from a common users view point. Same time when I go in depth it is really complicated. Writing bitcoin scripts were a complicated thing, apart from this I find setting up mining little complicated. I invested on mining, but whenever some error happens I used to struggle a lot to get things resolved.

[DreamStage]

The most complicated thing about bitcoin is understanding its concept, how does it work, what are his pros and cons.

For starters you need to know how you can use bitcoin to take profit or make it worth for your transactions from fiat to virtual currency.
You need to make alot of research before going more deep into this new world.

Are there scams? Are there issues? Can my money be lost? How much time to make a transaction?
Every question has to be answered as each one of them is complicated to be answered without knowing the base of bitcoin functionality.

[airdnasxela]

The most complicated thing about bitcoin is understanding its concept, how does it work, what are his pros and cons.

For starters you need to know how you can use bitcoin to take profit or make it worth for your transactions from fiat to virtual currency.
You need to make alot of research before going more deep into this new world.

Are there scams? Are there issues? Can my money be lost? How much time to make a transaction?
Every question has to be answered as each one of them is complicated to be answered without knowing the base of bitcoin functionality.

Same thought. When I started here, everything is new to me. like I don't really understand a thing. Even Bitcoin and blockchain itself is hard to understand as a beginner. How does it works? You really have to study and learn the basics then you'll eventually learn more and more as long you continue engaging and learning Bitcoin. You really need to gather a lot of opinions and information before understanding what really Bitcoin is, and what is the role of blockchain.

Even now when I introduce it to some of my friends, they find it very hard. That they always need to ask what is this, what is that... And it takes time to finally understand bitcoin

[Murat]

For me, the most complicated part of Bitcoin is the fee and payment time, I think it means a lot for the user perspective when you pay Bitcoin for any purpose then you have to pay it within a short time, but Bitcoin takes both times and huge fee on this regards, not only that but also the legal status is looking so complicated to me because most of the country' still don't allow it as a legal payment method so this one is the most concerning issue for me on Bitcoin, but I don't have any idea about the offline transaction because I didn't hear anything like this part of Bitcoin.

[Baby Dragon]

The most complicated thing about bitcoin is understanding its concept, how does it work, what are his pros and cons.

For starters you need to know how you can use bitcoin to take profit or make it worth for your transactions from fiat to virtual currency.
You need to make alot of research before going more deep into this new world.

Are there scams? Are there issues? Can my money be lost? How much time to make a transaction?
Every question has to be answered as each one of them is complicated to be answered without knowing the base of bitcoin functionality.

Indeed, it makes you wonder a lot of things particularly if it's worth the risk or not because most of people these days still thinks that bitcoin is a scam and I can't blame them for thinking that way because there are people who takes advantage of bitcoin and use it in illegal activities. They have ruined the reputation of bitcoin and that is why some of them are hesitating whether to take the risk or not. It's difficult for a newbie knowing that you have to learn a lot of things to cope up with problems and to earn some profit, sometimes you will wonder why do you keep on pushing yourself into something you lack of knowledge about. It's complicated but it is absolutely worth it because of the opportunities and benefits that you can get from bitcoin, you just need to be patient and you should always open your mind for knowledge because it can help you in the future particularly in making decisions.  

[pooya87]

being complicated, all comes down to the tools that the user is using and how much features it has and how easy it is to use those features. some tools are more user friendly than others so obviously it is easier to use bitcoin when you are using them. for example a simple subject such as setting fees could be as easy as moving a slider left and right (like in Electrum) or it could be a nightmare of using different websites and manually looking at memory pool and deciding what fee to set if the wallet doesn't do a good job.
same thing about a lot of other subjects: cold storage (offline signing), signing a message, creating backup, import/export keys, creating different scripts (multi sig, locktimes, other contracts),...

so to answer your question i think the most complicated thing about bitcoin is for developers and is about creating these tool to have many features while keeping them simple for all users so that they can easily understand and correctly use them.

[Sanugarid]

The most complicated thing about bitcoin is understanding its concept, how does it work, what are his pros and cons.

For starters you need to know how you can use bitcoin to take profit or make it worth for your transactions from fiat to virtual currency.

I also encounter volatility of market when I trade, so my first option is to hold and wait for the right time to trade. Every one knows that because it is a fundamental of trading.

To do that, you need patience and discipline.

Are there scams? Are there issues? Can my money be lost? How much time to make a transaction?
Every question has to be answered as each one of them is complicated to be answered without knowing the base of bitcoin functionality.

Of course there are scams, issues and etc. But the key to prevent and avoid those things is through researching and seeking information about what bitcoin is.

How to avoid scams?, How to fix issues?, How to recover losses?. You must read safety and rules before entering world of cryptocurrency. Transactions will help you to apply those knowledge and gain experience out of it.

[CryptoBry]

People whoa re already exposed to many technologies especially related to the internet may not find any insurmountable difficulties in dealing with Bitcoin and can even be so simple with them but this is not the case with people who are still had to be baptized with these innovations happening right now. There is no question that a learning curve is there, especially for people who have not yet started using many apps on their smartphones. But things are not getting better since there are now many wallets that are easier to use and can be set up in just minutes.

[Kprawn]

I think Smart contracts and scripts might be on the difficult side for most average users. That said, I think not a lot of average users would be

using those features and when they want to use that, they would go for some third party service that would make it a lot easier. Obviously writing

code on the protocol level, should be left to the developers and not for the average user. Most people could care less to tinker with the code,

they just want to use it. 

[Slow death]

What's your opinion?

The best way to answer this question is by making comparisons. In case I will make comparisons with banks and paypal.

When I am going to transfer money from my bank account to another bank account I don't mind knowing the fee, I just arrive at the ATM and enter the recipient's account number and transfer the money and in an instant the money is in the recipient's account ... (There is no waiting time to confirm the transaction and no constant fee increase fluctuation)

When I am going to transfer money from my paypal account to someone else's account that has paypal I have to go through the headache of checking the fee and making calculations so that the other person gets their money in exact amount.

In the case of bitcoin I had to learn about miners, transaction confirmation, and a lot of technical stuff ... And that means that people who deal with bitcoin will always be forced to learn the technical side.

[btc_angela]

I guess the most complicated things about bitcoin is how to secure your wallet.

We have seen countless complains about individual wallet being hacked, so I think most of them don't know how to protect it. Easy to make a bitcoin wallet, but keeping it safe is a different story.

[yazher]

The most complicated feature is miners fee. I always recommend my friends and family member not to fiddles with the amount selected by the wallet while sending Bitcoin.

If you change or reduce the fee then the chances are that your transaction will not be confirmed by the miners, resulting in Bitcoin getting stuck within the blockchain.

The worst part is that no one knows how long it will remain stuck before falling off. Therefore always pay what your wallet says when sending Bitcoin and never reduce the fee.

This was my case when using electrum for the first time, I ended up paying small fees for the transactions and got the BTC I sent for almost 2 days. the longest BTC transaction I've ever had. Thankfully it sent after that, some people got their transactions confirmed after almost a week. unlike in the exchanges, the transaction fee is already adjusted to the fast as possible but if you are using some soft wallet you need yo familiarize yourself with it before you use it.

[stompix]

For a new person being introduced to bitcoin with little to no technical knowledge...storing bitcoins is the biggest headache in my opinion.

Of course, they will choose the easy way, storing it in a web wallet, but then the people will start telling them it's not safe. Nor it is safe to store it on your phone, nor it is to store it on your computer if you run windows and you visit shady websites because of keyloggers and clipboard hijackers. And then if you deiced on a paper wallet be careful with that cause you need to keep it protected also, and be careful where you plant your 12-word seed, lol.
Adding on top of that the fact that once your coins are gone, they are, well, gone forever a newbie to this will probably turn around and run from all. To some all those steps you have to take to protect your coins sound like madness and look at you like someone who spends all his time thinking on a doomsday survival plan.

I had been forced a few times to answer a few friends on how to keep their coins safe and I could feel it with each "don't do that" their enthusiasm was going down.

As for the rest, transaction batching, signing messages etc, the usual users won't be needing those.  I can't remember the time I last used a batching transaction and my last signed message to somebody was a few months ago. Neah, the whole odyssey to find the perfect wallet or cold storage is the biggest turn off for some.