Can Bitcoin Become Negative in Value?

[denzkilim]

I was shocked for reading a market breaking new as strange as this.

I paused and reflected again and again by applying this condition to other market assets.

I read from Blomberg that the price of crude oil has declined into a negative  of $-37.63/barrel.

What will happen to countries that depend solely on crude oil revenue?

What will happen to the investors in crude oil?

A very serious reflection is that fact that, is it possible for bitcoin value to also drop into the negative?

What if the following happen:
1. A ban in the demand for bitcoin and a ban in the use of bitcoin.
2. Backing off of bitcoin miners from the business of mining?

Could these causes bring the value of bitcoin to something similar to the historic oil Price drop of $-37.63?

What do you have to say about this?

1. How does exactly do a government ban Bitcoin? The answer is they have no power to ban this technology even if they try it so hard they will never ever prevent people from using it. Even those giant countries like China can't ban Bitcoin.
2. Even there are a lot of miners that will back off there will be tons of miners that will enter the business because of the great opportunity that they'll see from it. For example when 10 miners are backing of there will be 20 or more miners that will surely enter the business.

[yazher]

You are just becoming sensitive to this kind of topic when crude oil and bitcoin is a different kind of thing to each other. Have you ever seen a currency that became negative in value? of course never. When Bitcoin will be banned in the whole world, there will be some kind of association that will accept it. As you can see right now, Bitcoin is going strong amidst this pandemic and that is one of the reasons why your speculation is never going to happen at all.

[Wenbing]

I think it will not become negative, it will just be its collapse

Take for instance, miners pays for the cost of electricity generation to mine bitcoins n the hope of paying the cost when such bitcoins are sold.

In the case of zero demand, do we still need bitcoin? It'll become worthless while the miners and investors will be hugely indebted.

[royalfestus]

Such can only happen in centralized project like crude oil not a decentralized coin like bitcoin, if bitcoin ever gets as low as $100 then the space is gone. Those in the tokenomics understand some of this and spend a lot to stay above some prices. It is also a result of politics and pandemic. At that negative I believe someone is already paying for it, Government most likely. The price is not really negative or less than $0, it means oil is in excess supply and no demand at all for it.

[Pffrt]

Theoratically it's possible for BTC to go to the negative (provided someone's willing to payto rid Bitcoins off his/ her possession)

Anyone can simply throw away his private key and get rid of his bitcoin. I believe there will be no short of throwing away the private key, the dust bin is enough to do so. So, no, Bitcoin can never go negative value.
However, bitcoin to be valueless will take at least a few decades from now.

[online73]

Hello everybody. I think that at the current level of manipulation, the value of bitcoin can take on any value, including negative ones. There is absolutely nothing to do with the nature of the market condition of an asset. Here the most important desire of the market maker. Any market is one huge lie. If the market maker cannot shake out certain liquidity from the market by his manipulations, why not take the most extreme step by lowering the price below zero. We can only be smart here - what bitcoin is widespread and cool. There is only one law - the law of the market maker.

[webtricks]

bitcoin's supply is perfectly inelastic. It's not possible for it to be negative.

Supply of Bitcoin isn't perfectly inelastic. Supply of something is said to be perfectly inelastic when the price of such commodity has no impact on its supply. In real world, nothing is perfectly inelastic. In case of Bitcoin, supply of Bitcoin in the market increases whenever price rises or falls by high margins. Many investors who were reluctant to sell earlier, become willing to sell in such conditions. We consider market supply (not real supply) to evaluate whether a commodity is elastic or not.

Also not to forget that new Bitcoins are still being created, so supply is not fixed (which is another condition for perfectly inelastic market).

So this isn't the reason why Bitcoin can never be negative. The main reason why I think Bitcoin can never fall below zero is due to the computational work involved in its creation. Anything which is created by spending value (electricity) always possess value.

[UserU]

However, bitcoin to be valueless will take at least a few decades from now.

Still too early in our era. Let our grandchildren worry about that, assuming they invest in Bitcoin too

[LoyceMobile]

If you ever worry about this, I promise I'll take them off your hands for free!

[seoincorporation]

The chance to see bitcoin negative is the same chance than see the gold negative. Are things that never will happen... But why it happens with the oil? It was because people invest money in it, and when the oil company told them 'Where should i send the oil?' people start selling it like crazy. And some people were ready to pay for other ones to take those oil barrels.

[Swapzone]

Worst case scenario it will have 0 value not negative, however, it's so unlikely as Bitcoin managed to keep its value through hard times. 

[Casdinyard]

You are just becoming sensitive to this kind of topic when crude oil and bitcoin is a different kind of thing to each other. Have you ever seen a currency that became negative in value? of course never. When Bitcoin will be banned in the whole world, there will be some kind of association that will accept it. As you can see right now, Bitcoin is going strong amidst this pandemic and that is one of the reasons why your speculation is never going to happen at all.

The OP is maybe confuse and wondering if the same price crash is going to happen with bitcoin, I must say that bitcoin could also be looking that way as what the crude industry looks like but it won't be in zero.
Aside if you seen bitcoin at $100 would not you buy it? lol everyone is dreaming bitcoin to be at the price as if it was back in the humble beginnings of bitcoin, probably around a hundred of bucks. Pandemic is hitting us hard now you can actually see it with the markets, but crypto is at the position of taking off for upcoming halving and I think this pandemic is not going to be a huge problem until the halving is over.

[cizatext]

Well if you know bitcoin market very well you will know that the market is always volatile and any thing can happen, just like the crude oil market if the demand drop the price will also follow. The covid 19 pandemic have dealt heavy on the economy.

[figmentofmyass]

This is why oil was in the negatives:

Prices went negative — meaning that anyone trying to sell a barrel would have to pay a buyer $30 — in part because of the way oil is traded. Futures contracts that require buyers to take possession of oil in May are expiring on Tuesday, and nobody wanted the oil because there was no place to store it. Contracts for June delivery were still trading for about $22 a barrel, down 16 percent for the day.

So strictly speaking, oil itself doesn't have negative value, the said futures contracts of oil do. Future contracts of oil that don't require you to take physical custody should still retain some value.

it seems like the opposite to me. oil very much has (or recently had) negative value.

settled physically deliverable futures contract = a true measure of the underlying commodity itself. if you need to pay people to take delivery on oil, that tangibly reflects the market value. storage costs (cost of carry) are characteristic of the real underlying asset. it is unsettled futures contracts---or contracts that don't require physical delivery---that don't reflect the true cost of carry. these can retain value precisely because they don't reflect the true value of oil.

this isn't just about oil speculators being unable to store oil. oil producers in the USA are generally still operating at full capacity because 1. shutting down wells is expensive, labor-intensive, and can permanently damage the site. and 2. producers took SBA bailout loans and will operate until the money runs dry, then they will default and not repay the loans. all the oil they are producing has to go somewhere, even if they have to pay someone to take it.

this could never happen to bitcoin because unlike oil, bitcoin has no carrying cost.

[adzino]

Not really. It can't end up being on a negative value, since you won't be incurring any loss or you do not have to spend anything to store your coins. I am not surprised that you have never heard of negative pricing. Let me explain it to you on layman's term. The demand for oil fell due to this pandemic. But, oils are still being pumped at the same rate. Now, they are no longer being able to store those extra oils. Again, storing is also costing them a lot. So, they are giving away their oils and paying to get it off their hands. Now you might be thinking why don't they just shutdown their operation and stop pumping all those oils, right? Well, terminating and restarting everything is going to cost them a lot more!
I am sure you have heard of negative interest rate. That's another interesting topic.

[shield132]

First of all I want to say that it has nothing to do with bitcoin and I'll explain later.
Now, what happened? Because of corona virus there were made a lot of restrictions around the world regarding to travelling. Stay at home resulted in decreased car usage. You don't need fuel if you don't use car.
Price of crude oil become negative which directly means owners pay you to just own, store it. In economics we have one rule: There is demand - there is supply but current situation is the pure example of what happens when there is excessive supply but no demand. But situation isn't that simple right now because company owners can't just throw it and at the same time their storage capacity could run out in May so they have to get rid of it anyway. What's the latest deal? To pay someone to just get it. It's like, imagine what do you do when your phone is out of storage and have upcoming information to store? You are pushed to delete some information but you need it, it's important, so you are paying others to store it, in this case cloud storage companies. In this case both, cruide oil company owners and you are seeking for storage.

But such situation can't happen on bitcoin!
First of all by owning bitcoin you don't lose anything, you can receive 21 million bitcoin in your wallet without any storage issues or etc, then can just destroy it. No one loses by owning bitcoin so there is no need to pay any cent someone for just sending and storing of it. Even if bitcoin becomes banned all around the world, don't even think that miners will pay you just to get mining equipments, no, because those equipments contain parts that can be recycled and used for other purposes which means owners will get at least some money.

[BuNga_cute]

In my opinion it is impossible for the price of bitcoin to be negative, to be zero is very unlikely. I think bitcoin is not possible losing demand,
with all the benefits we can get from bitcoin. And also bitcoin can't be banned by all countries, the proof is now the number of countries that
legalize bitcoin continues to grow.

[Wenbing]

<snip>
Its like, imagine what do you do when your phone is out of storage and have upcoming information to store? You are pushed to delete some information but you need it, it's important, so you are paying others to store it, in this case cloud storage companies. In this case both, cruide oil company owners and you are seeking for storage.

Very remarkable explanations. I also see some insignificant variable costs associated in storing our bitcoin. The cost include, buying devices for that purposes, buying internet subscription to download software wallets etc.

Shouldn't we factor these cost into our analysis of the possibility of bitcoin becoming negative.

[Wenbing]

Could these causes bring the value of bitcoin to something similar to the historic oil Price drop of $-37.63?

What do you have to say about this?

Bitcoin's lack of privacy will prove to be its downfall just as the censorship of this once great forum will prove to be its downfall.

This is response is outstanding among the comments on this threads. I want everyone to pay attention to this particular comment as I ask this question.

With due regards, kindly explain what you mean by 'privacy of bitcoin' and 'censorship of the bitcointalk forum'

Thanks

[rodskee]

I was shocked for reading a market breaking new as strange as this.

I paused and reflected again and again by applying this condition to other market assets.

I read from Blomberg that the price of crude oil has declined into a negative  of $-37.63/barrel.

What will happen to countries that depend solely on crude oil revenue?

What will happen to the investors in crude oil?

A very serious reflection is that fact that, is it possible for bitcoin value to also drop into the negative?

What if the following happen:
1. A ban in the demand for bitcoin and a ban in the use of bitcoin.
2. Backing off of bitcoin miners from the business of mining?

Could these causes bring the value of bitcoin to something similar to the historic oil Price drop of $-37.63?

What do you have to say about this?

Never mate because you must not compared Bitcoin to other physical form
as they are not meant to be.
Bitcoin can become lower in price but won't end the demand so it is impossible to turn zero value and will never in negative.
and also even Miners stops mining yet the value will remain as people will continue to use this and never to be abandoned .