pros and cons of bitcoin

[SadlyFox]

Possibly an overused and stupid question, but anyway.  What are the pros and cons of Bitcoin?  To the pluses, I would classify the prevalence and universality.  What else?  It is interesting to hear your opinion.

[mk4]

On the top of my head:

Pros

• No fears of bans and account locks
• Zero downtime
• Transact freely, and having true ownership of your funds
• More privacy compared to banks and other centralized services

Cons

• The concept is pretty hard to grasp for the masses
• Currently not as user friendly as tradfi platforms
• People need to learn about security
• Currently still volatile (as expected)

EDIT: thanks for the 2000th merit, pooya87! 🥳🎉

[zasad@]

Bitcoin has a huge market capitalization and the largest transactions are recorded in Bitcoin
https://whale-alert.io/transaction/bitcoin/4410c8d14ff9f87ceeed1d65cb58e7c7b2422b2d7529afc675208ce2ce09ed7d
$ 1 billion

Bitcoin transactions are unchanged even if a lot of money is stolen. Ethereum was hardforked to prevent a hacker from stealing more than 3 million coins while hacking the DAO smart contract.

But bitcoin loses in speed to modern coins,
where transactions are almost instantaneous or take a very long time.

[UserU]

Let's focus on the cons, since that would make things a tad more interesting:

1) Transactions are expensive when prices go up
2) Slow to confirm when it comes to deposits and withdraws. That's until Lightning Network comes along.
3) Speaking of Lightning Network, it still struggles with adoption.
4) Speaking of adoption, it still sees limited usage outside gambling, dark webby and trading/ speculation.
5) Mined (POW concept) so it takes alot of resources just to discover new ones.
6) Super volatile. Your $1,000 in holdings today can become $500 tomorrow.
7) Pain in the ass to procure through fiat from a combination of the above.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Advantages:

• You can transfer value oversea much faster than with the banking system.
• You own your money and not an IOU from a bank.
• It is permissionless.
• It is censorship resistant.
• It's always online.
• There's no counterparty risk.
• It's private and pseudoanonymous in contrast with the bank.

Disadvantages:

• The majority sees it as an investment and thus, it makes it volatile.
• The transaction fees can be really expensive.
• Not all people are responsible and they may lose their private keys.

[Coyster]

The pros of Bitcoin I enjoy the most is in the aspect of control and freedom, unlike Fiat and other centralized type of currencies that's controlled by one body or issuer, Bitcoin is the complete opposite, there's no sort of freedom that can compare to the ''being your own bank" feel with Bitcoin, no "authority" has any kind of right over your funds and it's a big plus for Bitcoin users, another pros is in the aspect of Bitcoin being a hedge to traditional fiat currencies, Bitcoin can be used to hold the value of funds affected by inflation/hyper inflation and devaluation.

But then, there are risks concerns with Bitcoin, "being your own bank" comes with a responsibility, one that quite a lot of people are unwilling to take, thus it makes loss of funds a recurrent issue and a long lasting con in the Bitcoin network.

[Bitcoin_Arena]

About the transactions fees being expensive as some members noted. The Bitcoin transaction fees are flexible depending how congested the network is. Sometime the transaction fee rate is so cheap, other times, it seems so expensive especially for transferring small amounts of BTC, but to be honest, I have never seen a mainstream payment platform that allows one to transfer assets worth $5M for a fee of only $30 or just $0.5 depending on your inputs across the globe like Bitcoin does.

It's all about timing and the ratio of the amount one wants to transfer to the fees but generally I would say fees are fair.

[boyptc]

Volatility can be either its pros and cons.

In a manner of being risky and some who takes risks, volatility can be your go-get on bitcoin because it's proven to be a very rewarding main feature that it has.

On the other hand, it's negative to those who don't understand it. They have that comprehension that 'it was $64k last time now it's down and will die soon'.

[bitmover]

Cons

• The concept is pretty hard to grasp for the masses
• Currently not as user friendly as tradfi platforms
• People need to learn about security
• Currently still volatile (as expected)

I was thinking about how hard the concept may be for masses.
However, is it really important?

Personally, I use Visa everyday, and I have no fucking idea about how it works and I really never cared about it. I just buy things with it! How does an international wire works (SWIFT, SEPA)? I never really cared about it.

I believe bitcoin adoption will go this way as well. People don't need to understand it if they just want to use.

Sadly, I agree that the other cons are a problem. Security is not easy, and not very user friendly to download and use a wallet...

[Coin_trader]

Volatility can be either its pros and cons.

In a manner of being risky and some who takes risks, volatility can be your go-get on bitcoin because it's proven to be a very rewarding main feature that it has.

On the other hand, it's negative to those who don't understand it. They have that comprehension that 'it was $64k last time now it's down and will die soon'.

In general, it's a cons because it just show how unstable the market is which means there is always a fear on trading this coin. Dumb money is important on trading and also building the value of a certain coin. So if the fear is great on a coin, the trading will be limited and stagnant just like what we are experiencing right now on cryptomarket.

[mk4]

I was thinking about how hard the concept may be for masses.
However, is it really important?

Personally, I use Visa everyday, and I have no fucking idea about how it works and I really never cared about it. I just buy things with it! How does an international wire works (SWIFT, SEPA)? I never really cared about it.

I believe bitcoin adoption will go this way as well. People don't need to understand it if they just want to use.

Sadly, I agree that the other cons are a problem. Security is not easy, and not very user friendly to download and use a wallet...

I wasn't referring to the technical aspects of Bitcoin, more of the concepts of self custody and the concept of being totally responsible for the security of your funds. Online banking account gets hacked? Phone the bank and chances are it'll be resolved in no time. Bitcoin wallet gets hacked? You're screwed. People are simply too accustomed to being careless about their accounts' security because customer support is going to save them in the end.

Even the decentralization aspect is difficult to grasp for the dozens of non-techie people I've talked to. When I explain decentralization and the fact that Bitcoin is peer-to-peer(with no company in between and such), a lot of times they just ended up being totally puzzled. Like it simply just doesn't immediately click in their heads.

[boyptc]

Volatility can be either its pros and cons.

In a manner of being risky and some who takes risks, volatility can be your go-get on bitcoin because it's proven to be a very rewarding main feature that it has.

On the other hand, it's negative to those who don't understand it. They have that comprehension that 'it was $64k last time now it's down and will die soon'.

In general, it's a cons because it just show how unstable the market is which means there is always a fear on trading this coin. Dumb money is important on trading and also building the value of a certain coin. So if the fear is great on a coin, the trading will be limited and stagnant just like what we are experiencing right now on cryptomarket.

But it's for bitcoin in general.

And someone who's in for investments and sees the volatility as an advantage will definitely consider it as a pros. Well, the usual, the newer ones will definitely see the negative side of it.

They'll treat volatility as a threat and great risk that they will fear.

[pakhitheboss]

Most of us know about pros but very less about the cons. So let me write a few which I have experienced for the last four years.

1. Network congestion is quiet frequent.
2. Fee in Satoshi goes up whenever their is a congestion.
3. Highly volatile for short term hold.
4. Transaction gets delayed whenever the price goes up or down.
5. Once payment made you cannot recall or amend it.
6. Transaction cannot be cancelled.
7. If a transaction gets stuck because of fee it can remain stuck for an unknown number of days.

[khaled0111]

The biggest problem with bitcoin, imo, is scalability. Most of the cons mentioned above are in one way or another caused by the inability to process a big number of transactions in a reasonable period of time. 

The network can process only ~4.6 tansactions per second which is a very small number compared to other payment methods.
It's mainly due to the small size of blocks and the time it takes to find one. Although some solutions have been introduced to solve this problem (LN, Segwit, Taproot...), the network still get congested from time to time.

[Eureka_07]

Possibly an overused and stupid question, but anyway.  What are the pros and cons of Bitcoin?  To the pluses, I would classify the prevalence and universality.  What else?  It is interesting to hear your opinion.

Cons could be that, Bitcoin takes more time to process a single transaction compared to other existing blockchain. Confirming those transactions requires the presence of bitcoin miners, and they are using lots of electrical energy, I'm not quite sure if electric consumption over bitcoin mining is still an issue today. But somehow, I think that is one of the reason why tx fees in btc are higher compared to other.
Pros of bitcoin could be that, its blockchain is very secured, and Bitcoin is the future 

[Squezzi55]

On the top of my head:

Pros

• No fears of bans and account locks
• Zero downtime
• Transact freely, and having true ownership of your funds
• More privacy compared to banks and other centralized services

Cons

• The concept is pretty hard to grasp for the masses
• Currently not as user friendly as tradfi platforms
• People need to learn about security
• Currently still volatile (as expected)

EDIT: thanks for the 2000th merit, pooya87! 🥳🎉

Currently still volatile you say? BTC will forever be a volatile coin because that's just what this whole crypto thing is all about, BTC isn't a stable coin so that's not a con, it was created to operate in such way

[Alucard1]

• People need to learn about security

Yes, this is true, if we are going to deal with cryptocurrency, we should know how to secure our wallets, security is a mass in the crypto world, as many hackers are there trying to steal our funds, always use safe device and always have anti-virus on.

Cons

• Currently still volatile (as expected)

This can be a pro as well, that is why bitcoin is really good for investment, it makes us earn money from trading and investment, and for me, I considered this volatility as an advantage and not a disadvantage.

[mk4]

Currently still volatile you say? BTC will forever be a volatile coin because that's just what this whole crypto thing is all about, BTC isn't a stable coin so that's not a con, it was created to operate in such way

Sure, it will still be volatile to a certain extent. But with more time and market liquidity, price movements would be a lot more minuscule to the movements we get today where it can go up/down by 10-20%. At some the volatility wouldn't be that much that it'd make a lot more sense to be used as a currency.

[Ebede]

PROS:
1. Not influenced by countries policies
2. Doesn't require Identification cards to open account
3. Privacy- No one will know how much you have
4. Volatile (Your $500 can rise to $1000 within hours)

CONS:
1. BTC is not operated offline
2. Transaction delays
3. High fees for small transactions
4. Volatile (Yout $1000 can drop to $500 within hours)

Note the number 4 in both pros and cons

[osasshem]

Having a proper understanding of the cons will make the pros easier. It's more like being convinced and certified about the down side and know what you are going into in other to manage your losses and aiming at the biggest profit it can provide. Bitcoin is volatile and gaining mass adoption and it's acceptance if being debated almost on daily basis.