3. Reasons Why Bitcoin Will Fail!
For people outside of the complex and exciting world of cryptocurrency, Bitcoin can be hard to understand. Many have brushed it off for years, saying that it was a fad that would disappear as quickly as the value of Beanie Babies. However, with the price spiking in the thousands of dollars for a single Bitcoin, naysayers are suddenly singing a different tune. Newcomers are dumping their money into Bitcoin, hoping that the price will only continue to grow. Many old-school investors who haven’t done their research will simply say it’s in an economic bubble and call it a day. But the reasons why Bitcoin cannot succeed in the long run go so much deeper than that. Just like any other speculative asset, no one really knows what is going to happen in the future. However, when one looks at the big picture, it becomes clear that Bitcoin will struggle to survive
- Bitcoin Block Chain
The most valuable thing about Bitcoin is that it introduced blockchain technology to the world. Blockchain technology drastically improves the speed, privacy, and security of sending money. Bitcoin can be sent from one person to another without a middleman, and it encrypts everyone’s identity to a long string of letters and numbers called a “wallet.” Blockchain is a big deal. Its potential to change technology is as big as the Internet. At the moment, the world of blockchain is young and exciting, like the Wild West of the digital world. However, even though Bitcoin was the first to introduce blockchain to the world, it’s not necessary for blockchain to exist. Sort of like if one web page goes down, the Internet still exists. Most people never saw the very first website that was ever created. It was a blank white page that was titled “World Wide Web” and a list of text links. That’s it.[1] No one could have ever imagined that that seemingly unimpressive page would evolve into what has now become what the Internet is today. There are already bigger, better, and faster versions of blockchain that made improvements on the original Bitcoin, like Ethereum and Ripple. Both of these coins, or “cryptocurrencies,” are already available on the market.
- Big Brother Is Watching
One of the biggest benefits of Bitcoin it that it is supposed to be private, secure, and untraceable. Obviously, this was a huge benefit for criminals on the Dark Web. Cryptocurrency got a really bad reputation once news broke that Bitcoin was being used to send money anonymously on the drug trafficking website Silk Road. The appeal that a lot of Americans see in Bitcoin is that they believe they can avoid paying taxes to the IRS, which is also a crime. It’s tax evasion. In 2013, 44 percent of the Bitcoin supply belonged to people who identify as Libertarian. Today, the market has way more newcomers, so the percentage of Libertarians is much smaller as more casual people join to invest in hopes of getting rich, rather than trying to start a revolution. What casual Bitcoin users don’t seem to understand is that even though their name is protected as a string of numbers and letters on the public ledger, that doesn’t mean they are fully anonymous. Most Bitcoin exchanges like Coinbase require that new users must upload the front and back of a Photo ID as well as take a selfie to prove that it’s really them. In Coinbase’s privacy policy, they state that they will keep your name, address, phone number, and more for up to five years and will give it to law enforcement if there was ever a subpoena.[2]The FBI has made it very clear that they are watching Bitcoin very closely, and they are getting better and better at finding the true identities of the people who use Bitcoin for illegal activity. They are fully aware that not everyone who uses Bitcoin is a criminal. In fact, they have a public dossier of their educational materials given to law enforcement to help them understand what it is. There are plenty of ways for hackers to hide their identity, but for the casual user, they are not getting any added expectation of privacy from Bitcoin. At this point in time, the only way to truly have an anonymous and untraceable financial transaction is with cold, hard cash.
- Laws and Regulation
In October 2017, China declared that it was illegal to create an “ICO,” which stands for “Initial Coin Offering.” Start-up companies were learning how to use blockchain to make their own spin-off coins to raise funds. The only downside was that a lot of these coins were fraudulent. A few fake coin companies took millions of dollars from desperate people who were trying to invest so they could “get rich” on these ICOs.In New York, all businesses who want to accept Bitcoin are required to register for a “BitLicense” if they want to do business. The license promises to comply with United States taxation laws and regulations. The application costs $5,000, and there are 500 pages of legal paperwork that would require a team of taxation lawyers to decipher. For most businesses, it’s simply not worth the money, time, and effort to accept Bitcoin when so few people will actually use it in their stores.[4]In 2014, the IRS released a guideline that anyone who profits from digital currency needs to pay taxes in the same way that anyone selling their stocks or bonds must pay their taxes. If the Bitcoin revolutionaries stick to their morals, they aren’t going to listen to the IRS. When there is such a huge spotlight on an activity that is known for tax evasion, it is obviously something that law enforcement takes notice of.
source: https://goo.gl/b4HTLM
Hello & Cheers!! I'm a content detection and information bot. You are receiving this reply because a short link or links have been detected in your post/comment. The purpose of this message is to inform your readers and yourself about the use of and dangers of short links.
To the readers of the post: Short links are provided by url shortening services. The short links they provide can be useful in some cases. Generally their use is benign. But as with all useful tools there are dangers. Short links can be used to hide all sorts of things. Quite frequently they are used to hide referral links for instance. While not dangerous this can be deceptive. They can also be used to hide dangerous links such as links to phishing sites, sites loaded with malware, scam sites, etc. You should always be extremely cautious before clicking on one. If you don't know and trust the poster don't click. Even if you do you should still be cautious and wary of any site you are sent to. It's always better to visit the site directly and not through a short link.
To the author of the post: While short links may be useful on some sites they are not needed on steemit. You can use markdown to format your links such as this link to steemit. It's as simple as
[steemit](https://steemit.com)Unlike short links this allows the reader to see where they are going by simply hovering over the link before they click on it.