Can Bitcoin Become Negative in Value?

[hahay]

Of course this will not happen to bitcoin because when there is no more demand for bitcoin then in the end bitcoin will die and also, bitcoin is not centralized and bitcoin has a limited supply which is very likely that demand will always be there until its value will at least continue to increase despite the level fluctuations in this market are huge but that is not a problem as long as bitcoin trading is accepted or recognized worldwide.

[witcher_sense]

In theory, if the demand for Bitcoin goes to zero then the value of Bitcoin might also go to zero. But that us just the theory, I don't think that something like this is likely to happen and any fear because of that isn't real.
Bitcoin price might fall any time, might lose the value but it will not go to zero.

There are people in bitcoin community who will not allow price of bitcoin fall to zero. These are bitcoin believers, maximalists, cypherpunks , etc. No matter what is happening with bitcoin, they keep believing in it and keep buying it especially when it falls. Although you know what. There is no such thing as "no demand for bitcoin".  Bitcoin is not just regular asset for speculation. It is a new technology that can not disappear after it once showed up. This is no demand for bitcoin, this is demand for the possibility to change our monetary system in the way that serves not only governments and banks, but all human beings in the world. Such a technology just cannot fall to zero.

[kawetsriyanto]

This can happen if only everyone stops investing in bitcoin.

But what makes people stop invest in Bitcoin? It is also rather impossible as I think a too small chance happens. Bitcoin is growing in adoption and the use of a digital payment tool. For me, it is a positive sign that Bitcoin can survive a long time. As it continues, it is doubtful to see the negative value of Bitcoin, even the value will be bigger because of its advantage.

[FlightyPouch]

It is unlikely that this will happen, there are no prerequisites for this. This can happen if only everyone stops investing in bitcoin.

That's the thing! No one will ever stop people from investing in this crypto currency. It is one of the best investments you can have right now, and if you have it earlier, the better. If there will be some way for people to stop investing in bitcoin, then we can talk about this but even though there are a lot of scams, dumps, and hacks that are happening, people are still using it since they know that in the near future, it will give them a good profit.

[MicroGuy]

It is unlikely that this will happen, there are no prerequisites for this. This can happen if only everyone stops investing in bitcoin.

Unlikely? Try impossible.

Bitcoin will never go to zero. But I do see it dropping to around $500 in the next 3 years.

[hatshepsut93]

the price for oil is temporarily negative, it will go up soon. the price for bitcoin will never go down to negative price

It had done it more than once in the past and can do it again. It's not like Bitcoin is immune to negative drops.

It was on the negative when it was trading for 300 dollars in 2015 and it did the same thing twice in this recent bear market. One time when it went to 3000 dollars in 2018 and briefly this year.

Negative doesn't mean below 1 dollar. It means below the price of mining.

You're just changing the definition of "negative", which is not what OP asked for. He asked if the price can be negative in mathematical sense, and the answer is clearly no, because Bitcoin doesn't have any big costs for storing/moving it, like oil does. The cost of mining isn't relevant much, it's miners problem, not holder's. And there's not even such thing as universal price of mining, every miner has their own bill that can be very different from what other miners have.

[ranochigo]

There's a huge difference between mining for Bitcoin and oil. Countries in the world can easily increase the volume of oil that they can produce as most of them are not producing at the maximum capacity. If this were to applied to Bitcoin, the increase in the difficulty every 2016 block would be enough to counter the effects of the increase in resources. Even if it is done to further their political agenda, the effect is fairly limited.

To the reason for the negative oil value; storing oil incurs losses and if there is no use for oil, it would make more economical sense to dump them off to someone else. Since no one wants it, they would pay people to get it off their hands. Bitcoin in comparison, doesn't incur any expenses and this scenario would never happen to Bitcoin.

[tbterryboy]

I do not know if I am right or wrong about this, but from what I understood, the reason why the price of oil turned negative is because there is no one buying them. The sellers are even begging the buyers and paying them to buy oil. So in this kind of situation, for sure there is going to be a negative price. But in the case of bitcoin, I don't see that as something that's possible.

For Bitcoin to even drop to dollar, I think everyone that's into it and investing in it will have to quit from it, and that includes the exchanges. I can't even imagine such a thing happening. Bitcoin can't and won't drop to a negative price and that's it.

[abel1337]

I don't know if that can happen, All I know is Bitcoin is different from oil. We all know that both rely on supply and demand, The recent oil crash reason is mainly the coronavirus. The oil storage of the company is so full because they can't sell oil very much in this situation. It is one of the reasons why oil experience a sudden dump. On the other hand, Bitcoin would probably crash into zero when i. Internet connection was cut all over the world (Bitcoin is unusable = no value) ii. All mining is stopped iii. End of the world. There is much reason but bitcoin price would step below zero I think.

[Yatsan]

I do not know if I am right or wrong about this, but from what I understood, the reason why the price of oil turned negative is because there is no one buying them. The sellers are even begging the buyers and paying them to buy oil. So in this kind of situation, for sure there is going to be a negative price. But in the case of bitcoin, I don't see that as something that's possible.

For Bitcoin to even drop to dollar, I think everyone that's into it and investing in it will have to quit from it, and that includes the exchanges. I can't even imagine such a thing happening. Bitcoin can't and won't drop to a negative price and that's it.

Actually that is possible, I witness some of the coin drop to 0 and comeback within a minute the reason behind this is with the certain exchange, there's one trader that got fucked-up and sell all of his holdings until it drop to 0 and some or buy until it got to millions. I don't remember that certain exchange but there's a issue in the past like that. It's possible but also impossible.

It's possible on a random exchange to happen but  impossible as a general, and as the whole bitcoin itself, I hope you are getting my point  

[d5000]

Funny thread

And - to bring in a completely new opinion - yes, it can become negative, for a short timeframe. The probability is extremely low, but it can happen.

Let's consider the following scenario:

Bitcoin has "died", i.e. nobody wants to buy it anymore, the blockchain has stopped to work. Basically the same scenario thousands of altcoins already are suffering from.

Now someone wants to "revive" the currency, for example if he quietly mined a lot of BTC alone for almost zero cost or got Bitcoins for free from people who stopped using it. However, people are so reluctant to use Bitcoin that they don't even accept it in the form of an airdrop.

So ok, what could this guy do? Well, offer money or another kind of gratification for people using Bitcoin. (This is basically what some ICOs/altcoins are already doing, if you think it well). Let's say he gives out 1 BTC to everybody and additionally gives 1 USD to the first 1000 participants of his airdrop who are proving that they're using a Bitcoin client. He hopes that after his airdrop finished, the currency would be again in use, and the price would start to climb so he can sell his remaining Bitcoins for a lot of money.

As he's the only market participant "selling" Bitcoin and he's doing so for a negative price (in my example, the price would be -1$), so the price of Bitcoin is becoming negative in this case (It would go to zero or higher again after his airdrop has finished, but the question wasn't that it can "stay" negative).

[ballerin and giroud]

Bitcoin will never go to negative because it has demand that's not printable supply like paper money making inflation not possible and a revolutionary technology backing it up and it is not like the centralized monetary system that it has a single source of authority thus making it extremely difficult for banks or governments to shut it down.

We never know what will happen in the future and we never know bitcoin will have a value or not in the future. Because everything can be happened on this world, especially with the media it can make something bad will go to a good thing and something good will go to a bad thing. I see bitcoin will be very usefull in the future, the technology is something that can't be separated by human being. Especially for transaction place, bitcoin can replace it. You can see how much price that will be spend for someone if he intend to transfer money? How many parties which are involved? And bitcoin can resolve it.

[Wenbing]

  I have read a few threads why its actually associated with oil price what to do with BTC

Fine statement. This is how its associated with BTC. Agree first that the economy are parts that fits together.

Do you know there are certain oil investor's that also invest in BTC or cryptocurrency. So, if there money go down the drain that'll affect the demand for BTC...
when the demand for BTC is less price will plummeted.

So, there is a chain reaction when any variable adjust in an economy.

<snip>

Negative doesn't mean below 1 dollar. It means below the price of mining.

You actually have a solid point with this lines. For a better understanding can you explain what you mean by those terms and what can cause BTC to take negative values based on your example?

[moderator's note: consecutive posts merged]

[MicroGuy]

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?

Bitcoin became a negative value is impossible because of the our innovative era or technology. Bitcoin in the future will be the main currency in the world because of versitile of this currency.

If the current proof of work Bitcoin were to become the main currency in the World, we would all be left breathing hot ash from the smoldering remains of our cooked earth.

[pgbit]

The price of bitcoin can never be negative because the selling price in the current cryptocurrency market works a lot. Bitcoin can hold the number one position as a developing country in the world at present so we need to read it in a positive market to bring it to a better position with the developed world banking. The system is being launched and bitcoin through banking as the price level at which we can say with payment in bitcoin never negative, can not be expected to be positive, it's always something to positive, then we will be able to market in valuable.

[Wenbing]

The price of bitcoin can never be negative because the selling price in the current cryptocurrency market works a lot. Bitcoin can hold the number one position as a developing country in the world at present so we need to read it in a positive market to bring it to a better position with the developed world banking. The system is being launched and bitcoin through banking as the price level at which we can say with payment in bitcoin never negative, can not be expected to be positive, it's always something to positive, then we will be able to market in valuable.

It has been proved in this thread that Bitcoin can't be negative even if the worst is to happen because unlike oil we don't pay to store Bitcoin.

But, from your remark, I want to say that bitcoins may not always be the number one digital currency in the market.

With the innovation of other coins in the market if bitcloins don't innovate too it can be displaced in ranking.

Anyways, anything can happen in an imperfect world like this until we have earth 2.0 (lol).

[Nalbo]

Oil price was negative for a brief moment as there were no more storage left and the pumps were not turned off to check the demand.
For bitcoin even if the demand plummets, there would be no constrain of storage as miners and any trader can store any amount of bitcoin without any cost and even offline.

[JamesOlly]

This is better question in its core, than it seems at first place.

“Value” is always different for same object/service to different people. I give You sample from BDSM world. Some people pay money, to be whipped, while I would pay NOT to be, leave room and mistress the same for both cases. You should easily see, how differently me and the other person value some… service?

Now, this is also conver table to product and objects. I now for sure, that BTC is a scam, and whilst many who lose eventually real dollars in there, are just greedy bastards who eager for free effortless income, there are definitely exceptions. For example loving grandmother giving grandson live savings for “investment” so that he could start his own independent life. She is a victim. BTC separately has zero value for me (I really would not pay a penny), but the fact, that we are dealing with scam here and possibility of hurting that lovely grandmother, lessen value of BTC for me even lower. In fisherman words: “I would not take BTC, if You paid me to do so.”

So yes, its possible to have a negative value. myessayplanet.com

[thecatinc]

Bitcoin is certainly valuable but Bitcoin can never be negative because it isn't a stable currency the worth is low and high but if the worth goes up we will easily make a profit cryptocurrency is additionally referred to as digital currency alternative currency or virtual currency.

Correction: No currency would ever be negative - They can only equal to 0. The prices of oli was negative because they cannot find a place to store them.
Correction 2: A value of something is determined by the equilibrium.
Correction 3: Don't have the mindset of Bitcoin is a "get-rich-quick" thing. It is not. The value behind it is from the miners and the technology behind it.

PS: IF Bitcoin [or any other cryptocurrency] were to be in negative in value, simply, you just need to burn your private keys/seed (or send it to a burn address). (note: Most exchanges DO NOT Support trades in NEGATIVE terms so I suppose that this would be very unlikely to happen).

[Shasha80]

In my opinion it is not possible for Bitcoin to be negative in value, even though the price of Bitcoin continues to drop
to the lowest, Possibility zero in value. But that is very small possibility that Bitcoin zero in value can be seen that
Bitcoin demand has increased. This is what makes the price of Bitcoin go up. So I never hesitate to invest in Bitcoin.