Since the increase in Bitcoin’s worth to almost $20,000 (before Christmas), I’ve been asked by several people about Bitcoin. Here are a few reasons why getting involved with them, in my opinion, is a horrible idea.
1. Your Bitcoin wallet is kept on your computer. If you lose the key to your wallet, or your computer crashes, you lose all of your money.
2. If you put your Bitcoin on an exchange, when that exchange gets hacked, you lose all of your money. This has already happened several times since there are only a handful of exchanges that deal with US currency.
3. In order to buy something with Bitcoin, you have to pay to have that transaction processed by all the Bitcoin “miners” in the world. This on average costs over $20 a transaction, and takes 2 hours to complete. The more you pay, the higher your priority in line.
4. This one transaction, according to https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption, takes as much electricity to process as what is consumed by 10 average U.S. households in a single day. This is mainly due to inefficiencies in the Bitcoin protocol.
5. Refunds or chargebacks are impossible with Bitcoin. There is no turning back a transaction.
6. Since there is little value to using Bitcoin for everyday transactions, most of its current value (in my opinion) is only from its possible future prospective value (when will the bubble completely burst?)
Now that Bitcoin value is back down to under $15,000, some are wondering if it might be time to invest. Take a look at these graphs and ask yourself, is this the bull trap before the bottom drops out?
