Short answer from me: Yes! I know I do a lot of posts, and even have a dedicated page, about bitcoin. This is mainly for two reasons. #1) I’ve been involved with bitcoin since 2011, though only more involved since March of 2019. #2) Everything evolves! Money has gone from coins, to paper, to credit cards, and now to online.
This video actually does a great job at going over the history of money, something that my high school failed miserably at.
Do I think bitcoin or other cryptos are going to end money as we know it in the near future? Nope! Money as we know it is going to be around for a long time to come, but we have to pay attention to where money is going, how it’s made, and who controls it. The top 1% of the population controls 97% of the money. That is so unacceptable.
Though bitcoin is becoming more common to see at online retailers: Microsoft, Overstock, Home Depot, and Starbucks, just to name a few. Big banks are not going to want crypto to go mainstream because it will cut them out as the money middlemen. The news of major companies like these accepting bitcoin (and Microsoft since 2014) is if they didn’t see the legitimacy of cryptocurrency, they wouldn’t accept it as payment.
Big banks are going to lose billions of dollars as more people buy cryptos, and then in turn pay for things with those cryptos. They won’t be able to charge you for just “having” your checking account, they wont be able to charge you any “maintenace” fees. They won’t be able to regulate how much you put in or take out in a single transaction.
This, I think, is what scares banks and governments the most. Since most bad people don’t like leaving paper trails, this is why old sites like “The Silk Road” were popular. You could pretty much buy whatever you wanted there in complete anonymity. I’m all for anonymous transactions, but drugs, guns, hitmen, OK, that was bit much! But nowadays, governments are thinking about more than just drugs or guns. What about anonymously funding organizations that do bad things? I know you can name a few. And it’s a legitimate question. If we give bad organizations a way to shift money around without anyone knowing about it, how are we supposed to stop them?
I think one MAJOR hurdle for bitcoin is what happens when the last one in mined around the year 2040, which is just 18 years away. Unlike our current greenbacks, bitcoin can’t just go and create more. It is an absolute fix at 21,000,000. At that point it is going to be that you’ll have to buy them from someone willing to sell to get your hands on any.
There is an estimate that 90% of the total bitcoin possible has already been mined, and that 20% of that is lost forever. When I say lost, I mean GONE! Since there is no “Lost Your Password?” links on wallets, if you can’t remember your’s, you’re toast. If you lost the hard drive that your wallet was stored on, toast again. Or if someone died and didn’t tell anyone their password, toast yet again! Just playing estimates, that means that there are about 3,780,000 lost bitcoin, or $156,760,000,000 worth. That is quite a hunk of change to just be toast.
There is also no FDIC or charge back credits if your bitcoin is stolen, or you get scammed into sending your bitcoin to someone. My suggestion is keeping your bitcoin password as far away from your normal passwords as possible, but DONT EVER lose it or forget it. And only buy from reputable companies.
I think, right now, it would be correct to say that bitcoin is a speculative investment. Most people I know, myself included, are just holding on to the bitcoin we have and watching the price go up. Never in my wildest dreams did I think when I bought my initial bunch back in 2011 would I have been able to watch my investment soar.
I’ve always been taught, and teach to others today, only invest what you can afford to lose. I was prepared to lose since I did my first investment on a teenage whim. I thought it was going to be like trying to win a carnival game. You know it’s impossible, but it looks like fun, so you do it anyhow, and when you lose you still walk away smiling because you had fun. This time though, the luck of the game was on my side.
So is bitcoin going to be able to end the world of money as we know it? We’ll find out in about 18 years. Right now I think it’s a great investment because even though today one bitcoin $43,000, you don’t have to invest that much to get in. You can buy as much bitcoin as you want, be it $5, $500, or $5,000. Just don’t overdo it. Then just play the “buy low, sell high” game.
I am NOT a financial advisor, and make sure you speak to one before investing. But I think that bitcoin is in one of it’s low end holds. If you go online to read predictions they are wildly all over the place for 2022, from dropping to $10,000, to rising to over $100,000. You just have to keep a watch.
So don’t go rushing to trade in all of your currency for crypto quite yet. Cold hard cash has a long way to go yet. But now is the time to get familier with crypto if you haven’t already. A time will soon come when your cashier asks you “Card or Crypto” instead of “Cash or Credit?”
A Little Bit of This and That 