Bitcoin as a long term investment a good idea?

[fahim1rocks]

As the title says, I want to know what you people think of bitcoin as an investment. Sure there are risks and bitcoin is unpredictable but we can always take an educated gamble after associating the risks. So far based on what I understand stuff that can destroy the value of bitcoin are
1) flaws withing the whole bitcoin and blockchain method itself that hasn't come to highlight yet.
2) Any kind security breach of the bitcoin and it's ledger ( for example a hacker manages to make a mass number of population own a fake ledger)
3) Majority of the government banning bitcoins.

Are there other risks? What are the chances of the risks from occuring that I just mentioned above?

Before anyone comes up and says 'Bitcoin is illegal in BD' and shouldn't be discussed here, my sister will be the owner of the coins who resides in canada and I am sure some knowledge on bitcoin doesnt hurt.

Btw she is planning to buy 0.5 to 1 bitcoins.

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bump..

[Fox Mulder]

Without delving deep into this matter, I'd simply say that it's not a good investment, specially long term.

With exchanges folding/scamming all the time, buying and holding on to Bitcoin is an even worse idea as the price fluctuates all the time.

[Trave160]

Well I write at a curators site where I earn cryptocurrency as points, I do wanna know how I use the exchange market and get money out of this

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Well I write at a curators site where I earn cryptocurrency as points, I do wanna know how I use the exchange market and get money out of this

[fahim1rocks]

Without delving deep into this matter, I'd simply say that it's not a good investment, specially long term.

With exchanges folding/scamming all the time, buying and holding on to Bitcoin is an even worse idea as the price fluctuates all the time.

I can use a offline bitcoin wallet and buy bitcoins via reputed escrow or local sellers (if any). That isn't the problem. Assuming I buy a bitcoin now and keep it for three years. The price should theoretically increase unless there are problems like the one I mentioned above right? We are still in the early stages of bitcoin and if people accept bitcoin as a asset and a good means of payment then the price is bound to increase. If people don't then it should decrease. What do you have to say about that?

[Arz]

As the title says, I want to know what you people think of bitcoin as an investment. Sure there are risks and bitcoin is unpredictable but we can always take an educated gamble after associating the risks. So far based on what I understand stuff that can destroy the value of bitcoin are
1) flaws withing the whole bitcoin and blockchain method itself that hasn't come to highlight yet.
2) Any kind security breach of the bitcoin and it's ledger ( for example a hacker manages to make a mass number of population own a fake ledger)
3) Majority of the government banning bitcoins.

Are there other risks? What are the chances of the risks from occuring that I just mentioned above?

The idea of virtual currency- one that's not regulated by central banks is here to stay, no matter how much central banks and people like James Dimon hate it. But if asked specifically about bitcoin, I'm less optimistic about it. Cryptocurrency still isn't mature enough; mistakes will be made and people will lose confidence in it, but lessons will also be learned and eventually it'll be mature enough to be accepted widely.

Now, about your concerns:
1. While the blockchain itself is pretty robust, there certainly exists coding flaws that's yet to be discovered. No software is bug free, as Parity recently found out the hard way.
2. It's unlikely due to how blockchain works, but if it happens, maybe they can do a hard fork and pretend it never happened.
3. This is a real possibility and a highly likely one, as demonstrated by China. Let's see how exchanges handle that.

[minitt]

Without delving deep into this matter, I'd simply say that it's not a good investment, specially long term.

With exchanges folding/scamming all the time, buying and holding on to Bitcoin is an even worse idea as the price fluctuates all the time.

plus the founder of bitcoin satoshi nakamoto holds 5 billion dollar worth of bitcoin representing almost 5% of total bitcoin. So he/she holds the capability to manipulate bitcoin value any time.

[fahim1rocks]

The idea of virtual currency- one that's not regulated by central banks is here to stay, no matter how much central banks and people like James Dimon hate it. But if asked specifically about bitcoin, I'm less optimistic about it. Cryptocurrency still isn't mature enough; mistakes will be made and people will lose confidence in it, but lessons will also be learned and eventually it'll be mature enough to be accepted widely.

Now, about your concerns:
1. While the blockchain itself is pretty robust, there certainly exists coding flaws that's yet to be discovered. No software is bug free, as Parity recently found out the hard way.
2. It's unlikely due to how blockchain works, but if it happens, maybe they can do a hard fork and pretend it never happened.
3. This is a real possibility and a highly likely one, as demonstrated by China. Let's see how exchanges handle that.

Thanks a lot man. I read about bitcoins a lot but still find it hard sometimes to grasp the whole concept like what determines the amount of payment received by miners and how limited the total supply of bitcoin is. I find it very surprising that china banning bitcoin hasn't affected the price at all. I believe the big blow to bitcoin will be if US bans it one day.
I just bought 150 dollars worth of coin in coinbase to dip my toe into crypto currency and will transfer them to gdax soon for trading. The market is very volatile. Lets see how it goes.

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plus the founder of bitcoin satoshi nakamoto holds 5 billion dollar worth of bitcoin representing almost 5% of total bitcoin. So he/she holds the capability to manipulate bitcoin value any time.

I don't think it matters that much considering the value of bitcoin right now is very volatile and can easily fall and rise to more than 20% at its current state. In the long term prices might reach 100k or drop to 1/20th its current value if it doesn't catch on and a 5-10% change in value wouldn't really mean much.