you've probably heard about this thing called Bitcoin and you're wondering if it's too late, has the ship sailed to get involved in it or you're probably like most people and you have absolutely no clue what everyone's talking about in this post we're gonna talk about
what is Bitcoin? and the four biggest myths most people have or believe about Bitcoin
I'm so excited . it's something I've been geeking out about for the past a couple weeks just really obsessed and immersed in the subject of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency and such a unique time to be in in 2017 going into 2018 and we're moving into a topic we've never discussed on this page
I wanted to first give you an overview of what it is?
if you got a lot of questions, if you're confused about it or you know zero about that's totally fine that's a lot of people don't because you know the media will portray it as one thing and then you got some friends on Facebook who say it's and other things so just so we're on the same page we'll talk a little bit about an overview of it and they don't want to walk through the four biggest myths circulating cryptocurrency primarily focusing on Bitcoin now before we get into this very important that you know
Note:
I'm not a professional. okay I'm not a financial professional, not given financial advice here, you should always check with a professional financial planner or whoever you go to before you make any big moves with your money
so a couple things just to get the foundational stuff with Bitcoin now
Bitcoin is called a cryptocurrency and it's not regulated by any government or any borders or anything like that and there's a lot of different crypto currencies out there but the three main ones are
- Bitcoin which is what everyone'stalkingabout(
- ethereum and
- litecoin
A study done by University of Cambridge found that around 3 to 6 million people worldwide are using these kinds of crypto currencies
so I think it was a 1 million back even 4 or 5 years ago so it's really growing it's picking up
speed I know you've speed I've know you seen the news of people talking about it
now what separates a cryptocurrency is that with normal currencies the
government can just print more money they can just decide that they want more
money and so they print it and that's why you get inflation and the economy
can kind of be affected by it.
what's cool about this is that it has a hard cap I believe it's around 21 million I heard they were gonna raise the limit so
correct me if I'm wrong in the comments down below 21 million let's say of bitcoins that
can be produced worldwide and once they hit that that's it there's nothing more
so that's good for security because it can't be manipulated it's not like
someone can come along and just decide to print more of it more and more
retailers now are accepting this as a currency where it's before it used to
have the stigma around black market if you know the story about Silk Road which
was like an underground web site where people can get a lot of drugs or illegal
stuff and they would accept bitcoins primarily because it was more anonymous
and more safe and harder to regulate then cash or anything like that not
that's traceable but it has that stigma still a lot of mainstream news or a lot
of you know mainstream financial advice will kind of shrug it off as this thing
that they used to be done with illegal contact so some people that are
accepting Bitcoin now you got Microsoft accepting it, Dell accepting it, PayPal
accepting it, lots of people are coming around to this that's not just some
weird scammer thing that's just a nerd a crypto nerd online who created some
currency who's actually seen it as a real form of exchange a real form of
money
the real reason most people are interested in it is what it's been doing
lately and that's because it's it hit like eighteen thousand dollars I think
above that last week which was an all-time high and if you had invested in
it about a year earlier it would have been around $800 so you see that's like
a 2,000 percent increase on your investment
so everyone speculated now what's this thing gonna do? what's it is?
it gonna keep going up or is it gonna crash? is the bubble gonna burst
so let's walk through now that we have the groundwork of what a cryptocurrency
is just that method of exchange just like any other currency
let's walk through
The 4 Biggest Myths about Bitcoin
- Bitcoin is a currency
- You need to buy a whole Bitcoin $14,000 for a single Bitcoin
- Bitcoin that it's too late that you should have invested a month ago shouldn't invest in a year ago and that's trying to time the market
- It's too risky now
Now this depends on your viewpoint but for me personally this is my personal viewpoint ,it's not a fact a lot of people talk about Bitcoin as a currency like something you would take out five US dollars for and buy something and then walk away with it or you know you have some bitcoins sitting around in your wallet or you have them and you use it as transaction stuff to buy things I don't view it that way at all
I view Bitcoin as an asset I view it as something I'm investing in not something .I'm going to spend with does that make sense. I want to invest in this and later if I choose to sell it or whatever happens I want to take it out and make that profit right there but I'm not viewing Bitcoin as this cryptocurrency that I'm gonna be spending money with Apple stock and a lot of Apple stock so if I have that I'm not trying to pay someone in Apple stocks I'm buying it I'm holding it that's just my personal style of investment so I don't have to actively management manage it every single day every single week that just gets too much to handle I'm buying and
oh my god and then the next day it's 15,000 right and and then it got to 18,000 and everyone's like well how are you even gonna afford that and in fact when I texted my girlfriend that I just bought Bitcoin I was super excited about it she's like what Sanket you spent fifteen thousand dollars on a single Bitcoin.
so a lot of people have this idea that you need to buy a wholeBitcoin and that's not true at all.
biggest myth here is
okay when you try and time the market Warren Buffett calls that that's as accurate as being a fortune teller right
and then that that nobody can tie in the market no one can tell you to buy a stock and then it shoots up magically no
one can predict that and if you can that's like insider training it's illegal go to jail but people think it's too late it's it's that the ship has sailed the thing I would say to that if you're gonna take that mindset I mean how does that work in other areas of your life how does that work if you view it as too late to get your health in order I should have started working out two years ago I'm you know just might as well go get the cores and and eat nachos all day that's not gonna be
very smart is it you can still get results they might not be as good as if you had been working out for five years but they're still gonna get you results how would it be if you took that into business that wow man I should have should have started my business five years ago or gotten onto YouTube right that's a big one I deal with all the time with people who are like My Friend Aniket how to start a YouTube channel I say start today post your first video today don't worry about what you could have done in the past the only thing you need to worry about is not in the past it's in the future and is this something you want to get it into then start doing your research and planning accordingly but don't be discouraged because it's too late or too people say you should have done this months ago that's the wrong mindset.
yes with any sort of investment you're gonna have risk ,if you invest in the stock market it could crash tomorrow that's just a fact you know any sort of investment has risk if you invest in real estate someone could come by graffiti your house smash your house up burn it to the ground that's a risk you have to take and some investments are way more risky than others and especially since cryptocurrency is has only been around for a decade or so it's gonna have a lot
of risk to it but it also has a lot of upside one thing I'll say is that people say that bitcoin is too risky because it's
not backed by a government I mean that could actually be a strength because look what happened in Zimbabwe where you had hyperinflation or in I think it was a world war 2 in Germany when the currency got devalued so much there's
photos of people playing playing like Legos or building blocks with stacks of money cuz it's not worth anything
currency is always only worth what someone's willing to pay for it there's people who say it's too risky but they have Airline points on their credit cards I don't see people saying worrying about if my credit card company goes away tomorrow or if Delta Airlines goes down tomorrow I have so many Delta Airlines points what's gonna happen to
them oh my god no one thinks about it that way but that's still a form of currency that you have and you have that
trust behind that Airlines that is not gonna go away
so anyway hope you liked the post - hope you learned one or two things from it it's supposed to be a very simplified version of cryptocurrency and Bitcoin getting out of what mainstream media says about oh my god if you invest in Bitcoin you're an idiot you know and being someone who's okay getting in the game and not
just watching from the sidelines a lot of people they just want to talk they just want to they just want to sit dormantly and watch and then they're the same people who wonder why they didn't seize the opportunity when they had it and they kicked themselves okay
so I love the quote will end on here the Chinese proverb that says
the best time to plant a tree was 10,000 years ago the second best time is today so I love that
with cryptocurrency
is it here to stay?is it going away ?do you have any?, post it in the comments down below it start a little discussion and see what other people say as well.
Follow @sanketshelatkar