New to Bitcoin and Need Advice

Looking to get into Bitcoin as hear it is really doing well and I wanna become rich off of converting it into fiat money. Couple of questions though:
1) Why are bitcoins valuable? You have your computer solve equations to what end? It uses up precious energy, time, and wears out computer parts to make a number go up. No real value to this world. The same can be said for "real" money, except that products are made and sold, things actually happen in the real world as a result of the labor done.
2) Where can you go to "cash out" once you feel that sufficient money has been raised?

It’s not money, it’s a digital store of value. It’s valuable because it’s decentralized (censorship resistant), divisible, has a finite supply and because it has received hundreds of millions of dollars worth of free mainstream press coverage.

you can't cash out, bitcoin is the new money

Sorry to sound abrasive, but all of that just sounded like buzzwords with no concrete basis. Can you break it down further into why it being decentralized, divisible, and the current amount of press coverage warrants investment consideration? I know I am asking for a lot of information, but at the moment it just seems like this crypto-currency stuff is a scam meant to exchange fiat currency into pretend money. I mean no offence with my statements

>Where can you go to "cash out"?

Cash out where?

What?

Chinese miners own you now

I have yet to invest, I ask these questions to determine if I should

IF you want to cash out, you just transfer your BTC to an exchange like Blockchain.info and fill in the automated form in order to sell the BTC and transfer the money to your ordinary bank account.

I have heard conflicting accounts regarding this process, many of which claim that the funds don't actually transfer and are instead "phished" out of your account.

Do note however that you most likely will have to tax the sold BTC or the government might become suspicious about where those 5000€ on your bank account came from.

Never meant to imply it was a good investment. But the best way to think about it is as digital gold. It’s worth whatever the value of that is. Gold market cap is 7 to 8 trillion.

ima make it easy for you: and are true and "can't cash out" is just a meme

Not quite sure how that would happen on any of the legit sites.
By "phished out of your account", which account are you referring to?

>2) Where can you go to "cash out" once you feel that sufficient money has been raised?
>"cash out"

kid, sit down for this one. get this. you CAN'T cash out. it's really that simple, all your real-life money? poof, gone. any exchange that claims to deposit into your bank account is a scam site. anyone who tells you otherwise is a paid shill of that scam site. that's how the game is played...and we all got played...

So it is digital gold, but actual gold has a physical use beyond its mere scarcity. For example, computer components. What real world usage does bitcoin serve to maintain its value beyond belief/gaining more users? Im having a hard time pinpointing where the tangible value enters the equation, as I feel that is the only way in which widespread implementation of this crypto-currency into mainstream usage will come about

Cash out to gold = Cant cash out scam BTFO. Kek.

Golds value is completely independent of its practical applications, there is no way you don’t know that.

The real world benefits to bitcoin are simple.

You can send money from the USA to Mexico without paying for a tax. Normally sending money to mexico costs the sender 10%.

Bitcoin is meant to replace banks.

I understand the bulk of gold's value comes from a history of perception

Ah, so Bitcoins purpose is to dodge taxes. But if that were the case, how would mainstream implementation of this come about without some kind of government intervention? It could easily be spinned as a form of economic terrorism by the media

>decentralized
Like bittorrent. Impossible to suppress.
>divisible
Capable of flexibly representing much more value than it currently does
>digital store of value
Like an un-hackable web ledger, indexed from anyone to anyone, cumulatively. a debit (not debt) based economic system.

>pretend money
all money is pretend money. The only different is who is pretending. Fiat we trust a government to do the pretending. Bitcoin is designed so that we can have money without trusting ANYONE. It's Opt-in pretend money. If you don't like it, use whatever use you like.

But you'll come around one day, or at least that's what hodlers are hedging for.

Pretty sure bitcoin currently a pyrmid scheme thing where you are earning money based on other hopeful investors and currently as you can keep getting money this way nobody cares.

Sure, there might be some real world implications further down the line but that's hardly why it's pushed for so hard. Lots of smart people have already made a lot of money out of it and just want to see how far it goes.

The quick answer is that none of those things make it warrant investment consideration.
The longer answer is that it offers multiple benefits such as:
-An alternative to your country's monetary system (much appreciated by Venezuelans for whom bitcoin is a saving grace compared to their crazy inflationary currency). You probably don't care about this if you use USD or Euro but other people do, and you might at some point.
-A way to transfer any amount of money quickly to anyone on the globe who can then exchange it to their local currency. This is faster and cheaper compared to traditional money transfer methods. However, this doesn't actually apply to Bitcoin because of retarded transaction fees. Then again if you're transferring over $1k you don't care about a few dollars fee. Anyway something like Ether is perfect for this.
-Super easy way to accept payments without a gay payment processing company like paypal.
-Finally, bitcoin IS used to buy real goods and services. You can buy pretty much anything. However, the adoption is slowing down because bitcoin is a piece of shit.

Also this is important

You're a fucking nigger piece of shit liar.

On the topic of value, why are stocks that don't give out dividends valuable? Sure they represent a portion of a company but that's meaningless in actual terms, and you can only sell them to other people at what the majority deems them to be worth. Not saying it's bad just trying to understand how that's so different.

Article 1 Sections 8 and 10
Crypto's use it make money while you can. The technology's only real use is to reduce transfer time for banks or for a paypal like service but just the technology, no coins.

>What real world usage does bitcoin serve to maintain its value beyond belief/gaining more users?

>Be virtual goods seller
>Buyer pays, I give them item
>Buyer does a chargeback, claiming the transaction was unauthorized/they didn't receive the goods
>I lose my money and suffer a $20 chargeback fee because Paypal hates virtual goods
>Even if I win, I still have to spend hours building a case against the buyer

>Be virtual goods seller
>Buyer sends BTC, I give them item
>no need to worry about chargebacks

Of course, the buyer has to worry about this scenario:
>Be buyer
>Send BTC to seller
>Seller runs off with the BTC
>I lose my money

BTC has another feature to address that problem, though.
>Be seller
>Buyer asks me why he should trust me
>I show him my transaction history on the blockchain, showing that I've sold 20 BTC worth of goods and have hundreds of vouches
>Buyer googles my BTC address and sees that my record is clean
>Buyer sends BTC, I give them item

but blockchain.info is just a wallet?

Well, I have yet to invest anything, instead opting to put any money I make into a bank account. I agree that dividend-less stocks seem to be worthless unless control of the company is your ultimate goal (obtaining a majority of stocks)

The fact that people like OP are posting about making money off of crypto instead of its actual usage as a new decentralized currency, is how we know it's in a bubble. The price derived right now isn't from practical value (even as "store of value"), but rather future speculation that it'll only grow larger and extremely quickly too.

Then when people start doing mass exodus of turning actual tangible economic goods into crypto because of perceived gains, is when shit will really hit the fan.

Hmm, so you are saying that its value seems destined to plummet? Just for curiosity sake, how does one short on Bitcoin?

Just sell your bitcoins to someone who wants then for cash fucking dumb nut

No need to be so harsh, I am merely seeking information regarding crypto-currencys as a possible investment

On an exchange that has shorting, such as Kraken. Many others.
Except it's retarded to short Bitcoin now. But maybe you'll see a good time to do so at some point in the future.
>1$
>10$!? This is crazy
>100$? Woah, can't imagine it going any higher
>1000$ ...
>3000$ ...
>9000$ 10000$
>20000$
>50000$
>etc

Gibb me your shekels

You forgot to mention the part where it went from $1000 to $300

What said.

I don't know when exactly it'll plummet though. If I could figure that out, I'd be filthy rich. Could be as said, maybe it'll only plummet after 100k. Or maybe tomorrow.

>how would mainstream implementation of this come about without some kind of government intervention?
It already has. Go look up bitcoin on netflix and come back to us. The gobberment has issued laws concerning exchanges for bitcoin. And it already has been spun as a form of economic terrorism by the media. Nothing is sticking because the people that knew about bitcoin were already informed on the issues of bitcoin and what it can do. Now we have people like you who don't know what bitcoin is and can be ill-informed. like bitcoin is a ponzi scheme. Bitcoin is immune to artifical boom and busts based on the printing of currency like the US dollar. What this means is that the market (the people) dictate what price a bitcoin is worth.