What do you think is the biggest disadvantage of bitcoin?

[Smartprofit]

We keep saying bitcoin is a nice currency, because of lots of reasons like deflation, freedom etc. There are times though that we find some kind of inconvenience on its use.

IMO, bitcoin has a huge disadvantage. The fee part. I've made a transaction 5 days ago with a charge of 500 satoshis (in total). That's pretty cheap and I set that fee because I'm transferring money to myself, but thinking that it may never be confirmed is kinda annoying. Based on bitinfocharts, the median fee right now is $7! I'm playing on an online trading card game that accepts only paypal, and I'm trying to convince them accept bitcoin. How exactly?? All those HODL enthusiasts look forward to see bitcoin touching the $100k. In order for this to happen, it means more demand. This leads to more transactions per second which also leads to higher fees. Who knows how many satoshis we'll have to pay for having a high priority among miners' choices.

Am I the only one that starts unseeing bitcoin as a medium of exchange?

Bitcoin is currently not a very good medium of exchange.  Large commissions, high volatility, low liquidity, etc. 

But this does not mean that bitcoin is not interesting as an investment asset.  Gold is also a poor medium of exchange.  Diamonds are also a bad medium of exchange ...

Bitcoin has other functions as well.  Bitcoin is a capital preservation tool.  Bitcoin is a very easy way to make international payments.

Imagine that there is a war or revolution going on in your country.  You need to quickly leave for another country.  What assets can I take with me?  The property?  Bank accounts?  Ingots of gold?  No, these are not very good assets (for an overseas escape). 

Bitcoin is the perfect solution!  12 English words (seed) = $ 1,000,000.

[South Park]

Bitcoin is a nice currency with lots of advantages and like we all know anything that has advantage have disadvantage. Bitcoin is surrounded with lots disadvantage and among them I will like to highlight the High fee in time of transactions and also the irreversible aspect in transactions.

Irreversible transactions: bitcoin is known for it’s irreversible transactions, meaning bitcoin sent to a wrong wallet can not be recovered. How good is these? When we all make mistakes and sometimes out of stress or pressure we forget ourselves.
High fee: it’s almost normal to us now because it’s continue to pop up

When it comes to irreversible transactions this is a classic case of it’s not a bug it’s a feature, this is not a bug or a weakness of bitcoin but one of its strongest points, the reason satoshi did this is because banks can reverse transactions and as such the money in your bank account is never truly yours, but in the case of bitcoin there is no centralized institution and no way to reverse transactions, I know that this means that if you make a mistake you are out of luck but this passes the responsibility back to the end user which is exactly what satoshi was looking for.

[Darkelf11]

Bitcoin is a movement, which every investors need to understand, before buying. And the biggest mistake is to buy when the price is extremely high, which it will take more time to sell for a profit, secondly the big mistake of disadvantaged of bitcoin is base on exchange that is not more secure, with a weak password.

There are many things to consider when buying some bitcoins. You are free to buy but let it be a lesson to everyone that you should understand first the consequence of buying when the price is high. Ofcourse the best timing to buy is when the price is low and it is best to sell when the price is high. Next, the unsecured exchange is not a disadvantage of bitcoin. Bitcoin does not hold any exchange but exchanges use bitcoin for their site.

[Zanab247]

One of the biggest disadvantage of bitcoin is lack of facilitator. Facilitator mean  those who help other to achieve their goal in the country. I came to discover that there are many scammer in the forum claiming they are facilitator to help and teach people the right thing to do the right in the forum than to  see them try to know all your personal details to scam your money.many people have loss so much money on scammer just because it hard them to different scammer from facilitator.

[Stedsm]

Yeah, I was just going to write that fee is the biggest disadvantage of BTC right now (during days when BTC spikes hard and when we need to pay fortunes to get our transactions confirmed). Don't you think that miners do it just to stop us from selling and just hodl longer? I mean, just think of it differently. Anyways, I believe there's one more thing that's disadvantageous to BTC and that is its monopolistic possession of big investors. You already know the number and it's fixed, 21 million and all the BTC gone, we just need to buy it at their prices if they become successful in accumulating almost each Satoshi available in the markets. This is too bad and if overlooked, it can make BTC a game of some "supernatural" investors and big bulls who will take BTC to some levels unmatchable by small investors.

[ShowOff]

I have read quite a number of previous answers about the disadvantage of bitcoin. But most users say fee are one of the most prominent answers to bitcoin's disadvantage. I'm sure there will be more fixe for this fee issue in the future, but to date every bitcoin upgrade has had issues with transaction fee.

Are there any steps to prevent transaction fee from increasing when the bitcoin price goes up ?

[imstillthebest]

One of the biggest disadvantage of bitcoin is lack of facilitator. Facilitator mean  those who help other to achieve their goal in the country. I came to discover that there are many scammer in the forum claiming they are facilitator to help and teach people the right thing to do the right in the forum than to  see them try to know all your personal details to scam your money.many people have loss so much money on scammer just because it hard them to different scammer from facilitator.

scammers are different from facilitators . you know the difference when it comes to asking sensitive data's and money  .

 we dont need to give our data to a facilitator but we can still communicate on them anonymously  . if you are serious and wants to meet them locally, there should be safety measures that you must follow to keep your self safe . faciliator is not a big disadvantage on bitcoin because we have this forum and we have the net , we can learn and educate our self alone if we want to improve our bitcoin and crypto knowledge .

[CryptoPoliticalEnthusiast]

I'd say the biggest disadvantage is the transaction fees, they can be really high sometimes.

But that's perfectly solvable. Most of the fees can be lowered through user influence, and many of the fee hikes are politics at work that can be stopped if users make it clear they aren't happy.

[South Park]

Yeah, I was just going to write that fee is the biggest disadvantage of BTC right now (during days when BTC spikes hard and when we need to pay fortunes to get our transactions confirmed). Don't you think that miners do it just to stop us from selling and just hodl longer? I mean, just think of it differently. Anyways, I believe there's one more thing that's disadvantageous to BTC and that is its monopolistic possession of big investors. You already know the number and it's fixed, 21 million and all the BTC gone, we just need to buy it at their prices if they become successful in accumulating almost each Satoshi available in the markets. This is too bad and if overlooked, it can make BTC a game of some "supernatural" investors and big bulls who will take BTC to some levels unmatchable by small investors.

I do not think we need a conspiracy to explain what we see when it comes to the fees when it is a clear case of supply and demand at work, the space on each block is limited and if you make a transaction then you want some of that space for your transaction to be confirmed, so in effect you are bidding against other people in an auction to see who gets the fastest confirmation, and this means that those that have a greater need or the most money can get faster confirmations making the fees to go up in value, can miners manipulate this process? Of course they can, but without a real need for faster transactions they will get nowhere.

[Wulan_maniez]

Because of high volatility, I don’t feel safe using bitcoin as a medium of exchange yet. Just imagine, when bitcoin is bullish like it is today
and when we are making payments for food, suddenly one second later the price of bitcoin goes up, but we can’t do anything because we have already paid bitcoin.
This is an obstacle for everyone to think twice about using bitcoin as a medium of exchange.
If we keep it as a long-term asset then the current bullish moment is very profitable for anyone who keeps bitcoin.

[Ayiranorea]

There is no big disadvantage with bitcoin. It hasn't reached the common man's hand, because of its technical things and the transaction fee. The success will be very big, once it gets used by the common people who contribute a majority of the economy. Another thing is the transaction fee, it hasn't got the fee structure which stops people from microspending.

[_IRMAN]

I think the only disadvantage is the high transaction fees, and this makes it difficult for bitcoin to become a payment method and get mass adoption. Apart from that I think everything is fine.

[illnino]

Bitcoin is a movement, which every investors need to understand, before buying. And the biggest mistake is to buy when the price is extremely high, which it will take more time to sell for a profit, secondly the big mistake of disadvantaged of bitcoin is base on exchange that is not more secure, with a weak password.

First, its high volatility is a minus. On the other hand, it is a great plus for those, who hodl Bitcoin or trade it. Secondly, the security is still not so good. Finally, we need BTC ATMs, and it seems to me, these machines are available in the USA only.

[thesmallgod]

The post clearly stated the disadvantages of bitcoin and I can see a lot of folks still defending bitcoin  . I know it is hard to accept that what you like have some bad side but it is nothing unusual even fiat currency had disadvantages such as; fragility, inflation, and changes in public confidence so also bitcoin has disadvantages such as volatility, high transaction fee, false anonymity and difficulty in general acceptability in lieu of a legal tender etc.

[k@suy]

The post clearly stated the disadvantages of bitcoin and I can see a lot of folks still defending bitcoin  . I know it is hard to accept that what you like have some bad side but it is nothing unusual even fiat currency had disadvantages such as; fragility, inflation, and changes in public confidence so also bitcoin has disadvantages such as volatility, high transaction fee, false anonymity and difficulty in general acceptability in lieu of a legal tender etc.

For me the only drawback of bitcoin was the mere fact that it was a very volatile currency which makes it also a unique characteristics of bitcoin too. And this was the sole reason that every traders should be keep in mind and not to deny it because we face it a lot. And this was also the major challenge in bitcoin that we should overcome to be able to generate an income from here. Even bitcoin has a good side still we can't deny that it also has a bad side.

[fauzan123]

The post clearly stated the disadvantages of bitcoin and I can see a lot of folks still defending bitcoin  . I know it is hard to accept that what you like have some bad side but it is nothing unusual even fiat currency had disadvantages such as; fragility, inflation, and changes in public confidence so also bitcoin has disadvantages such as volatility, high transaction fee, false anonymity and difficulty in general acceptability in lieu of a legal tender etc.

For me the only drawback of bitcoin was the mere fact that it was a very volatile currency which makes it also a unique characteristics of bitcoin too. And this was the sole reason that every traders should be keep in mind and not to deny it because we face it a lot. And this was also the major challenge in bitcoin that we should overcome to be able to generate an income from here. Even bitcoin has a good side still we can't deny that it also has a bad side.

Good and bad sides will always exist in a business, especially in the financial sector, but in terms of benefits and principles, bitcoin remains unchanged. Because basically bitcoin exists as a tool for alternative transactions from conventional transactions.

Of course, as we know now that some have started to accept bitcoin, like paypal and others, it is not impossible that the banking system will also be able to cooperate in the near future.

[AicecreaME]

Personally speaking, transaction fees and processing time are the biggest disadvantages of bitcoin.

The two things I've mentioned are pretty much of a hassle whenever I'm using bitcoin specially when I'm exchanging. The transaction fees are way too high for a small amount I'm going to exchange. I feel like the exchangers are charging up higher rates than the what they're supposed to. In addition, the processing time of a single transaction takes a quite long time to be confirmed. It takes for about 10 minutes for one transaction. If you are planning to have 6 transactions, that's for about an hour to process which is a long time compared to other digital platforms wherein, in a matter of seconds, confirmation receipt is guaranteed to be received by the user.

Hopefully these issues will be addressed in the future, so that it won't be a headache to most users of bitcoin.

[dificanovi]

The average person complains of quite expensive transaction fees and longer delivery times than fiat currency transfers, but on the other hand, bitcoin can make us rich in the near future, as happened at this time, namely a fairly high price increase. with the huge advantage of bitcoin, all the shortcomings of bitcoin are not a problem for me.

[batang_bitcoin]

The average person complains of quite expensive transaction fees and longer delivery times than fiat currency transfers, but on the other hand, bitcoin can make us rich in the near future, as happened at this time, namely a fairly high price increase. with the huge advantage of bitcoin, all the shortcomings of bitcoin are not a problem for me.

That complain about slowness and transaction fee never gets old. I've done many times and transacted with the current recommended fees and I don't find it expensive at all. The confirmation time is good and it didn't take any longer. Despite we're on the bull run, the confirmation time is better this time compare to the bull run of 2017. One problem that I can see is not for bitcoin but for people who comes out when bitcoin is getting the attention when it's pumping.

[Sapphire915]

Being characterized as an speculative bubble, volatility of bitcoins and transaction fee is the biggest disadvantages to some users and investors like me. Aside from that, Internet connection and speed in any part of the world can be considered too. I agree with the several people here that keep saying it. Without an internet, we definitely cant access our digital wallets and do some transactions. And with the transactions itself, higher fees brought so much pain to us who really work hard just to earn profits.