Bitcoin: A Year Later

[UbonOz]

Another year older and deeper in debt. Are we?

Last year I posted in the link http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/657170-bitcoins-banned-in-thailand/page-6#entry6688450.

I made the comment about coming back in one year to see what has happened.

Things have changed quite significantly.

I am more than happy that I took the plunge into Bitcoin last year.

I have bought progressively during the year and learnt more about the world and finance than I have in all my years previously.

Would be interesting to hear from others to see if they have a different view since last year.

This time last year the BTC price was in the vicinity of US$100 to US$150, today it is just below US$600.00.

[ldnguy]

Why are you buying bitcoin? As an investment or to use as money. Most people I hear talking about it claim it's a currency, but virtually none of those people use it as a currency. Most use it as a get-rich-quick scheme. They want money for nothing and think this is it. If bitcoin succeeds you may get rich by buying now, or you may be buying too late. SO just wondering why you are buying and what your exit strategy is. Personally I think property is a better and safer investment.

[worgeordie]

To me this Bitcoin thing is like the Dutch tulip bulb scam,or the

Southseas bubble scam,who says a bitcoin is worth xxx,or better

yet why is it worth xxx?,it would be nice to have a currency that

would cut out the greedy bankers,but i don't think this is going

to end well,for people who use it for investment.

regards worgeordie

[JesseFrank]

This time last year the BTC price was in the vicinity of US$100 to US$150, today it is just below US$600.00.

But wasn't it worth in the vicinity of 1200$ earlier this year ?

[thaivisa999]

http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/bitstampUSD#rg360ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zv

Yes it was about 100 usd per bitcoin a year ago went up 12x to 1200 and then went down to 600 so if you invested one year ago you would be doing very well but would have been doing best if you had sold at 1200 I suppose.

I researched bit coin as I wanted to understand if it could be real investment and what it as all about. The problems that I found is that your bitcoins can easily be stolen so it is not a reliable investment in my view. There can't be anything worse than expecting To make 12x your original and waking up one morning and finding your bit coin wallet is....empty...this was the risk I came across from the articles and info I found. After all the bitcoin 'bank' mount gox Itself was a victim so seems it is hard to secure them...

I remember in 2000 a website offered to pay me in bitcoins and I thought that what ridiculous scam a this offering to pay me in tokens??!!!...they happily paid me cash instead. I think if I had taken and held those bitcoins they would probably have been worth a house or something I imagine...

So that is why I wanted to research it as I just don't like to always have a closed mind and miss the boat on the golden gift horses that do come along very few years ...for bitcoin it would appear that the easy money has been made...

Looking at that chart it seems before about 2011 the price was only a few dollars? Not usre if that is correct - I maybe be misreading- but if so if u had about before 2011 and sold in January 2014 u would have made about 300x your original investment...if your funds had nt disspeared etc...

[Ianatlarge]

Dude, bitcoins came into existence in 2009, so not poss that you were asked to pay in such in 2000. I have invested in bitcoins, begining in 2010 (it guy). So, currently happy. Are bitcoins a scam? Yes or no, but no more than any other currency. I believe that the greatest probability is that they will continue to grow and become increasingly widely accepted. But I could be wrong.

[slygeeza]

anyone in Pattaya want to buy some?

[thaivisa999]

Yes I was wondering why the chart seemed to only go back a few years so I did some looking on the web and saw it was only created in 2008, as you say, so I don't know what token I was offered payment in back in 2000. That is the problem with these things it hard to understand what is going on and get the right information...but for you it has certainly paid off so good luck to you!

Yes I could see it going up a few times from here so it could well be worth you staying in it... My experience with stocks that go up a lot (same type of thing really) is that it is always a bit painful and it hard to know when to sell and usually I end up losing even if there is a period when it has gone up hugely...am thinking of Internet stocks in 2000 and Chinese stocks particularly here....hope you do take something off the table along the way....

Your post said one year on so not sure if you are looking at a few of these things - I may have missed your earlier postings on thai visa -if you have any other crytocurrency or tech things to be aware of that may go up hugely then please send me a message always happy to hear about any possible gift horses!! Although obviously I know many of them are going to be duds it always interesting to take a look if you can actually get any information on them that is reliable...

If u got in in 2010 it seems from the chart the price was somewhere between 1-2 usd and it is now at 600 and formerly at 1200. I would say you have already made the big money which is more than anyone can ever generally hope to make( people can dream of 100x stake but not 1000x stake)..so enjoy...maybe this is why u moved to Thailand? I don't know your original stake but u should have made enough to pay the bills for a while...unless you are loaded and can afford to lose I would take out at least half if not all and transition into something safer as you have already had a good run...but either way good luck...

[thaivisa999]

Sorry I am Using the ipad can't really navigate or type easily ok so u put a link to your earlier post and got in last year.. Ha ha well I have used up my brain and finger time too much lew....so my earlier post will have some inaccuracies..but good luck on it and beware...

[96tehtarp]

I buy Bitcoin and Litecoin for the fun of it.

[taiping]

I have bought Bitcoins since March 2013, and my average cost is USD 70, including the amount I lost with the MtGox bankruptcy (now written off).

What concerns me is government efforts to limit bitcoins by making it difficult to exchange fiat money with bitcoins, so that some banks refuse to have financial arrangements with bitcoin exchanges.

Governments cannot shut down bitcoins themselves unless they shut down the Internet, but they could make it impracticable or illegal to trade bitcoins with fiat currency like USD.

It seems to me that the bitcoin protocol is solid, but the weak point is the fiat/bitcoin exchange mechanism.

Comments welcome from knowledgeable bitcoin users.

[Suradit69]

http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/bitstampUSD#rg360ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zv

Yes it was about 100 usd per bitcoin a year ago went up 12x to 1200 and then went down to 600 so if you invested one year ago you would be doing very well but would have been doing best if you had sold at 1200 I suppose.

I researched bit coin as I wanted to understand if it could be real investment and what it as all about. The problems that I found is that your bitcoins can easily be stolen so it is not a reliable investment in my view. There can't be anything worse than expecting To make 12x your original and waking up one morning and finding your bit coin wallet is....empty...this was the risk I came across from the articles and info I found. After all the bitcoin 'bank' mount gox Itself was a victim so seems it is hard to secure them...

I remember in 2000 a website offered to pay me in bitcoins and I thought that what ridiculous scam a this offering to pay me in tokens??!!!...they happily paid me cash instead. I think if I had taken and held those bitcoins they would probably have been worth a house or something I imagine...

So that is why I wanted to research it as I just don't like to always have a closed mind and miss the boat on the golden gift horses that do come along very few years ...for bitcoin it would appear that the easy money has been made...

Looking at that chart it seems before about 2011 the price was only a few dollars? Not usre if that is correct - I maybe be misreading- but if so if u had about before 2011 and sold in January 2014 u would have made about 300x your original investment...if your funds had nt disspeared etc...

"Yes it was about 100 usd per bitcoin a year ago went up 12x to 1200 and then went down to 600 so if you invested one year ago you would be doing very well but would have been doing best if you had sold at 1200 I suppose."

if you invested one year ago you would be doing very well ... and if you had invested (as someone must have) at $1200, you'd be licking your wounds now if you cashed out or praying that some "greater fools" will come along and rescue you if you're hanging in there.

The greater fool theory states that the price of an object is determined not by its intrinsic value, but rather by irrational beliefs and expectations of market participants. A price can be justified by a rational buyer under the belief that another party is willing to pay an even higher price. Or one may rationally have the expectation that the item can be resold to a "greater fool" later.

Even something that has a practical value, like property, is not as safe an investment as some people like to believe and as the fairly recent real estate implosion illustrates.

[deepcell]

Tell me please, how someone can steal your bitcoins if it is not stored online (in the cloud), but in your personal e-wallet (external drive)? Sounds odd.

between investing in bitcoin or properties, I get properties sure even if bitcoin being safe to invest.

[SNGLIFE]

I wired funds for BitCoin and LiteCoin purchases in October before the meteoric rise, but had to suffer 30 days or so of transaction delays. So, I bought in when BitCoin was about $800, saw it rise and fall, and I am still holding. My purchase of some $25k of both coins was extra money laying around doing nothing. I do not think I will ever touch the coins after having stored them offline in a safe place in both electronic and paper format. I figure 20+ years from now, if things go well, my kids will be adults and may have use for them. If things go bust (which I doubt), then it's no big deal. That is the nature of "risk".

If only my mother had bought into company X stock when I was the age my kids are now, I may have been able to retire years ago to some distant country at age 21 rather than age 32...ah, well..!

[SNGLIFE]

On another note, I think the use must evolve. Rather than jumping in as a replacement for the current financial infrastructure, it needs to first be accepted as a transmission medium (aka BitPay or PayPal, for example). That would build trust and allay various "fears of ignorance" which plague most change of any kind.

After trust is there and fear is gone, then we should see a rapid and revolutionary change of people accepting it such that they cannot fathom ever being without it (see Internet evolution, revolution, and adoption).

Using the same Internet adoption analogy, BitCoin is now where the Internet was in 1994. People are aware of it, but most still just don't understand it. Watch this clip from "The Today Show" in 1994. You'll see my point:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hVKRSsrIqpA

Edited August 2, 2014 by SNGLIFE

[zachary]

Bitcoins are pretty awesome, digital currency, you can pass a fortune to someone (example, selling a website to someone in England from USA in minutes using bitcoins, no bank fees, no struggle, no waiting on wires, etc)

Those types like worgeordie are usually the ones that close their eyes and hope it goes away. Uneducated opinions. Read up on "Tulip mania" and you will see there really are no similarities.

Namecheap accepts btc, wikipedia now accepts btc donations, CEO of eBay is considering integrating bitcoins , they are real, they are here to stay

[csabo]

Don't invest in bubbles. Bubbles break unexpectedly. The person blowing the bubbles wins. The person buying the bubbles looses.

[thaivisa999]

On another note, I think the use must evolve. Rather than jumping in as a replacement for the current financial infrastructure, it needs to first be accepted as a transmission medium (aka BitPay or PayPal, for example). That would build trust and allay various "fears of ignorance" which plague most change of any kind.

After trust is there and fear is gone, then we should see a rapid and revolutionary change of people accepting it such that they cannot fathom ever being without it (see Internet evolution, revolution, and adoption).

Using the same Internet adoption analogy, BitCoin is now where the Internet was in 1994. People are aware of it, but most still just don't understand it. Watch this clip from "The Today Show" in 1994. You'll see my point:

But for the purposes of investment how do you know that it is bitcoin not some future paypalcoin or applecoin google coin etc that is accepted...for those in bitcoin it could be important...I am not in it but do u see competition to it...I guess if there was reliable competition the risks would be brought more into focus- bringing the price down...just a thought- I don't understand it much just read the articles that I could find on the subject at the time...

[DiamondKing]

To me this Bitcoin thing is like the Dutch tulip bulb scam,or the

Southseas bubble scam,who says a bitcoin is worth xxx,or better

yet why is it worth xxx?,it would be nice to have a currency that

would cut out the greedy bankers,but i don't think this is going

to end well,for people who use it for investment.

regards worgeordie

That is because you don't know what you are talking about

[DiamondKing]

Tell me please, how someone can steal your bitcoins if it is not stored online (in the cloud), but in your personal e-wallet (external drive)? Sounds odd.

between investing in bitcoin or properties, I get properties sure even if bitcoin being safe to invest.

Bitcoin is NEW just like banks were new when they first started out they would get robbed all the time by the likes of Jesse james, Bonny and clyde, James Deringer etc etc and they would target banks that had weak security which is exactly what happened with Bitcoin thieves target people who do not store their coins correctly and they got robbed just like the banks did way back when.

Now since the banks were being robbed so much they would focus on increasing the secuirty of their banks which is exactly what Bitcoin is doing as it evolves and security is getting better and better as Bitcoin matures.

If someone buys bitcoin then there are ways to make it impossible for anyone to steal their Bitcoins by storing the bulk of your coins offline.

Even today banks get robbed but its quite rare and its rare that anyone gets their coins stolen if they follow protocal.

[JesseFrank]

Tell me please, how someone can steal your bitcoins if it is not stored online (in the cloud), but in your personal e-wallet (external drive)? Sounds odd.

between investing in bitcoin or properties, I get properties sure even if bitcoin being safe to invest.

Bitcoin is NEW just like banks were new when they first started out they would get robbed all the time by the likes of Jesse james, Bonny and clyde, James Deringer etc etc and they would target banks that had weak security which is exactly what happened with Bitcoin thieves target people who do not store their coins correctly and they got robbed just like the banks did way back when.

Now since the banks were being robbed so much they would focus on increasing the secuirty of their banks which is exactly what Bitcoin is doing as it evolves and security is getting better and better as Bitcoin matures.

If someone buys bitcoin then there are ways to make it impossible for anyone to steal their Bitcoins by storing the bulk of your coins offline.

Even today banks get robbed but its quite rare and its rare that anyone gets their coins stolen if they follow protocal.

So you're saying that Mt Gox, the major bitcoin exchange in the world, before it got robbed and went bankrupt, had flawed security ?

[DiamondKing]

On another note, I think the use must evolve. Rather than jumping in as a replacement for the current financial infrastructure, it needs to first be accepted as a transmission medium (aka BitPay or PayPal, for example). That would build trust and allay various "fears of ignorance" which plague most change of any kind.

After trust is there and fear is gone, then we should see a rapid and revolutionary change of people accepting it such that they cannot fathom ever being without it (see Internet evolution, revolution, and adoption).

Using the same Internet adoption analogy, BitCoin is now where the Internet was in 1994. People are aware of it, but most still just don't understand it. Watch this clip from "The Today Show" in 1994. You'll see my point:

But for the purposes of investment how do you know that it is bitcoin not some future paypalcoin or applecoin google coin etc that is accepted...for those in bitcoin it could be important...I am not in it but do u see competition to it...I guess if there was reliable competition the risks would be brought more into focus- bringing the price down...just a thought- I don't understand it much just read the articles that I could find on the subject at the time...

You are quite correct however Bitcoins market cap is so far ahead of the next competing Alt Coin that right now nothing is even close

https://coinmarketcap.com/

BItcoins Market cap is over 7 Billion dollars the next closest is just 227 Million plus Bitcoin iw way ahead as far as development of Bitcoin ATM's and other support equipment

For those who think its a big bubble and scam some of the biggest companies and investers out there are investing into and accetoing BTC including

DISH network (you can pay your satellite bill with BTC

Subway (buy a subway with BTC

Richard Branson (you can pay your flight to space with Bitcoin and people have)

Overstock.com (2nd largest online retailer accepts BTC)

Tiger Direct another online retail giant

Plus tens of thousands more companies.

Bitcoin is here to stay and those that jump on now can expect some massive gains plus the idea is to use your bitcoins when you can because ultimately that is what it is all about .

[DiamondKing]

Tell me please, how someone can steal your bitcoins if it is not stored online (in the cloud), but in your personal e-wallet (external drive)? Sounds odd.

between investing in bitcoin or properties, I get properties sure even if bitcoin being safe to invest.

Bitcoin is NEW just like banks were new when they first started out they would get robbed all the time by the likes of Jesse james, Bonny and clyde, James Deringer etc etc and they would target banks that had weak security which is exactly what happened with Bitcoin thieves target people who do not store their coins correctly and they got robbed just like the banks did way back when.

Now since the banks were being robbed so much they would focus on increasing the secuirty of their banks which is exactly what Bitcoin is doing as it evolves and security is getting better and better as Bitcoin matures.

If someone buys bitcoin then there are ways to make it impossible for anyone to steal their Bitcoins by storing the bulk of your coins offline.

Even today banks get robbed but its quite rare and its rare that anyone gets their coins stolen if they follow protocal.

So you're saying that Mt Gox, the major bitcoin exchange in the world, before it got robbed and went bankrupt, had flawed security ?

MTGOX was a company that started out grew way to fast and did not keep up with their security and expansion the owner is a crook and the Bitcoin community is way better now they are gone even though it was a big setback for BTC but since MTGOX has gone BTC has stabilized and is back on track to continue to appreciate.

As with any new business crooks are the first to get in when they see an opportunity to flout the law just like Silkroad but as things develop they are weeded out and while MTGOX was really bad for many BTC holders it is a positive move that they are now gone.

[UbonOz]

Tell me please, how someone can steal your bitcoins if it is not stored online (in the cloud), but in your personal e-wallet (external drive)? Sounds odd.

between investing in bitcoin or properties, I get properties sure even if bitcoin being safe to invest.

Bitcoin is NEW just like banks were new when they first started out they would get robbed all the time by the likes of Jesse james, Bonny and clyde, James Deringer etc etc and they would target banks that had weak security which is exactly what happened with Bitcoin thieves target people who do not store their coins correctly and they got robbed just like the banks did way back when.

Now since the banks were being robbed so much they would focus on increasing the secuirty of their banks which is exactly what Bitcoin is doing as it evolves and security is getting better and better as Bitcoin matures.

If someone buys bitcoin then there are ways to make it impossible for anyone to steal their Bitcoins by storing the bulk of your coins offline.

Even today banks get robbed but its quite rare and its rare that anyone gets their coins stolen if they follow protocal.

So you're saying that Mt Gox, the major bitcoin exchange in the world, before it got robbed and went bankrupt, had flawed security ?

Mt Gox had more holes in it than a colander. Extremely badly managed.

But, the main reason there was such a loss is that people trusted them. The last thing you do is trust an exchange.

OK to buy/sell your BTC, once done get them out and into your own wallet where you hold the private keys.

The writing was on the wall, people were warned, but they still trusted Mt Gox.

I went through the motions of KYC with Gox and was rejected because I supplied proof of ID which was not in English. Fortunate for me. I then went to BitStamp and was approved. All has gone well with BitStamp but I do not leave any quantity of cash or BTC on their exchange.

There is no way your BTC will be stolen if you use the correct security measures, ie. cold wallets.

The blockchain is possibly one of the most important inventions to mankind.

There is going to be so much change over the next few years, and all good.

Anyway, I will come back in another twelve months and see what is happening.

[PattayaPete]

I first got into bitcoin early last year when the price was around $30. I've been buying steadily since then and also accept bitcoin for payment at my business, The Pattaya Beer Garden.

There are many reasons why I believe bitcoin will succeed and become a viable world currency. In the past year millions of dollars has been raised for bitcoin startup companies and a lot of very smart people have become serious investors. The number of places you can spend bitcoin is rapidly growing with such notable new additions in the past year being Dell Computers, Expedia.com, Overstock.com and of course The Pattaya Beer Garden along with tens of thousands of other businesses. Bitcoin has become much easier to buy and sell and even Thailand now has two bitcoin exchanges where you can buy or sell bitcoin for baht.

There are very good philosophical reasons for wanting bitcoin to succeed. Anyone who understands how the banking system now works, fractional reserves, bailouts and a thousand other ways in which banks leach money out of our capitalist system will be attracted to bitcoin. The way governments create fiat currency and the way fiat currency always devalues (constant inflation) is another reason to favour bitcoin.

However the best reason to get into bitcoin right now is to simply look at the upside and downside.

The downside is that bitcoin may fail. It is a new and experimental currency and it has a lot of powerful enemies like bankers and some politicians. Bitcoin can not be "closed down" by anyone but it can be made illegal or at least very difficult to transact at the point where bitcoin meets fiat currency. We have seen this happen in several countries, including Thailand. However in every case so far bitcoin has survived and even thrived. Currently Ecuador is the only country that has outright declared bitcoin illegal and that just recently. Other bastions of democracy such as China and Russia have attempted to close down bitcoin but have failed and reneged on their negative positions. If bitcoin does fail then obviously its value will go to zero.

The upside is that millions of people have come on board. Venture capital has flowed in to bitcoin in vast amounts and the infrastructure is being built as I write this to make bitcoin a viable and superior world currency. Once it has sufficient momentum it will become unstoppable. We are not there yet but we are closer everyday. Bitcoin makes payments so simple, cheap and quick that its superiority is self evident to anyone who cares to investigate. If bitcoin achieves critical mass then it is a given that its value will increase dramatically. It's supply is strictly limited by the protocol that means if more people want it the only way the can be accommodated is for the price to go up. If the user base expanded to that of say Visa or Mastercard the value of a bitcoin would have to increase many multiples of what it is now.

So if you buy a bitcoin today at around $600 the downside is you may lose that $600 but the upside is you could make many thousands of dollars. You don't even need to buy 1 bitcoin. You can buy a bit which is 1,000th of a bitcoin for 60 cents. Owning a few bits really is a no brainer.

People say bitcoin is hard to understand and hard to keep secure. There is some truth to this. If you really want to understand how bitcoin works there are many resources on the internet that will explain it. However for most people it's a bit like the internet. Do you know how the internet works? How the TCP/IP protocol transfers packets of data with multiple redundancies built in. Probably not, and why should you unless you are interested in techy stuff. You just use it and it works. Well bitcoin will be the same. If you want to know how it works it is a fascinating story and you will be awed by just how clever it is. For most people though its utility is what will count.

The bitcoin protocol is 100% secure and has never been broken by hackers. This means all transactions are 100% safe. Safer say than internet banking and much much safer than a credit card transaction.. However once a transaction has occurred and you own bitcoin then it is more difficult to keep them safe. Not because bitcoin is insecure but because the place most people keep them like a smart phone of home computer is likely very insecure. It is easy for people who understand computer security to keep their bitcoins absolutely secure but not so easy for the average person.

A lot of work has been done and is continuing to make security easy and transparent for the average person. Wallets like Electrum really do make it fairly easy now. For people who do not trust themselves to secure their own bitcoin then websites like coinbase.com will hold your bitcoins very securely. The only problem with coinbase is that you have to trust them not to steal your bitcoin much as you have to trust your bank. For people with a small holding, coinbase is a good solution. If you want to own more than a few thousand dollars worth it is probably worth putting in the effort to understand a good secure wallet like Electrum and keep your bitcoin yourself, offline.

So, don't miss out on what promises to be the most exciting technology since the invention of the internet. Invest a little today even if just 100 or 1,000 baht. You will have a fascinating time working out how to do it and although you may end up losing those few baht you more likely will end up multiplying them many times. Oh, and feel free to drop into the Pattaya Beer Garden and buy a beer with your bitcoin.

[UbonOz]

I first got into bitcoin early last year when the price was around $30. I've been buying steadily since then and also accept bitcoin for payment at my business, The Pattaya Beer Garden.

There are many reasons why I believe bitcoin will succeed and become a viable world currency. In the past year millions of dollars has been raised for bitcoin startup companies and a lot of very smart people have become serious investors. The number of places you can spend bitcoin is rapidly growing with such notable new additions in the past year being Dell Computers, Expedia.com, Overstock.com and of course The Pattaya Beer Garden along with tens of thousands of other businesses. Bitcoin has become much easier to buy and sell and even Thailand now has two bitcoin exchanges where you can buy or sell bitcoin for baht.

There are very good philosophical reasons for wanting bitcoin to succeed. Anyone who understands how the banking system now works, fractional reserves, bailouts and a thousand other ways in which banks leach money out of our capitalist system will be attracted to bitcoin. The way governments create fiat currency and the way fiat currency always devalues (constant inflation) is another reason to favour bitcoin.

However the best reason to get into bitcoin right now is to simply look at the upside and downside.

The downside is that bitcoin may fail. It is a new and experimental currency and it has a lot of powerful enemies like bankers and some politicians. Bitcoin can not be "closed down" by anyone but it can be made illegal or at least very difficult to transact at the point where bitcoin meets fiat currency. We have seen this happen in several countries, including Thailand. However in every case so far bitcoin has survived and even thrived. Currently Ecuador is the only country that has outright declared bitcoin illegal and that just recently. Other bastions of democracy such as China and Russia have attempted to close down bitcoin but have failed and reneged on their negative positions. If bitcoin does fail then obviously its value will go to zero.

The upside is that millions of people have come on board. Venture capital has flowed in to bitcoin in vast amounts and the infrastructure is being built as I write this to make bitcoin a viable and superior world currency. Once it has sufficient momentum it will become unstoppable. We are not there yet but we are closer everyday. Bitcoin makes payments so simple, cheap and quick that its superiority is self evident to anyone who cares to investigate. If bitcoin achieves critical mass then it is a given that its value will increase dramatically. It's supply is strictly limited by the protocol that means if more people want it the only way the can be accommodated is for the price to go up. If the user base expanded to that of say Visa or Mastercard the value of a bitcoin would have to increase many multiples of what it is now.

So if you buy a bitcoin today at around $600 the downside is you may lose that $600 but the upside is you could make many thousands of dollars. You don't even need to buy 1 bitcoin. You can buy a bit which is 1,000th of a bitcoin for 60 cents. Owning a few bits really is a no brainer.

People say bitcoin is hard to understand and hard to keep secure. There is some truth to this. If you really want to understand how bitcoin works there are many resources on the internet that will explain it. However for most people it's a bit like the internet. Do you know how the internet works? How the TCP/IP protocol transfers packets of data with multiple redundancies built in. Probably not, and why should you unless you are interested in techy stuff. You just use it and it works. Well bitcoin will be the same. If you want to know how it works it is a fascinating story and you will be awed by just how clever it is. For most people though its utility is what will count.

The bitcoin protocol is 100% secure and has never been broken by hackers. This means all transactions are 100% safe. Safer say than internet banking and much much safer than a credit card transaction.. However once a transaction has occurred and you own bitcoin then it is more difficult to keep them safe. Not because bitcoin is insecure but because the place most people keep them like a smart phone of home computer is likely very insecure. It is easy for people who understand computer security to keep their bitcoins absolutely secure but not so easy for the average person.

A lot of work has been done and is continuing to make security easy and transparent for the average person. Wallets like Electrum really do make it fairly easy now. For people who do not trust themselves to secure their own bitcoin then websites like coinbase.com will hold your bitcoins very securely. The only problem with coinbase is that you have to trust them not to steal your bitcoin much as you have to trust your bank. For people with a small holding, coinbase is a good solution. If you want to own more than a few thousand dollars worth it is probably worth putting in the effort to understand a good secure wallet like Electrum and keep your bitcoin yourself, offline.

So, don't miss out on what promises to be the most exciting technology since the invention of the internet. Invest a little today even if just 100 or 1,000 baht. You will have a fascinating time working out how to do it and although you may end up losing those few baht you more likely will end up multiplying them many times. Oh, and feel free to drop into the Pattaya Beer Garden and buy a beer with your bitcoin.

Only found out this week that you accept BTC. Possibly, you are the first in Thailand to accept.

I will most definitely make a visit to your establishment next time I am down in Pattaya.

Good luck and let us know how the BTC sales progress.

[UbonOz]

A link below for a BitCoin Conference in Thailand, September.

Site is quite vague at the moment, I assume more will be added.

http://bitcoin2014.in.th/events/bitcoin-conference-2014/

[Chivas]

Bitcoin can be compared to Thaivisa posters who always rammed down others throats that it was a maximum of 20,000 Baht to evade overstays........Like that scenario Bitcoin will collapse like a pack of cards and the question asked will be where did the money all go.....

Only a matter of time....

[chingching]

I have been using bitcoin for the past 6 months or so. In a forum on transferring money from u.s.a. to thailand. I stated bitcoin was the cheapest as a percent of money sent. No one responded at all. ( figuring a 1% fee at both ends )

One of the very first bitcoin purchases was by some guy in New York, who bought 2 pizzas - Delivered, for 10,000 bitcoins. At it's peak that would have been 6 million USD a piece.

[JacChang]

Interesting, I've always viewed them as the new gold. Will look more into it. I love investment ideas.