"for me at least it is an opportunity to keep my own wealth. " This is a really poor reason to use BTC. A) BTC is supposed to be a currency - generally, a cur

"for me at least it is an opportunity to keep my own wealth. " This is a really poor reason to use BTC. A) BTC is supposed to be a currency - generally, a currency is not where you should be storing wealth. Currencies are not designed to be 'stores of value' - they are there to facilitate economic activity and transactions. If you want to 'store wealth' - put it in real estate, bonds or equities. Commodities. Other currencies. A broad mix/basket of many of them. B) There's no reason at all to think that BTC will necessarily be worth more/less than another currency. Why do you think BTC will 'always go up'? Much of the BTC hype may have already been had. C) By simply keeping your currency in a trivial savings account, will roughly protect it from inflation. In addition - most bank accounts are Federally insured - in case something goes wrong, you get up to $200K back etc.. D) Risk. BTC could go to zero tomorrow. Probably not - but possibly. It's extremely volatile = bad store of value. People have this really odd view that 'currency = value' ... it's not ... currency is just a 'medium of exchange' - so you only need to hold it when you want to transact with someone else in a common/liquid way. Over any reasonable length of time, currency is generally not a good place to hold value, and it's not designed for that. If you have lot's of currency, trade it for something else, spread it out. There will never, ever be a currency or any other magical currency store of value that will provide what you are kind of implying. Never. This is because the ratio of 'things people need' and the 'amount of currency they need to transact for' is constantly in flux, ergo, a 'fixed' currency constantly in flux relative to that.