Biggest threats to the price of Bitcoin.

[Bergkampsballs]

Thanks for all the responses. It seems that people tend to believe that there's 2 main threats. Government regulations, particularly strong regulations from multiple governments as well as whales or even just Satoshi getting bored one day and dumping a load of coins on the market.

There's a couple of things that seem to be flying under the radar here that I would have thought that more people would have found to be a bigger threat than has been suggested from the responses here so I was wondering if there's good reason that people don't seem to be concerned about them...

First of all alt coins, would it not be the case that an alt coin or even multiple alt coins could quite easily overtake Bitcoin in the near future as the king of coins? Surely this would have a devastating effect on the value?

Also, I just read an article that seems to bring about a slightly different threat. Is it not feasible that large banks could find a way to implement some sort of digital currency that could be more marketable than Bitcoin? Apparently "Dr Doom" (Nouriel Roubini) seems to think that something like this is going to happen.

https://news.bitcoin.com/dr-doom-nouriel-roubini-bitcoin-store-of-value/?utm_source=OneSignalPush&utm_medium=notification&utm_campaign=PushNotifications

[exstasie]

First of all alt coins, would it not be the case that an alt coin or even multiple alt coins could quite easily overtake Bitcoin in the near future as the king of coins? Surely this would have a devastating effect on the value?

This has been a constant point of FUD ever since the first altcoins were launched in 2011.

It's never happened before and I honestly don't see it happening, not anytime soon anyway. Bitcoin is far more trusted (from both technical and store-of-value standpoints) than any altcoin. It's widely viewed as the reserve currency of the crypto market. It's incredibly entrenched.

Think about it: every asset in the crypto market trades against BTC. Much like the dollar in the traditional markets, it's very difficult to reverse that sort of liquidity dynamic.

People think altcoins take away from Bitcoin but it's quite the opposite. They have a symbiotic relationship. When value flows into altcoins, speculation in the ALT/BTC markets sucks BTC supply away the BTC/fiat markets. Altcoin investors tend to enter through BTC/fiat exchanges, buying BTC and sending it to altcoin exchanges. This increases demand for BTC, and reduces supply. In this way, altcoins are very bullish for BTC. They reinforce each other's trends.

Also, I just read an article that seems to bring about a slightly different threat. Is it not feasible that large banks could find a way to implement some sort of digital currency that could be more marketable than Bitcoin?

Bitcoin's fundamental value comes from its decentralized network, security (proof of work), and monetary policy. Banks can't offer anything like that.

[Pamadar]

Bitcoin being as established as it is now wouldn't have to be wry of outside threats unless it's an end of the world scenario, in which case everyone should panic of course.

That's how things works now, with such scenarios only shows that self destructions of
unavoidable cases may threat this investment currency.

Nonetheless, what I see being the biggest threat to bitcoin us ironically the one that also put it to what it was now, the whales themselves.

No question with that, but since  bitcoin already gaining the attention there are many new players now
with that whales manipulations may reduced.

If these whales decided to dump the price we cannot do anything about it, they will definitely affect the price and more so the mentality of the investors which would immediately cause bitcoin to fail.

For now that's the case but time will come that it will be adopted and it will continue to move forward,
value will be much better after then.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Credit card companies literally pay me to use credit cards. It costs me nothing, and the lack of instant settlement only protects me as a consumer. Why would I prefer to use BTC if it means paying fees, waiting for settlement, and having no consumer protections? Because it's better for merchants?

All fair points, but it goes both ways. Sites like Bitrefill pay me to use bitcoin. I can get cashback (or satsback, if you will) of up to 6%, which is far more than I can get from a credit card, not to mention that often I can buy cards for a percent or two cheaper than their fiat value. That more than offsets 5 cents in a transaction fee.

If merchants can save so much by avoiding credit cards, they ought to be giving sizeable discounts for BTC payments. I don't see why consumers would be interested otherwise

A number of local places I regularly spend bitcoin offer between 5 and 10% discount on their listed prices for paying in bitcoin, exactly because they don't get hit with outrageous fees from credit card providers and banks. And even if they didn't, I would still continue to spend bitcoin with them for the primary reason I got in to bitcoin in the first place - I don't want a third party credit card company or bank monitoring all my transactions and deciding whether or not they are acceptable. It's my money, and I'll spend it how and where I like.

What other options are there that are widely considered safe and adequately tested? Why would this be limited to the opening and closing of Lightning channels?

I don't think we could call Lamport signatures safe and adequately tested at the moment, given that we don't have a strong enough quantum computer to test them with. I won't profess to be an expert by any means on quantum resistant cryptography, but the other possibility I am aware of is an extended Merkle signature scheme, which is already in use by an altcoin. Still, by the time this becomes a serious issue in a few decades from now, then I would expect that majority of transactions will have moved to a second layer solution, hence my comment about Lightning comments.

[Subbir]

As the demand for Bitcoin grows so does it's value is true that the biggest threat to the price of Bitcoin is when the whales are in the market. These bring down the price of the coin a lot but the days of the whale are over increasing demand based on investment is not able to dominate the market. Biggest threats to the price of Bitcoin will take a long time to become centralised the government of a decentralised bitcoin country cannot easily controlled. Bitcoin survives depending on the market and both short-term and long-term investments are profitable.

[drlukacs]

Hi,
https://decrypt.co/29625/the-biggest-threats-to-bitcoin-in-2020

To be fair, I think these sources are talking about things that would all but wipe out Bitcoin rather than just reducing the price.

I was wondering what you guys think is the most likely instances that would cause the price of bitcoin would sink back below say the $5,000 or the $10,000 mark?

From 2017 until now, Bitcoin's price has bottomed out at $ 3k3 and $ 3k8.  At the end of 2018, the price of bitcoin fell from $ 20k to $ 3k3 which led many to believe that this is the real manipulation market.  they seem to have lost confidence but when the price of Bitcoin was pumped back up to 14k $ made the market exciting again.
This shows that the greedy people here are accustomed to this manipulation and they ACCEPT it as usual. So I think the price of Bitcoin falling to low lows again is not a big deal.  we are still here and waiting for one day uptrend to come back

[Kong Hey Pakboy]

As the demand for Bitcoin grows so does it's value is true that the biggest threat to the price of Bitcoin is when the whales are in the market. These bring down the price of the coin a lot but the days of the whale are over increasing demand based on investment is not able to dominate the market. Biggest threats to the price of Bitcoin will take a long time to become centralised the government of a decentralised bitcoin country cannot easily controlled. Bitcoin survives depending on the market and both short-term and long-term investments are profitable.

I can't clearly understand your explaining here because you lack of indicating pause between the parts of your sentence. Anyways, whales are the one's who can manipulate and can be a threat on bitcoin's price because they are the one's who holds the largest amount of bitcoins, so if they will start selling their holdings there will be a huge dump. I also don't think that the government is a threat for bitcoin because even other countries have banned bitcoin. There are still some countries who accepts and they do not consider bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as a threat.

[Shasha80]

I don't believe there are altcoins that can threaten the price of Bitcoin, because Bitcoin is too strong for altcoins to beat.
Even Ethereum as the king of altcoins until now has not been able to shift the dominance of Bitcoin in the market. So
altcoins are not a threat, but more as an investment alternative. It makes more sense for government regulation or FUD
which can dump Bitcoin prices, this is a threat to the price of Bitcoin.

[mk4]

I think that if the government really wants to get you, they will find a way. Take the almost 70.000 BTC that were seized from the hacker Individual X a few days ago. It took years, but they did it. He used tumblers/mixers but was still caught in the end. 

It's definitely possible to get caught, but definitely also possible to get away with it if you do things right. Tumbling/mixing your coins doesn't automatically mean that your coins are now untraceable(probably a huge misconception), as you could still fuck it up by doing things like re-joining coins and such.

[teosanru]

Hi,

As everybody keeps pointing out that Bitcoin is a risky investment, I'm trying to get a better understanding of the greatest risks to my coin.

I must admit that sun flares and quantum computers were not what I was expecting to find when I googled this but alas...

https://medium.com/coinmonks/the-5-biggest-threats-for-bitcoin-that-have-the-potential-to-destroy-it-9b3845ebcd1d

https://decrypt.co/29625/the-biggest-threats-to-bitcoin-in-2020

To be fair, I think these sources are talking about things that would all but wipe out Bitcoin rather than just reducing the price.

I was wondering what you guys think is the most likely instances that would cause the price of bitcoin would sink back below say the $5,000 or the $10,000 mark?

Obviously every technological invention has an end when a better technological invention arrives. Same would happen with Bitcoin too. There will be a phase for Bitcoin and Quantum Computing could be real threat to vulnerability of bitcoin as it would make it sort of useless but. I think rest of the points were added just to make article look bigger. Software bug can be in any application doesn't mean end of bitcoin or something. But Quantum computing would make all sorts of passwords useless so there definitely would be some solution to that also. Maybe we could shift to another cryptocurrency which could solve these issues by creating a private key using our finger prints.

[Kopetunto]

I think that if the government really wants to get you, they will find a way. Take the almost 70.000 BTC that were seized from the hacker Individual X a few days ago. It took years, but they did it. He used tumblers/mixers but was still caught in the end. 

It's definitely possible to get caught, but definitely also possible to get away with it if you do things right. Tumbling/mixing your coins doesn't automatically mean that your coins are now untraceable(probably a huge misconception), as you could still fuck it up by doing things like re-joining coins and such.

Even though the coins have been broken down and then combined again, but I think if the government tries to trace it, I don't think it's a difficult thing. but sometimes we collide with the legal regulations established in each country, so that it cannot run according to personal desires

indeed it can certainly be traced, because the thing a Bitcoin hacker has to do is sell his Bitcoin and exchange it for fiat,
of course the bank is the last destination, even though their Bitcoin has been randomized,
but the traces will definitely be seen. hopefully the threat to bitcoin price due to hackers will disappear.

[o_e_l_e_o]

But Quantum computing would make all sorts of passwords useless so there definitely would be some solution to that also.

Precisely - quantum computing is not just a threat to bitcoin, but a threat to all kinds of passwords, encryption, etc., used all over the internet. It's not just going to be a case of suddenly one day everything on the internet is insecure, with criminals stealing bitcoin, stealing fiat, hacking accounts, intercepting emails and communications, and so on, with abandon. Quantum computing at a level which would be a risk to bitcoin is decades away.

Maybe we could shift to another cryptocurrency which could solve these issues by creating a private key using our finger prints.

As above, we have years or even decades to prepare for this. There is nothing stopping bitcoin for adopting quantum resistant signature schemes and forking to implement them. There is no inherent necessity to move to a different coin. And creating a private key using your fingerprint doesn't solve anything in terms of quantum resistance if you still use ECC to turn that private key in to a public key.

indeed it can certainly be traced, because the thing a Bitcoin hacker has to do is sell his Bitcoin and exchange it for fiat

That's the whole point of mixing or coinjoining prior to depositing to an exchange - to break the link between the stolen coins and the attacker's exchange account. Or they could just cash out peer-to-peer and never touch a centralized exchange at all.

[shoreno]

in the first link medium , thier top threat to btc is ignorance and less interest . that does not totally wipe the value of bitcoin  . ignorance on btc do happen at all times but less interest not totally because we can say that people have less interest on using btc as a payment method but they are more interested of using a btc as investment because they can earn money on it . earning money has never been boring , that is why its not possible for people to loose interest into btc . this is said to be the top threat but i wonder why im more scared to other 4 threats .

[SquallLeonhart]

Obviously every technological invention has an end when a better technological invention arrives. Same would happen with Bitcoin too. There will be a phase for Bitcoin and Quantum Computing could be real threat to vulnerability of bitcoin as it would make it sort of useless but. I think rest of the points were added just to make article look bigger. Software bug can be in any application doesn't mean end of bitcoin or something. But Quantum computing would make all sorts of passwords useless so there definitely would be some solution to that also. Maybe we could shift to another cryptocurrency which could solve these issues by creating a private key using our finger prints.

I doubt that another new tech that would be better than bitcoin could come along anytime soon. Right now blockchain is the biggest tech in this sector and we are surely getting better and better blockchain and we can safely say that best blockchain is definitely not bitcoins by a big margin yet bitcoin is still the biggest one.

This shows that people do not care about the best blockchain or best technology, people just care about marketing a bit and what the community things, and community loves bitcoin as it is, so it is not about anything better coming along or not. So my idea is that nothing better than blockchain will come anytime soon, blockchain will stay as the best tech for at least another decade probably longer, but better blockchain than bitcoins already came and changed nothing.

[Inkdatar]

As the demand for Bitcoin grows so does it's value is true that the biggest threat to the price of Bitcoin is when the whales are in the market. These bring down the price of the coin a lot but the days of the whale are over increasing demand based on investment is not able to dominate the market. Biggest threats to the price of Bitcoin will take a long time to become centralised the government of a decentralised bitcoin country cannot easily controlled. Bitcoin survives depending on the market and both short-term and long-term investments are profitable.

Well if the whales sell a large amount of bitcoin it can cause also of declined of price in the market. Also if the mining firm will stop their operations this can cause of drop of price and a commotions will possible occur on selling btc. But these days, we can observe the adoptions happening in bitcoin and for sure some are accumulating btc and waiting for the price to increase.

[usekevin]

I don't believe there are altcoins that can threaten the price of Bitcoin, because Bitcoin is too strong for altcoins to beat.
Even Ethereum as the king of altcoins until now has not been able to shift the dominance of Bitcoin in the market. So
altcoins are not a threat, but more as an investment alternative. It makes more sense for government regulation or FUD
which can dump Bitcoin prices, this is a threat to the price of Bitcoin.

May be Ethereum is seems to be a king of Altcoin.But the fac is,bitcoin is the king of cryptocurrency.The two things will justify this phenomenon.Firstly the price of bitcoin is all above the any other cryptocurrency in the market.So it define the demand of bitcoin is always greater then other coins.When some government regulate the bitcoin,it will surely reflect on bitcoin price.

[pungopete468]

This is informative what I really know was the quantum computing didn't know that there were other threats that could possibly eliminate the Bitcoin. Well it's better that we are aware of this one.

[South Park]

The threat in its market value I think is total prohibition of its usage for some reason if there is any. This is more likely something that will ruin its price.

And I never thought this kind of ban would apply to bitcoin. Some countries may be able to prohibit its circulation and also prohibit market activities in that country for various reason. But absolutely don't think a mass ban will happen to bitcoin in the future. Still very unlikely, mate.

In my opinion, the biggest threat to the price of bitcoin is the whale, because their activity in the market often bring disaster to the price of bitcoin even though it is only temporary until the price finally recover. Then I thought, if the bitcoin we are currently using is still in the testing phase then I think it's possible to have a new, bigger idea with better improvement. This can affect the price of bitcoin, but it's not a threat as long as the idea isn't born.

It is obvious that countries are moving more towards regulation rather than banning this market, to begin with the excuse they tried to use about cryptocurrencies being used only for criminal activities is not only not true but as this market becomes more popular the volume of those transactions becomes even smaller so they do not have a lot of ground to try to ban it, also with the economic situation they are in which most countries are incredibly indebted they need all the taxes they can get and if that means tolerating this market for a while then they are going to do it.

[erikoy]

High chance that it could sink to lower market after bull run but we cannot assure that it will going to happen because we know that more and more people will hold die to the fact that bitcoin is one of the best digital currency. Instead if selling bitcoin thinking of ATH and profit I.think best is to hold some if you have some coins like selling 50/50 of your holdings. Like what I said more and more people are using bitcoin and it will be hard to acquiren die to limited supply only.

[Ayiranorea]

The threat in its market value I think is total prohibition of its usage for some reason if there is any. This is more likely something that will ruin its price.

And I never thought this kind of ban would apply to bitcoin. Some countries may be able to prohibit its circulation and also prohibit market activities in that country for various reason. But absolutely don't think a mass ban will happen to bitcoin in the future. Still very unlikely, mate.

In my opinion, the biggest threat to the price of bitcoin is the whale, because their activity in the market often bring disaster to the price of bitcoin even though it is only temporary until the price finally recover. Then I thought, if the bitcoin we are currently using is still in the testing phase then I think it's possible to have a new, bigger idea with better improvement. This can affect the price of bitcoin, but it's not a threat as long as the idea isn't born.

It is obvious that countries are moving more towards regulation rather than banning this market, to begin with the excuse they tried to use about cryptocurrencies being used only for criminal activities is not only not true but as this market becomes more popular the volume of those transactions becomes even smaller so they do not have a lot of ground to try to ban it, also with the economic situation they are in which most countries are incredibly indebted they need all the taxes they can get and if that means tolerating this market for a while then they are going to do it.

Countries are now facing hard economic situation. To come out of the same now everywhere money flow is required. With the regulation of cryptocurrency usage the money flow can be increased. With the regulation cryptomarket too gets more mature. Right now it is easy to locate bitcoin accepted services in few countries. The same scenario needs to happen with almost every country. As the market is manipulative there will be large marginal fluctuation which shouldn't be considered a threat to the price.