# A bitcoin question **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 2, 2017, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-bitcoin-question/776160 "2017-01-02T19:00:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2017, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-bitcoin-question/776160/1 "2017-01-02T19:00:11Z")
[Bitcoin breaks $1,000 level, highest in more than 3 years](http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/02/bitcoin-breaks-1000-level-highest-in-more-than-3-years.html) > [@](#): > > The price of bitcoin has breached the $1,000 mark, hitting a more than three-year high on Monday. > > The cryptocurrency was trading at $1,021 at the time of publication, according to CoinDesk data, at level not seen since November 2013, with its market capitalization exceeding $16 billion. > > Bitcoin has been on a steady march higher for the past few months, driven by a number of factors such as the devaluation of the yuan, geopolitical uncertainty and an increase in professional investors taking an interest in the asset class. Does this mean that each bitcoin is worth $1,021? How can a currency with such a high value be useful in trading? If I were on a site and bought something worth a couple of hundred bucks would I really have to forward a fraction of a bitcoin? It surely must make it confusing assessing prices unless you keep converting them to dollars. And if this really is a great way to hoard your savings what would you need to do? Buy a few bitcoins and store them on your hard drive? That seems, to say the least, a little risky, even with a backup. And as for mining them, forget about it, it looks too complicated to even think about. I guess I’m misunderstanding a few things. A little help would be much appreciated. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2017, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-bitcoin-question/776160/2 "2017-01-02T19:13:14Z")
I share your ignorance, and there’s definitely a risk in storing them on your portable hard drive: you might throw out several million dollars worth of bitcoins in spring cleaning: “Missing: Hard drive containing Bitcoins worth £4 m in Newport landfill site.” > **[Missing: hard drive containing Bitcoins worth £4m in Newport landfill site](https://www.google.ca/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/27/hard-drive-bitcoin-landfill-site?client=safari)** > > A digital 'wallet' containing 7,500 Bitcoins that James Howells generated on his laptop is buried under four feet of rubbish ---
**Author:** ![Schnitte](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/schnitte/32/9033_2.png) [@Schnitte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Schnitte)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2017, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-bitcoin-question/776160/3 "2017-01-02T20:01:50Z")
Bitcoins can be broken down into fractions of a bitcoin, and these fractions can be transferred separately. The protocol can handle eight decimals after the decimal point, meaning that you can transfer amounts as small as a billionth of a bitcoin. Edit: If your problem is simply one of terminology, i.e. how to name a fraction of a bitcoin without getting into inconvenient numbers like 0.002, that can be handled easily with the usual numerical prefixes. It’s not rare to hear or read about a millibitcoin, for instance. ---
**Author:** ![dolphinboy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dolphinboy/32/330_2.png) [@dolphinboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dolphinboy)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2017, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-bitcoin-question/776160/4 "2017-01-02T20:37:58Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > I share your ignorance, and there’s definitely a risk in storing them on your portable hard drive: you might throw out several million dollars worth of bitcoins in spring cleaning: “Missing: Hard drive containing Bitcoins worth £4 m in Newport landfill site.” > > [Missing: hard drive containing Bitcoins worth £4m in Newport landfill site | Bitcoin | The Guardian](https://www.google.ca/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/27/hard-drive-bitcoin-landfill-site?client=safari) That’s heartbreaking. I could see myself doing something similar, and regretting it the rest of my life. I would think it would be worth spending 100-200K looking for it, but that’s just me. ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2017, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-bitcoin-question/776160/5 "2017-01-02T20:58:18Z")
It’s an electronic currency, so it’s easy to trade fractional coins, and that’s what people using it for transactions do. Most of the use of bitcoin for purchases is either by True Believers, who don’t care about the inconvenience, or people buying illegal goods like drugs or trading money past currency controls, who put up with the inconvenience for semi-anonymity. Bitcoins are generally an awful way to save money, both because the value fluctuates very widely and you don’t get any kind of general appreciation on them and because they’re difficult to convert to real money in bulk. There are exchanges where you can move hundreds or thousands of dollars into and out of it fairly easily (though there are charges and exchange rate tricks to worry about), but there’s no guarantee that you can get a large sum converted to cash in a reasonable time frame. It’s also not all that liquid if you have a lot; trying to cash out the 4 million pound wallet would likely crash the market, so the last part of them would sell for a lot less than the first part. ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2017, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-bitcoin-question/776160/6 "2017-01-04T16:57:46Z")
Also, here’s a comprehensive document from the SEC about bitcoin. It’s 27 pages long, but gives a much more solid overview of why putting your retirement fund into bitcoin is an incredibly bad idea. > **[batsbzx201630-20.pdf](https://www.sec.gov/comments/sr-batsbzx-2016-30/batsbzx201630-20.pdf)** > > 174.23 KB ---
**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2017, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-bitcoin-question/776160/7 "2017-01-04T17:21:43Z")
Very helpful responses! I think I’ll stick with keeping my savings under the mattress for the time being! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Tired\_and\_Cranky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a87d85/32.png) [@Tired\_and\_Cranky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tired_and_Cranky)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2017, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-bitcoin-question/776160/8 "2017-01-04T18:14:12Z")
> [@Pantastic](#): > > Also, here’s a comprehensive document from the SEC about bitcoin. It’s 27 pages long, but gives a much more solid overview of why putting your retirement fund into bitcoin is an incredibly bad idea. > > [https://www.sec.gov/comments/sr-batsbzx-2016-30/batsbzx201630-20.pdf](https://www.sec.gov/comments/sr-batsbzx-2016-30/batsbzx201630-20.pdf) Your link does not go to an SEC statement. It is a public commenter’s statement about a self-regulatory organization’s rule filing. The SEC seeks comment from the public before it approves rules by some of the organizations that it regulates. This is just one of those comments. Some commenters on rule filings are well-informed and offer good insights. Some commenters are biased shills for the industry they profit from. Other commenters are as ignorant as the worst Youtube commenters. I don’t know which group your commenter falls into but I would take the paper with a huge grain of salt. Here is a statement from the SEC staff about some of the risks of bitcoins. It’s not exactly a ringing endorsement of bitcoins as investments: [https://www.sec.gov/oiea/investor-alerts-bulletins/investoralertsia\_bitcoin.html](https://www.sec.gov/oiea/investor-alerts-bulletins/investoralertsia_bitcoin.html) ---
**Author:** ![Turble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8dc957/32.png) [@Turble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Turble)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2017, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-bitcoin-question/776160/9 "2017-01-05T16:10:15Z")
Today on Reuters: [Digital currency bitcoin fell more than 20 percent in the space of four hours of trading on Thursday](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-markets-bitcoin-idUSKBN14P1ID) ---
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2017, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-bitcoin-question/776160/10 "2017-01-05T18:00:30Z")
> [@Turble](#): > > Today on Reuters: > [Digital currency bitcoin fell more than 20 percent in the space of four hours of trading on Thursday](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-markets-bitcoin-idUSKBN14P1ID) That link returns a “Page Not Found” page. Here’s a link that works for me. [http://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-markets-bitcoin-idUSKBN14P1ID](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-markets-bitcoin-idUSKBN14P1ID)