Should you still buy bitcoin

Bitcoin functions by the same fiat principles as the U. Bitcoin wallets can connect directly to your bank account, debit card, or credit card. With blockchain, however, that job is left up to a network of computers.

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Last Updated on September 10, This is the question that many people ask themselves when they hear about the outlandish returns that this cryptocurrency has had over the past 10 years. In this short guide, we will be covering the massive potential but also the considerable risks of investing Bitcoin, and we will hopefully help you to answer the question of whether you should buy Bitcoin, or not. Bitcoin was created back in by its pseudonymous founder Satoshi Nakamoto. It was the first cryptocurrency to be ever created, and it has spawned an entire industry around it hundreds of businesses and thousands of new crypto assets. Even though at the time of writing there are well over 2, cryptocurrencies out there, none of them has ever surpassed Bitcoin in total value market capitalization or in hash power the computing power that keeps the network secure. The main argument being that the type of fair launch and should you still buy bitcoin growth that Bitcoin had is impossible to replicate in a world that already knows so much about cryptocurrencies.

Why Invest in Bitcoin?

People who understand the currency well tend to be enthusiastic boosters. Those who are citical of Bitcoin tend not to understand the currency very well and, as a consequence, their criticisms tend to be superficial , misguided , or just plain wrong. That’s unfortunate because Bitcoin does have some real weaknesses. The lack of knowledgeable critics has created an echo chamber effect that I worry may produce or may have already produced a bubble. I’m generally a Bitcoin fan and, full disclosure, I own some Bitcoins , but in the interest of balance, here are four reasons you should think twice before buying Bitcoins.

Why Bitcoin is Gaining Traction

Last Updated on September 10, This is the question that many people ask themselves when they hear about the outlandish returns that this cryptocurrency has had over the past 10 years.

In this short guide, we will be covering the massive potential but also the considerable risks of investing Bitcoin, and we will hopefully help you to answer the question of whether you should buy Bitcoin, or not.

Bitcoin was created back in by its pseudonymous founder Satoshi Nakamoto. It was the first cryptocurrency to be ever created, and it has spawned an entire industry around it hundreds of businesses and thousands of new crypto assets. Even though at the time of writing there are well over 2, cryptocurrencies out there, none of them has ever surpassed Bitcoin in total value market capitalization or in hash power the computing power that keeps the network secure. The main argument being that the type of fair launch and organic growth that Bitcoin had is impossible to replicate in a world that already knows so much about cryptocurrencies.

Currently, the creation of money is in the hands of a few people whose interests are not aligned with the rest of the population. Bitcoin aims to change that and hence completely redefine the way that humans think about and interact with money. A notable example is the existence of inflation, which essentially is the percentage of value that fiat money loses every year due to the increase in the money supply. Bitcoin has a hardcoded monetary policy that cannot be violated, and that makes it a form of money protected from the manipulation that fiat money is subjected to.

This hardcoded monetary supply is illustrated by the 21 Million coins supply cap of Bitcoin, and is enforced through the Bitcoin block reward, which is an algorithmically determined amount of Bitcoin that is generated every block about 10 minutes. Let that sink in.

It offers very similar qualities to gold, while also improving upon them at the same time. Some of the most notable ones are the following:. Since the Bitcoin network is not controlled by a central entity, transactions on the ledger cannot be stopped or rolled.

This makes Bitcoin possibly the only efficient form of uncensorable money in existence. This is very powerful for a variety of reasons, but most importantly it enables people to protect their wealth from authoritarian regimes and it enables truly open commerce. Therefore, what some citizens have decided to do is to store their value in Bitcoin. They can now also easily use that Bitcoin to buy goods and to quickly send it to friends or family abroad if necessary.

Many supporters believe that Bitcoin will not only become digital Gold, but that it will in fact eventually kill-off and substitute fiat currencies like the US Dollars. With a limit of around 3 transactions per second, it was clear from early on that Bitcoin would not be able to process payments simultaneously for hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of people… Or could it? Enter Lightning Network LN. LN is a Layer 2 scaling solution for Bitcoin, meaning that transactions are not going through the main chain but through sidechains.

This makes individual transactions a lot cheaper and throughput seemingly ceilingless. The main limitation of LN is that it can only process as many transactions as many Bitcoins are locked in the network in the form of a channel. That being said, the growth of the network capacity has been remarkable and shows no signs of stopping anytime soon.

With scalability solved, Bitcoin now has what it takes to truly become a global form of money, which leads us to the next point. Aside from thousands of merchants accepting Bitcoin worldwide, an interesting trend to watch is should you still buy bitcoin of citizens in third world countries adopting Bitcoin to protect their wealth. This is a clear sign of people adopting Bitcoin as currency when their national currency has failed.

Many speculate that this is not only due to quickly growing adoption but mainly due to global economic uncertainty and fear due to the outlandish amount of debt that is the foundation of the fiat money. Large institutions like Fidelity, Nasdaq, and JP Morgan have all publicly announced that they are buying Bitcoin or that they are building bitcoin-related products for their millions of clients.

However, this is likely just the tip of the iceberg. It is very probable that dozens of additional institutions and possibly even Governments are also working behind the scenes on Bitcoin infrastructure but have not announced so to the public.

Is it safe to buy Bitcoin? Absolutely not, and everyone telling you otherwise is probably trying to make money from you. Furthermore, Bitcoin is still largely an experiment and you should treat it as.

You should never invest in Bitcoin more money than what you can afford to lose. Due to the speculative nature of Bitcoin, even mere rumors like a country potentially regulating Bitcoin can already cause a significant price drop. Bitcoin is a network, and hence unlike Gold, its existence could potentially be threatened by a single bad actor.

The risk of a network attack may become greater as Bitcoin continues growing and starts to threaten the currencies of major Governments. We have seen over and over again that the first version of a technology is often not the one that ends up sticking around forever. This has been the case with mobile phones, cameras, and even social networks. Fact is, there is a very little precedent on this and therefore this point might indeed hold true. Bitcoin is built on a deflationary model, meaning that the value of money increases over time.

This is a strong contrast to the fiat money system, which through inflation is designed in a way that money loses its value. There are two main schools of economics that explore these two economic models: Austrian economics and Keynesian economics. Austrian economists believe that the world needs a deflationary monetary system to flourish, while on the other hand, Keynesian economists believe that inflation and debt are necessary to encourage economic growth. As stated earlier, once Bitcoin grows to a certain size where it starts to threaten major fiat currencies, Governments may take coordinated action to shut Bitcoin.

One approach would be to illegalize Bitcoin exchanges and hence prevent people from buying it. They might even go as far as legalizing Bitcoin and making anyone holding it legally liable. Something similar has already happened back in when the US Government made it illegal to hold goldand confiscated this precious metal from its citizens. That being said, unlike Gold, Bitcoin is not a physical asset that can easily be identified by the Government.

An individual could simply memorize the private keys to his coins, or even send them to friends or family abroad with just the click of a button. Therefore, such an endeavor could only be successful if coordinated on a global scale. And as history has shown in multiple instances, Governments are notoriously poor at coordinating on an international level, which would make a crackdown of this magnitude rather unlikely. Bitcoin is still a high-risk and high-volatility asset that should be treated with extreme caution.

It is definitely not the right asset for anyone and you need to be aware of that if you want to avoid unnecessary stress. You have probably noticed that all of the above 3 profiles have one thing in common: they are not investing more money into Bitcoin than what they can afford to lose.

If you are a person that can handle wild market swings and that has some money set aside for high-risk investments, then Bitcoin might be a good option for you. In a research report by Finder. Since the research only involved a few thousand people these numbers may not be entirely correct, but it does give you an approximate idea of the group of people that you are joining when you buy your first Bitcoin.

Having a framework that you can follow will make it a lot easier for you to handle the wild price swings of this digital currency. Although there are a few more, in this article I will show you the 3 most popular Bitcoin investment strategies that you can start following today.

Yes, that is not a typo. This is by far the simplest way of getting exposure to Bitcoin since it does not require any active management from your side, and since Bitcoin has been in a long-term bull trend ever since its inception, it might also prove to be very effective. Dollar cost averaging is a strategy also often used in stock market investing. It essentially consists of buying small chunks of an asset periodically every week, or every month in order to minimize the risk of buying at the top.

Investor B: Has also made a loss, but he still has 8, to buy cheap Bitcoin. Therefore, if you are not comfortable with timing the market then dollar-cost averaging might be the right Bitcoin investment strategy for you. Finally, the last strategy is to actively manage your portfolio. This can be done by selling some of your Bitcoin after it has gone up a lot, and by re-buying them cheaper if there is a drop.

You could also go on a margin trading exchange like BitmexDeribit or Bybitwhere you can open a leveraged short. Instead of selling 4 Bitcoin when you think that the price is going to drop, what you could do is send 2 Bitcoin to Bitmex and open a short with 2x leverage.

When the price then drops and you think the bottom is in, you can now close the short at a profit and use the profits to buy more Bitcoin. Needless to say, this strategy should only be used by people that are experienced with the matter and that are familiar with the risks of bitcoin trading. The macro price cycle occurs in the form of multi-year bull markets that push for new all-time highs, and that is then followed by a year bear market.

On the micro level, Bitcoin is known to follow patterns in certain seasonalities. As pointed out earlier, Bitcoin is a highly speculative asset and you should never invest more money that you can afford to lose.

A good mentality hack to use before buying Bitcoin is assuming that the money you are planning to invest is gone forever. Should you still buy bitcoin that thought makes you nervous, then you were planning to invest too. That being said, if you are going to start investing a bigger amount into cryptocurrency, then try to own 1 whole Bitcoin. After you own your first Bitcoin, then you are now in a good position to also invest in other cryptocurrencies. Both coins are focused on becoming digital money.

Bitcoin Cash has a significantly lower hash power computing power than Bitcoin does and is hence significantly less secure. With that being said, if you are just getting started and are looking for the best cryptocurrency to invest inthen you should stick to Bitcoin since many people consider it the safest bet in the cryptocurrency space. Once you are more familiar with the technology and this asset class, then you might want to also buy some altcoins like Bitcoin Cash.

In lateanother major fork happened. Should I buy Bitcoins or Ethereum? They wonder if Bitcoin still is worth buying now that it has already gone up so much in value, or if they should buy altcoins like Ethereum instead.

So, while the decision if you should buy Bitcoin or Ethereum is one you have to make, what we can do for you is to outline some relevant facts for you. This is especially powerful for fin-tech applications since Ethereum can completely cut rent-seeking intermediaries like banks out of the equation.

This not only applies for value transfer, but also to loans, digital representations of assets like stocks, and trading without the need for a central platform like a stock exchange. If you want to learn more about Ethereum then a great starting point is our article about real-world use cases of Ethereum. Since Ripple has developed into a very powerful coin in the market, we should also keep it in mind as an option. This currency currently ranks as 3 on Coinmarketcap, although it has beaten Ethereum in market capitalization a couple of times.

When choosing which cryptocurrency to buy most of, everyone has his own factors or reasons to always keep in mind. Some look more into security considerations, others more into ease of use.

This all depends on the user and his own technical ideas.

Should I buy Bitcoin?

Step Two: Connect a Bank Account. David O. On Nov. As with any should you still buy bitcoin, nothing is for sure. Trading bitcoin on an insecure or public wifi network is not recommended and may make you more susceptible to attacks from hackers. Many people have lost their bitcoins due to mistakes such as. This post will outline some things you NEED to know before you buy. If the demand for bitcoin exceeds the rate at which it can be produced, the price will increase. Unlike most online exchanges, the Cash App stores your bitcoin in your Square Cash Account, rather than a separate digital wallet. You may very well be ready to buy your first fraction of a bitcoin. There is no official Bitcoin price. Purchases made using a credit or debit card are charged a 2. While a number of the regulations are positive, others are hoped to be reviewed later by the crypto community. Consumers who want to trade bitcoin need a place to store them—a digital wallet, and connect it to a bank account, credit, or debit card. Buy Bitcoins. In order to purchase bitcoin, you need to connect your wallet to a bank account, debit cardor credit card. Similar to winning the lottery, solving hashes essentially comes down to chance—but there are ways to increase your odds of winning in both contests.