Bitcoin as long term investment

Author: Best.Korea

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Everyone knows that long term investments are actual way to make money.

Short term investments dont bring much because commodities take time to grow to greater size.

Bitcoin has historically grown a lot over a long time. In next 10 years, it is expected to grow by at least 40%. Thats what some economists say.

So I think investing some money in bitcoin and other reliable crypto is good.

Its important to look at history of growth of currency. If currency grew significantly in past 15 years, it is likely that it will keep growing.

There are sites and apps which basically give away free bitcoin for visiting them, but in very small amount. There are some apps where you invest money to gain bitcoin over time. Its also possible to buy bitcoin directly.

So when there are free ways to gain bitcoin, its actually worthy to invest few dollars to gain more, because the only way you can lose money is if bitcoin somehow fails as a currency, which I dont think is possible.

However, be aware of scams. Some apps and sites are scams who will never pay you even if you invest money in them.

Basically, check reviews for sites and apps. Usually, if app or site is a scam, it will have bunch of negative comments from people it scammed.

Another strategy to fight scams is to invest only a little bit of money in multiple apps which seem reliable and check if they will pay later. This way, you learn which sites are better than others and you get some money in return as well.

Another important thing is, never invest too much money in just one thing.

Dont invest too much in bitcoin.

The smart way to invest is to invest in many options which have long history of success.

This way, even if one option fails to earn enough money, others will succeed.

Bitcoin isnt the only cryptocurrency. Its just one of the strongest there is.

Of course, the important thing to say again is, if you do buy bitcoin, remember that waiting time is about 10 years to sell it for dollars, for greater profit to happen.

There are things in economy which must grow over time due to nature of economy where some things must grow and some must fall.

US dollar has been falling compared to gold, bitcoin, silver...ect.

So investing in multiple things which have grown historically is a very safe way to earn money. It is much safer than simply saving dollars, since due to inflation, dollar loses value over time compared to commodities, so each year you can buy less with your dollar.

The basic law of trade is to invest in things which grow in value, and since US dollar doesnt grow in value, saving dollars means you lose dollars over time.

Imagine if someone saved 100 dollars for 40 years. In past 40 years, dollar has reduced in value for over 40 times.

This means that if someone saved 100 dollars for 40 years, his wealth would be reduced 40 times.

But if someone invested 100 dollars in gold 40 years ago, he would now have much more than 100$.

Inflation so far means some commodities rise in value compared to US dollar over time.

So investing in some commodities means you gain more dollars over time, but saving dollars means you lose amount of commodities you can buy with them over time. So saving dollars means you essentially lose wealth over time.

Some commodities are better than others. Some commodities also lose value over time. For example, a smartphone loses value over time, so used smartphones cost less.

So it would be usually pointless, for example, to buy smartphones and sell them 10 years later.

But it wouldnt be pointless to buy used smartphone at a cheaper price to save money compared to buying new smartphone.

This is how trade economy works. You have things which you need for yourself and things which you need to invest in.

In case of things which you need for yourself, you buy them at cheapest price you can find.

In case of things you want to invest in, you buy multiple different things from multiple reliable sources at a cheap price, after checking their growth history to make sure they do grow over time.

This simple economical theory only has 2 types of things: things you will sell and things you wont sell.

Things you wont sell - you want them at cheapest price.

Things you will sell - you want things which grow in value over time.

And of course again, long term is prefered over short term.

Having some amount of gold for 30 years pays off more in terms of money than having same amount of gold for just 5 years.

And there is also economy of scale. By increasing amount of different things you buy from different sources, you increase amount of knowledge about prices at different places, which results in you being able to buy cheaper, thus reducing cost per unit.

Economy of scale usually in simplest terms means that increasing output reduces price per unit, and this is true in trade because increasing output,  increasing number of sources and variety of safe investments results in you learning the lowest prices and best sources, so you both buy at lower price and later sell at higher price.
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@Best.Korea
You can make money in short term investments.

Do your research on binary options. Aside from investing in markets, if you invest in real estate such as wholesaling or being a landlord of a property or Airbnb , you can turn over profit within a matter of weeks.
I used to think investing for a return has to take years, a significant amount of time. It depends on the preference of the investor.
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@Best.Korea
Have you seen the crypto prices lately? It's expensive to buy right now.
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@Greyparrot
Have you seen the crypto prices lately? It's expensive to buy right now.
Sure, but if you dont buy now, you risk it increasing even more, which means you would lose money in two ways if that happens. Way one is that then you must pay more to buy. Way two is that you missed profiting from value increase.

Besides, you can buy any amount you want. Its not like there is a fixed amount which you must buy.

Also, bitcoin cloud mining is probably much better than directly buying bitcoin.

Then you have wallets which pay you interest rates to keep your crypto in them. Not sure if those wallets are scams, but so far they seem to work.
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@Best.Korea
So, you buy bitcoin with what?


And can you explain the dynamics of bitcoin in relation to standard national currencies, such as the dollar or pound sterling?


What is the actual benefit of bitcoin over standard currencies?
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@zedvictor4
So, you buy bitcoin with what?
You can use dollars to buy bitcoin.

Or you can download some apps to do cloud mining.

And can you explain the dynamics of bitcoin in relation to standard national currencies, such as the dollar or pound sterling?

What is the actual benefit of bitcoin over standard currencies?
The benefit is that if you have bitcoin, and it grows in value, you can sell it for more money than you payed to buy it. Kinda like gold.
Also, there are cloud mining apps where you pay dollars to get bitcoin over time, but you should get more than what you payed for, unless app is a scam.

I have CT pool mining app. It seems reliable so far, and has high rating on google play store, so its probably safe.

Now, I am not sure what exactly you want to know. Basically, if bitcoin historically grew in value over your country's currency, then it pays off to invest in it.

You can check it by googling "Bitcoin to dollar" or "Bitcoin to pound".
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@Best.Korea
I assuming then, that to establish an ongoing value for bitcoin it is traded in conventional money markets, and that exchange rates are calculated similarly.


So who or what controls Bitcoin activity?
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@zedvictor4
So who or what controls Bitcoin activity?
Market does. You have bunch of apps and people trading bitcoin. If demand for bitcoin rises, which it most likely will, a rise in value of bitcoin also happens.

And you also can pay apps to produce bitcoin and then you get it at lower price than on the usual market. These apps act like investment does.
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@Best.Korea
Ok. Just trying to get my head around the concept.

So who or what created/instigated Bitcoin?

And are you saying that there is now no human control, input or output?
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@zedvictor4
So who or what created/instigated Bitcoin?
The blockchain theory was made possible by public private encryption schemes, after that people started thinking of ways to use blockchains to establish trust and one of those was a public ledger with private modifications.

There were several whitepapers and prototypes, bitcoin was essentially created by one man at the start, but it is by nature an open source project.

Imagine a big sheet of paper in the town square. It records transactions between people and by adding up the transactions anyone can calculate what anyone else has in their "account".

By magic nothing can be erased from it and also by magic only the person who 'owns' the 'account' can write down a transaction where money comes out of his/her account and goes into someone else.

The magic is the private key, it is an encryption key (a long series of characters, not quite a password because you can't pick any one you want; but close enough). So long as you can keep that secret nobody in the world can produce a valid transaction draining money from your account. Adding money is different, you can't stop that (in bitcoin, more complicated systems support that).

Given this the other question can be answered:

And are you saying that there is now no human control, input or output?
There is no backdoor, admin mode, central authority.

That "big sheet of paper" is a file, a big file, I have a partial copy on my hard drive as I type this is the only thing everyone who uses the system needs to agree on. I can open it in notepad++ and add to it, but that addition won't be valid according to the algorithm that defines bitcoin. If I tried to post it to the internet (via various community nodes) it would be rejected and I would probably be added to a list of incredibly stupid scammers since anyone using tested software to add to the ledger would not make such mistakes.

The apps Best.Korea references are just tools which know the algorithm and allow you to monitor the state of the ledger and move your own money around by creating valid modifications to the ledger.

It is very important to know that there are applications that interact with the blockchain directly and there are other apps made by companies which interact with an user profile you created with that company. In those cases it's more like a traditional bank, they have the secret key to "your account" and as you might guess they actually control it so it's not really yours if you can't trust that company.

This is the mechanism by which people have been scammed in cryptocurrency. They don't understand it, they trust a company to do it for them, then that company takes the money and runs.

Since there is no backdoor or admin mode they can get away with it. If a real bank tried this governments would trace the fraudulent transactions and there is a good chance they could reverse them all even if they have to threaten other banks to do it. Banks that won't reverse fraudulent transactions tend to be black listed.

To say it is "out of human control" isn't quite accurate. We have to agree on the ledger to use. If we wanted to, as a collective, we could start a new ledger or reject transactions from the current ledger even if they are mathematically valid. For instance we could add steps in all applications to reject modifications that are associated with child sex slavery (if you could identify such transactions).

The key is that it is certainly outside of central control or the control of nefarious actors like hackers.

No government could forcibly remove value from your account. No bank run can occur. There is no means for someone to impersonate you and steal your money (unless you let the secret of your private key out).

Those are the reasons blockchain has value and the reason it spikes in value every-time a big government starts making tyrannical sounds.

Fiat currency can be devalued. Gold can be stolen. BTC is invulnerable to both failings, but like all currencies it is useless if nobody accepts it as payment. Many people believe that is inevitable and will be a one way latch.

It's easy to imagine a fiat currency being devalued to the point that people switch to crypto to carry on a "black market", such black markets have been present in all other inflationary crises.

However because of the nature of crypto there is no way to force people to stop using it nor is there any reason to stop using it besides giving governments and banks power.

Still, the valuation of BTC in dollars is driven by the people who are playing the same stock gambling game that is played on the stock market. They are only doing it so they can gain at the expense of some 'sucker' who buys and sells at the wrong time. They have no intention of using BTC to buy anything nor do they believe it will have value in the long run. They started with USD and they want to end with more USD (or whatever their local currency is).

There are flaws in BTC that make it ineligible to be the final currency of humanity. However we can switch from one cryptocurrency to another. Such a conversion, while complicated, is possible and therefore it is not entirely irrational to think BTC will continue to have value as fiat dies.

The reason to do this would be adoption motive. People may intellectually see the need for a better system than BTC, but if all their wealth is in BTC, they won't give that up unless it can somehow translate over.

A responsible liberal government would adopt a more full featured cryptocurrency as the national currency if for no other reason than to enforce a constitutional requirement that the national currency not become a means of secret taxation via inflation.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
Still, the valuation of BTC in dollars is driven by the people who are playing the same stock gambling game that is played on the stock market. They are only doing it so they can gain at the expense of some 'sucker' who buys and sells at the wrong time. 
Its value is determined by the market, just like with gold.

Obviously, when people buy more, price of gold increases. When they sell more, price of gold drops.

But what also plays the role is dollar.

Dollar is printed a lot, so it will drop in value compared to commodities and to bitcoin.

There is basically no way for bitcoin to collapse, because even if people reduce the amount they buy, number of printed dollars will mean same amount of bitcoin can buy more dollars.

As for apps, apps give you more bitcoin than on the regular market.

Basically, you invest 30$ over 6 months and they give you back more than that over usually 3 to 6 months.

But again, I must say, plenty of apps are scams. One must be smart about it.
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Bitcoin only has value so long as there is new money coming in.  Bitcoin by the very definition is a Ponzi scheme.  The value is solely dependent on new money coming in, it has no physical value like a hard asset.
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@sadolite
Bitcoin by the very definition is a Ponzi scheme.
It certainly is not. A ponzi scheme makes the appearance of a successful investment by using new investors to pay old investors.

Bitcoin was not designed as an investment. It doesn't pay anything and was never intended to. You can't call USD a ponzi scheme just because some people think of it as an investment. People do play games with fiat currency just as they do with BTC.


it has no physical value like a hard asset.
Neither do USD or bonds. The value of gold as jewelry and a metal is a pale shadow of its price which is controlled by all the people trying to use it as a stable store of wealth.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
We agree to completely disagree.
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@sadolite
The value is solely dependent on new money coming in, it has no physical value like a hard asset.
Well, if you want "physical value", then there is gold and silver, land...

There is no "physical value" in currencies like dollar either. They are just paper who loses value all the time. People just agreed to use dollar, so it still has value.

Physical value is only found in physical finite most desirable commodities.

So it must be both finite and desirable. Finite means supply is low, and desirable means demand is high, which is what makes the constant increase in price and a rather solid investment.
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"There is no "physical value" in currencies like dollar either."  Technically there is value in the dollar. The govt technically owns everything. Anything and everything in the US can be commandeered and taken at will from anyone. The dollar is backed by every asset of the private sector including govt assets. Bitcoin is nothing but something created out thin air.
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I think now is a good time to buy Bitcoin, considering that Trump is about to become president. That and shares from American oil (like Kinder Morgan), private prison companies (like CoreCivic), and financial institutions (like JPMorgan). Elections are always the best times to invest.
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@sadolite
The dollar is backed by every asset of the private sector including govt assets. 
Yes, but investing in dollar is pointless because it loses value over time. It doesnt gain value.

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@Best.Korea
I never suggested investing in the US dollar.  I said bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme and has no  value  like a hard asset. Bitcoin is 100% reliant on new money coming in to have value. Bitcoin is a concept created out of thin air.
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@sadolite
I never suggested investing in the US dollar
Well, this is about investing, and bitcoin is a good investment, historically speaking.
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@Best.Korea
Regardless, I said what I said and it is undeniable. Bitcoin has no intrinsic value.