And I don't believe there is going to be a financial system collapse anytime soon. I do believe, though, that people in other parts of the world will start to benefit from the technology. The ability for me to send money to India in 10 minutes is incredible in comparison to other tools.

If the current financial system collapses, I don't see the mobile phone providers keeping their networks up and I don't see ISP's keeping their network up. Then what will happen to bitcoin?

I find it funny that people say progress isn't happening fast enough. Things are happening way faster today than they were a year ago. More money is being invested in bitcoin companies, more people are thinking about investing, etc. We even have publicly traded shares (GBTC). I'm even more excited today than I was when I first learned about bitcoin because I can see where things are going. Every day it becomes more clear to me that bitcoin isn't going away. And if it does, it'll be replaced by another coin, which I will happily join. Because at the end of the day, blockchain technology works.

I actually don't believe that bitcoin is going to gain widespread adoption. I don't expect everyone to get a wallet. At least, not in its current version. The majority of people don't want to know what finance is. They don't care how their bank account works so long as it does. They don't care how money gets from point A to point B so long as it does. Therefore, mass adoption will mean no one actually knows that they are relying on Bitcoin.

I wouldn't say it's the biggest risk, but if you are good at working at tracking trends in trading, you can definitely make a considerable amount of money. Being able to grow your holdings by 10x or 20x means you can really do some great work after a year or two.

There is far too much work to be done still. But the infrastructure is being built and we are going to slowly, but surely, see adoption grow. What I find exciting is that a lot of people won't know that they are relying on bitcoin and the blockchain to make their transactions.

Something to take into consideration are the tax implications. Now I don't know where you live, but in the United States, day trading results in a higher tax rate than those than hold an asset for longer than a year. Therefore, if you're day trading, you need to factor taxes into how much you'd have to make before you actually reached break even and then started to make a profit. Further, for tiny movements, you really need giant amounts of an asset to make any real money. That's why we see bots buying/selling thousands of bitcoin at a time. Only then does it become potentially lucrative.

I need to sign up for that bank. I get free money and have no risk whatsoever? Or is it the bank of ponzi?

If you are going to trade bitcoin physically, do it in a public place. Also, the same way as you don't walk around with all your money in your wallet, don't walk around with all your bitcoin accessible on your phone. Store bitcoin in your vault and then take only what you need.

The losses are definitely bigger. You're borrowing bitcoin to trade. Therefore, if the bitcoin goes down, you need to dip into your pocket to buy back the bitcoin so you can return it.

I have just started using BitLendingClub. We'll see if I get my bitcoin back, but if so, I would definitely suggest looking into it. In essence, you are lending bitcoin to people to do things and then they pay you back with interest. There are quite a few traders there who are selling bitcoin on localbitcoins. So my investment results in about a 5.5% increase for a month. Spread that out over the year and you can see how your investment can grow. And there are other traders (some that I wasn't sure I trusted) that are accepting loans with 10% interest. That's 120% growth over a year. Incredible.

When I was debating the gold vs. bitcoin argument with a colleague, he used to say that gold was the best store of value. And I agreed with him. But I said that bitcoin would one day replace that because not only does it share similar properties to gold (it's technologically scarce), but it also has properties that make it far superior to gold. As many have said here, and as I said to him, I can walk into a store and pay with bitcoin if the shop accepts it. And my bitcoin will be easily broken up depending on if he is charging me $1.99 or $1.95. Doing that with gold is virtually impossible. He argued, "but there are gold coins." And I replied, "those gold coins are worth more than their face value."

The moral of the argument is this: gold isn't going away, but as bitcoin appreciates in value and becomes more stable, people will move to bitcoin. And what they'll like about it is the ease in which they can still transact while having a "safe" currency.

"All transactions should go through us!" is what the person was really thinking. Yeah, that's cool ... Or they can go through thousands and thousands of people verifying transactions, which is far more powerful than just one. When they fear you is when things are getting good.

You are so right about that. And yet, as a species, we tend to react when the shit hits the fan. lol

I disagree with the notion that only rich hands can touch it once bitcoin has 4 or 5 zeroes behind it. By its very nature, bitcoin can be broken down to a much smaller decimal place. If one bitcoin becomes worth 10,000 (five zeros), then one bit becomes worth $0.01. Right now, 1 bit is equal to $0.00023. Therefore, if bitcoin goes up in price, the average person stops investing in whole bitcoin and, instead, uses bits. I actually believe there is a trend occurring where we stop talking about bitcoin and start talking about bits. Instead of owning 3.2 bitcoin, I own 3,200,000 bits.

Once you take this into consideration, the recover from $200 to $1,000 is as easy as the recovery from $2 to $30, especially since there is that rich money participating now. And more importantly, since the past was built predominately on speculation, we'll see a true recovery over the coming months and years because there will be increased usage.

What is interesting is that HSBC is going to lay off 1/5 of their employees and then they're going to be that much more profitable. A lot of these employees are likely unneeded for what the company does. Other banks will follow. I barely visit my bank branch because if I ever get a check (which is rare), I just take a picture of it and voila, it's in my bank. Ally bank doesn't have branches at all. That's how you run a lean bank.

I spoke with the CEO of BTCS, which has launched a mining farm down in the Carolinas (if I remember correctly). Based on the current hash rate and their price of electricity, they are still making a profit even with where the price of BTC is currently. And then there are chips that are coming out this summer that argue that their efficiency and hashing power will enable miners to remain profitable even if bitcoin were to drop underneath $100/BTC.

It's better to make a move when we don't have to than to make the move when we need to. Imagine having these debates when blocks are already pushing their max size? Nothing would actually get done. There'd be too much fear and debate about how to do it.

I think that a lot of Wall Street is going to become a fan of same day clearing. However, I don't see the NYSE deploying bitcoin as the means of that. They'll likely create their own colored coin.

Bitcoin is an asset like any other asset and it deserves a place in your overall portfolio. However, the same way I wouldn't tell you to put your entire portfolio into General Electric, I wouldn't tell you to put it all into bitcoin. Therefore, the idea of bitcoin vs. index funds is a bad argument because I wouldn't put my money in either of them fully.

Here's how my portfolio would look:
- 5% in bitcoin. I'm young, so I can take the risk. This is more than others will do, but I am comfortable with the risk/reward.
- 65% in dividend growth stocks. These are stocks that have increased their dividend historically. And perhaps it's not just those that grow their dividend, but those that have a lucrative, safe dividend.
- 30% in speculative growth stocks. One stock I've had my eyes on is FB. I wish I had cash in 2013 when the price was a third of its current price. But in the next 5-10 years, I see this company being worth double if not triple its current value. I would buy FB. I would buy a slew of biotech stocks. People are still dying, so they need new medicines.

That's what my portfolio would look like. 35% speculative; 65% relatively safe. And as the dividends come in, I am going to reinvest them in other dividend stocks, other speculative stocks, and other bitcoin.

I think it has less to do with the understanding of printing billions or not and more to do with how our minds work. Everything is digital to us. Therefore, something like bitcoin, which only takes a little while to transfer, makes sense.