Within the coming years, disrupting the Bitcoin network will become increasingly more difficult as Bitcoin wallet software and the protocol become more mature and resilient.
Bitcoin is valuable as a currency because of the economic efficiencies the bitcoin network is already creating as transactions flow over it. As with the Internet, more applications will flourish which will make the bitcoin network, and thus bitcoin as a currency, valuable.
Isn't the purpose of bitcoin mining simply to get rich - or not, as the case may be? Well, at 21, we are less concerned with bitcoin as a financial instrument and more interested in bitcoin as a protocol - and particularly in the industrial uses of bitcoin enabled by embedded mining.
The bitcoin protocol is about mining bitcoin, not pricing bitcoin. There is nothing in the protocol about establishing a market price for bitcoin; you need a market for that, but what if all the exchange markets are shut down?
As the platform and protocol become more ingrained in society, get built into products and services, and basically become more of the mesh of society, just like the Internet, companies and people will need to own Bitcoin to play on its rails.
Well, bitcoin is a currency. Bitcoin has no underlying rate of return. You know, bonds have an interest coupon. Stocks have earnings and dividends. Gold has nothing, and bitcoin has nothing. There is nothing to support the bitcoin except the hope that you will sell it to somebody for more than you paid for it.
Bitcoin is a currency, bitcoin is a network, bitcoin is a technology and you can't separate these things. A consensus network that bases its value on the currency does not work without the currency.
The scripting language in Bitcoin is important because it is what makes Bitcoin 'programmable money'. Within each Bitcoin transaction is the ability to write a little program.
Blockchain assets derive value from their usefulness. Bitcoin has value because people value the payment network. BTC is required to use the network, so people demand it. If Bitcoin continues to be useful, it will continue to have value.
We are very excited about the use of blockchain, whether it's Bitcoin or not, but we are as enthusiastic as ever about Bitcoin as a global currency and, really more importantly, Bitcoin as a global financial rail.
Because the supply of Bitcoin is limited, the price of Bitcoin is going to have to increase and increase very substantially over time. My advice is that if you're interested in Bitcoin and excited by Bitcoin, then buy some Bitcoin and hold onto them, and you're likely to do very well over time.
There is no more reason to believe that Bitcoin will stand the test of time than that governments will protect the value of government-created money, although Bitcoin is newer, and we always look at babies with hope.
I think the technology will get bigger and the price of Bitcoin will go up, so I'm speculating to increase my purchasing power. But I don't intend to sell the Bitcoin. I intend to hold it until there's a day where I can just use Bitcoin completely.
Bitcoin was created with security in mind. The Blockchain is Bitcoin's public ledger that records every transaction in the Bitcoin economy.
Within my social circle, there is a large group of people who will take bitcoin as legal tender; like, you can go to them and settle debts in Bitcoin, and they will happily take it.
As more wealth and political power is amassed - as bitcoins rise in value - Congress and various lobbying groups will be influenced to an ever greater extent by the interests of Bitcoin owners who - in turn - will lobby to keep the Internet and Bitcoin alive and growing.
Ethereum exists because it enables developers to write smart contracts better than Bitcoin in the near-term. Zcash will exist because it will attempt to do privacy better than Bitcoin in the near-term, and the token gives you access to the anonymity protocol.