For years, I’ve heard people like Roger Ver who project exponential increases in bitcoin value. This has led me to very very careful of spending it, because whatever I buy today will not be worth what the bitcoin is projected to be worth later. It’s like selling Microsoft or Google stock before it explodes- I would spend the rest of my life kicking myself. But bitcoin traffic is what drives its value. If no one used it, the value would collapse. Am I clutching onto bitcoin too dearly? Do you have a certain amount of BTC in a vault, never to be spent?
I spend it, I plan on holding on to some as savings but always end up spending it lol.
I have a bitpay card, and what I generally do is buy bitcoin, keep it in paper wallets, and then shift it to the card as I need it. It works very well, and an additional benefit is that it gets rid of that whole “ugh I need to have money to pay this bill, but I want to buy bitcoin but is it worth it to buy $35 worth of bitcoin so that I have enough money but bitcoin might go up but bla bla bla” thing.
I save BTC and spend BTC. When I spend BTC, I buy more if I can, so as to not deplete my savings.
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Exactly. That is the way to do it.
As a Bitcoin vending machine owner, it’s hard for me to save because I’m constantly selling it. I do some trading on the exchanges with it. Rarely do I spend it.
Aren’t you charging a bit of a premium for it? I would imagine that you would be charging enough to re-purchase the amount you sell plus whatever fees you might pay plus just a little slice for yourself, yes?
I don’t utilize Bitcoin as an investment vehicle. Personally I feel it is better suited for use as a medium of exchanging value. In my business we accept Bitcoin for various reasons including that it saves us about 3% over credit cards and when people purchase some of our most expensive products depending on what else they buy it’s possible that 3% actually exceeds the profit margins. Profit margins on computers (one of the things we sell) are very very low particularly at the low end of the spectrum. Another 3% is great to get out of it. Now this particular sale at the low end doesn’t double in value, but that money also wasn’t invested for a year, and the most expensive parts are often bought and stored for fairly short intervals. So Bitcoin for me is readily available for me to spend without going through a middlemen or paying a premium (though I have twice purchased $500-1000 in BTC through others in order to pay bills).
While Bitcoin does go up over the long term its generally pretty stable for long lengths of time. It can go down too, but generally still goes up over the long haul. Long haul though can be two years to return to previously values. When I make an investment I want to be reasonably certain that whatever I invest in will double or triple in value over the course of a year or so (if that is the length of the investment). Bitcoin doesn’t really do that unless you give it greater periods of time or otherwise get lucky. Now I have “made money” off having Bitcoin, but that wasn’t the objective. I’ve also lost money. Over the long run I’ve gained more than I lost so it’s no big deal, but I still think it is a terrible investment vehicle given other options available. Some people have gotten lucky off Bitcoin, but that doesn’t make it in and of itself a smart investment vehicle. I think using it as an investment vehicle is more like gambling than investing.
Investing in Bitcoin (a smart investment) to me would be investing in vending machines and placing a mark up such that you can reasonable ensure the profit margins provide a return on that investment. The other thing you can potentially do is if you get other businesses to accept Bitcoin you might be able to utilize that to reduce your investment costs (slightly). If you get Bitcoin at value rather than at a premium through an exchange you’ll make more money when someone goes to buy it. As a vending machine owner (I’m not currently) I’d be on top of working toward getting more businesses to accept Bitcoin and maybe even paying businesses to do so… that said I am trying to promote Bitcoin simply for all it’s various benefits not even including making more money. It’s decentralized and puts users in control rather than a government. You don’t have to ask government for permission to send that money like you indirectly do with that wire transfer at your bank. As some people in our community have experienced the banks and government have attempted to stamp out Bitcoin and competition through shutting down Bitcoin business owners bank accounts. While the government can still make a Bitcoin transfer illegal they actually have to do something through violent action to stop you from doing it. That’s a lot more expensive for a government to do than simply making banks shut off users access to the banking system. So spreading Bitcoin far and wide actually takes away some of the control government has on all of us.
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I use bitcoin every chance I can, but I also make sure to buy the BTC back every time I use it. I tend to buy a little more then I use each time.
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Turns out it’s wise to do both! It hadn’t occurred to me to replenish the BTC as it’s spent. I’ll have to make that a habit. Thanks!
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I do the same with the bitpay card, I used to use circle to load it but cant now.
You can load the bitpay card from any sort of bitcoin wallet, the trick is to get bitcoins in the first place.
Best to spend Bitcoin directly if you can. We need more businesses accepting it. Otherwise we’ll continue to be dependant on centralized entities and government. I probably don’t need to say this here, but look at what happened with wikileaks. Government stepped in and pressured the major payment networks to cut ties. Everybody from Visa/Master Card/American Express/and Discover to PayPal. Nobody had any any means of donating to wikileaks for a while other than Bitcoin. Wikileaks isn’t even a US entity. So… getting people off the centralized payment networks and government money (both FRN and dependence on welfare/subsidized stuff like school/and other sorts of wealth redistribution programs).
Ideally we’ll see ZeroCoin take off in the coming years… such that there is a level of real anonymity to transactions as well. What government can’t stop government can attack so stifling track is also important.
You are correct, but in the meantime, I prefer to keep as much of my money in a decentralized place that can’t be controlled(bitcoin in secure wallets), rather than in a highly centralized and manipulated currency that is tightly controlled and subject to the whims of any law enforcement office that thinks my money needs to be confiscated. So, I spend bitcoin in the (very) few places that I can, and I have a quick conversion to cash for everything else. I tend to load it at the very least, every other day, and I’ve never once had more than a hundred dollars on it unless it was for an immediate purchase for such a large amount.
Basically, the cards let you play both games at once, and it’s very nice.
Yea- I can see the convenience of that. I’d probably get one if I didn’t have more places to spend Bitcoin than that of which I already received from others. And I don’t exactly store my worth in FRN, silver, or gold either. I prefer my worth to increase in value. Of course that does involve some risk as the government could always come in and steal it… but they could potentially do the same with Bitcoin. They just have to be more careful about how they break in the door. There is a limit to how much of a defence you can put up. If I had the money I’d be throwing millions into hardening it further, but for now I’ll throw at it what I’m able. Hopefully it’ll secure it for a lot of people given the extent of what I’m already contributing.
Yeah, I just put everything that I don’t -need- to keep in the bank into bitcoin paper wallets. I WISH I owned some land so I could go bury a lockbox somewhere 
I also wish that my damn rental management would take debit cards like every other business in the 21st century, but nooooo, it has to be a piece of paper with a number written on it like it’s the 1800’s.
i’ll definitely buy and spend btc when its actually profitable to do so. like with getting 15% off all amazon orders through https://purse.io/?_r=hy9wfQ or when there is a discount associated with using it. are there any other instances like this? also i think that decentralized goods, services and currencies are the future and we all possess this insight that others do not have and we have an opportunity to really profit from this. i believe that the state will be increasingly irrelevent going forward as technology allows us to simply go around them
Yea- I know a web developer who gives 10% off his services when you pay him in Bitcoin. I’ve considered and may at some point offer a smaller discount to those paying in Bitcoin. I have to think about it a bit more. I’m more or less interested in encouraging new users to adopt Bitcoin/try it out- not reduce prices for Bitcoin users overall (ie we already have a lot of customers paying in Bitcoin).