Stop saying Bitcoin's future is unclear without any rational reasons why

It is very unlikely that it will die completely. At worst, there will be people mining it for fun, or for sentimental reasons. Some computer researchers may want o keep it running for research purposes, like they did in 2009.

Even so, the value could conceivably get so low that no one would bother to trade it anymore. Or the market price could drop below 1 $/BTC.

How could that happen? Perhaps one of these:

  • Someone devises a significantly better cryptocoin.

  • The US government bans bitcoin trade and use, with US-cooperating states following suit.

  • Centralized payment services get better, faster, cheaper (mobile payments like ApplePay and competitors catch on, banks lower fees and delays for international wires, credit cards in the US finally adopt smartcards like the rest of the world, etc.) just enough to make bitcoin payments not worth the hassle, and to force closure of BitPay and other bitcoin-based services. That cascades to closure of most bitcoin ventures.

  • Bitcoins gets a wave of bad press because of hacker thefts, lack of chargebacks, association with crime, etc., and people stay away from it even if they could save some money with it.

  • People who lost money because of bitcoin start suing bitcoin enterprises for misleading advertising, negligence, or other non-criminal charges, driving capital away from the industry.

  • Pessimism about adoption in the long term convinces many investors to sell, which increases pessimism, leading to a runaway crash.

  • Freak traffic surges saturate the network resulting in very long delays for confirmations, and then loss of trust.

  • Miner cartel with more than 50% of the hashpower tries to abuse their power, blotches it and destroys trust in the system.

  • Saturation of the network forces users to compete for miners' service by a runaway increase in fees.

And more...

/r/Bitcoin Thread