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Vanguard Founder Jack Bogle Says ‘Avoid Bitcoin Like the Plague’

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Re: Vanguard Founder Jack Bogle Says ‘Avoid Bitcoin Like the Plague’

#21
post #12

The common sense for the wealthy investor should have been to invest 1% of his portfolio into bitcoin and other digital currencies. If he did that two years ago he'd get x15-30 returns, making Digital currencies over 10% of his portfolio. That would be the time to "cash out" or "scale out" the original investment back into traditional channels. Is it late now? I think wait a bit and then start DCA that portion of you…

Why? Why was this common sense? What other things should people have invested 1% of their portfolio in? Is every thing that has the possibility of increasing in value dramatically worth investing 1% of my portfolio?

Re: Vanguard Founder Jack Bogle Says ‘Avoid Bitcoin Like the Plague’

#22

“Bitcoin has no underlying rate of return,” said Bogle, 88, who started the first index fund in 1976. “You know bonds have an interest coupon, stocks have earnings and dividends, gold has nothing. There is nothing to support bitcoin except the hope that you will sell it to someone for more than you paid for it.” Didnt quite understand this quote - is he down on gold too?

I'm no financial advisor, but I'd fire the person who recommended I buy gold as a long term investment.

Re: Vanguard Founder Jack Bogle Says ‘Avoid Bitcoin Like the Plague’

#23

"There is nothing to support bitcoin except the hope that you will sell it to someone for more than you paid for it.” Genuinely asking, isn't this the plan for many people? How is bitcoin different than other commodities or property in this regard? Would Bogle say the same thing about those investments?

How is bitcoin different than other commodities or property in this regard?

The key distinction is that, mercurial though their price fluctuations may be - traditional commodities such as oil or real estate at least have some intrinsic value, and hence, an intrinsic floor to their valuations. Meanwhile, to the extent that any of these "coins" have such an intrinsic value - if they can even be thought of as "currencies" at all - it is extremely hard to pin down.

Which is Bogle's central point: to the extent that any of these instruments have "value", it's in the belief that ... that value will keep going up, and up, and ever up.

Re: Vanguard Founder Jack Bogle Says ‘Avoid Bitcoin Like the Plague’

#24
Another day, another alarmist article.

Nothing Jack Bogle says is not true. Yet, he is 88yr old guy, with all due respect, he has no idea what Bitcoin is.

I have yet to hear something from Wall Street that is novel and relevant to Bitcoin. It is a new thing they are afraid of, often not understanding it fully. When I say Bitcoin, I mean all crypto-currencies.

If you don't know what you are getting into, I would advise not to put any major sum in crypto. Go small and learn. Don't bet your life on something you don't understand.

And don't listen to these guys. :)

Re: Vanguard Founder Jack Bogle Says ‘Avoid Bitcoin Like the Plague’

#26

“Bitcoin has no underlying rate of return,” said Bogle, 88, who started the first index fund in 1976. “You know bonds have an interest coupon, stocks have earnings and dividends, gold has nothing. There is nothing to support bitcoin except the hope that you will sell it to someone for more than you paid for it.” Didnt quite understand this quote - is he down on gold too?

Here is Warren Buffet's similar argument against gold from his 2011 annual investor letter [0]. The argument also applies to Bitcoin and other assets that are driven more by speculation than productive income streams:

"The second major category of investments involves assets that will never produce anything, but that are purchased in the buyer’s hope that someone else – who also knows that the assets will be forever unproductive – will pay more for them in the future. Tulips, of all things, briefly became a favorite of such buyers in the 17th century.

This type of investment requires an expanding pool of buyers, who, in turn, are enticed because they believe the buying pool will expand still further. Owners are not inspired by what the asset itself can produce – it will remain lifeless forever – but rather by the belief that others will desire it even more avidly in the future.

The major asset in this category is gold, currently a huge favorite of investors who fear almost all other assets, especially paper money (of whose value, as noted, they are right to be fearful). Gold, however, has two significant shortcomings, being neither of much use nor procreative. True, gold has some industrial and decorative utility, but the demand for these purposes is both limited and incapable of soaking up new production. Meanwhile, if you own one ounce of gold for an eternity, you will still own one ounce at its end.

What motivates most gold purchasers is their belief that the ranks of the fearful will grow. During the past decade that belief has proved correct. Beyond that, the rising price has on its own generated additional buying enthusiasm, attracting purchasers who see the rise as validating an investment thesis. As “bandwagon” investors join any party, they create their own truth – for a while. Over the past 15 years, both Internet stocks and houses have demonstrated the extraordinary excesses that can be created by combining an initially sensible thesis with well-publicized rising prices. In these bubbles, an army of originally skeptical investors succumbed to the “proof” delivered by the market, and the pool of buyers – for a time – expanded sufficiently to keep the bandwagon rolling. But bubbles blown large enough inevitably pop. And then the old proverb is confirmed once again: “What the wise man does in the beginning, the fool does in the end.”

Today the world’s gold stock is about 170,000 metric tons. If all of this gold were melded together, it would form a cube of about 68 feet per side. (Picture it fitting comfortably within a baseball infield.) At $1,750 per ounce – gold’s price as I write this – its value would be $9.6 trillion. Call this cube pile A.

Let’s now create a pile B costing an equal amount. For that, we could buy all U.S. cropland (400 million acres with output of about $200 billion annually), plus 16 Exxon Mobils (the world’s most profitable company, one earning more than $40 billion annually). After these purchases, we would have about $1 trillion left over for walking-around money (no sense feeling strapped after this buying binge). Can you imagine an investor with $9.6 trillion selecting pile A over pile B? Beyond the staggering valuation given the existing stock of gold, current prices make today’s annual production of gold command about $160 billion. Buyers – whether jewelry and industrial users, frightened individuals, or speculators – must continually absorb this additional supply to merely maintain an equilibrium at present prices.

A century from now the 400 million acres of farmland will have produced staggering amounts of corn, wheat, cotton, and other crops – and will continue to produce that valuable bounty, whatever the currency may be. Exxon Mobil will probably have delivered trillions of dollars in dividends to its owners and will also hold assets worth many more trillions (and, remember, you get 16 Exxons). The 170,000 tons of gold will be unchanged in size and still incapable of producing anything. You can fondle the cube, but it will not respond.

Admittedly, when people a century from now are fearful, it’s likely many will still rush to gold. I’m confident, however, that the $9.6 trillion current valuation of pile A will compound over the century at a rate far inferior to that achieved by pile B."

[0] http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2011ltr.pdf

Edit: If you enjoyed the above excerpt, I'd recommend reading it in context, pp. 17 (start at the heading) through end of 19. I've excerpted only the middle part on gold, but he also explains the dangers of holding cash, and further explains why he favors productive investments.

Re: Vanguard Founder Jack Bogle Says ‘Avoid Bitcoin Like the Plague’

#27
post #18

Over the past 7 years, Bitcoin has outperformed every security and portfolio that Jack Bogle has recommended.

How about when adjusted for volatility?

How do you do that? It seems hard to me to attach hard $ to volatility. If you go with a rebalancing approach like frequently done for lazy portfolios you'd likely benefit from volatility, would you not?

Re: Vanguard Founder Jack Bogle Says ‘Avoid Bitcoin Like the Plague’

#28
post #17

"There is nothing to support bitcoin except the hope that you will sell it to someone for more than you paid for it.” Genuinely asking, isn't this the plan for many people? How is bitcoin different than other commodities or property in this regard? Would Bogle say the same thing about those investments?

There is a big difference. If you buy wheat futures and nobody wants to buy them, you can take delivery of a bunch of wheat. If you buy investment real estate and nobody wants it, you can live in it, or build things on it. If you buy stock in a random Fortune 500 company and nobody wants it, you can take possession of a bunch of desks or factories or inventory or whatever their deal is. And if you take possession of…

All those things typically have a potential DCF PV associated with them. Bitcoin is 100% speculative.

Re: Vanguard Founder Jack Bogle Says ‘Avoid Bitcoin Like the Plague’

#29
Bitcoin is becoming a value store. With slow transaction confirmation and high fees, what are the real-world applications for Bitcoin supposed to be now? And for those applications, are there not other cryptocurrencies more specifically targeted at being better at that application?

Re: Vanguard Founder Jack Bogle Says ‘Avoid Bitcoin Like the Plague’

#30

“Bitcoin has no underlying rate of return,” said Bogle, 88, who started the first index fund in 1976. “You know bonds have an interest coupon, stocks have earnings and dividends, gold has nothing. There is nothing to support bitcoin except the hope that you will sell it to someone for more than you paid for it.” Didnt quite understand this quote - is he down on gold too?

Gold is certainly the ideal model for something like Bitcoin but in terms of projectable value gold has time on its side. I will happily invest in Bitcoin when its history as a store of value and a medium of exchange is measured in millennia.
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