Is Bitcoin (cryptocurrency) a scam?

Been looking into how one actually sells bitcoins..

It's not easy. You can't go to the bank and convert your billion dollar hoard into cash.

The only way out, seems to be market places, auctions and such. All which have fee's attached to them.

Or you could trade person to person...

The point is, this seems more a commodity then a currency, and any commidity is only worth as much as someone else is willing to pay. You could be sitting on a theoretical fortune for years without finding a buyer. (Or forever)

I have friends who swear by it and made a bundle. But I also feel like it is a huge bubble that’s about to pop.

It is not a scam. I am heavily invested in cryptocurrencies (Approximately 45% with 45% of that in Bitcoin and the rest distributed between NEOS and other altcoins).

Like any early-technology, BTC has a lot of issues that will only be solved over time such as high transaction fees etc. As more of the general public enters the market, more issues will arise but they will be solved. Blockchain technology isn't going anywhere, and I believe smart contracts are the future.

Just be wary, don't invest what you aren't willing to lose and don't be swayed by volatility or FUD.

One of the biggest lessons learned during the 1997 asian bubble was that the value of a commodity has to be somewhat proportional to its end use. Otherwise, most of the growth of said commodity would speculatory in nature and as with any speculative growth, it can rise and fall based on something as volatile as perception (making it extemely vulnerable).

It happened with real estate in the Philippines during that time, where land values exploded- triggered by the fast growth of the economy. Eventually, however, the growth tapered off and the real estate industry was slow to match this trajectory. Land values continued to increase (as many were already heavily invested and you can’t just sell off their product unless it is completely built) and we ended up with a LOT of high value investor-targetted products that they could no longer disposed of as investment dwindled. Supply >>> demand = drop in property values = bubble popped. Eventually, you have a LOT of people with properties they couldn’t sell (and with people needing money during an economic crisis, real estate products practically lost all value). It took almost a decade to recover from that, but we learned to be a lot more cautious with our money.

I see a lot of the same indicators happening to cryptocurrency. I understand that cryptos will never go away and eventually we’ll likely be adopting a universal currency no longer tied to a single country.

But it is the uncontrolled explosive growth, its lack of regulations (how do you prevent price-fixing?), the constant ads trying to sell you on the” investment” into the currency (instead of its use), its proportionately slow implementation into practical day-to-day use and the fact that it has not been tested by macros like regulations and economic downturns after widespread speculatory growth and the fact that new cryptos are popping up as competition (which might lead to market saturation and an eventual slow/stop the growth of bitcoin).

I admit I am not an expert in bitcoin and what safeguards it has that would make it dissimilar to how our buble happened but I am willing to listen to anyone who knows more.