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Warren Buffett: Bitcoin Is Pure FOMO

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Re: Warren Buffett: Bitcoin Is Pure FOMO

#111

Post by Cacti »

adamnemecek wrote: post #107
epistasis wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love hear one thing about investing before that doesn't apply now. Or one thing that Buffet doesn't understand about bitcoin that has any economic relevance. Those who say he doesn't get it seem infinitely more naive and ignorant than Buffet on this.

One of the main differences is the fact that the value of a currency is fundamentally based on who accepts it. All economic theory prior to this is...i dont want to say outdated but needs to be reprioritized.

Are you seriously suggesting that "currency is fundamentally based on who accepts it" is a new idea?

Re: Warren Buffett: Bitcoin Is Pure FOMO

#112

Post by Cacti »

juanmirocks wrote: post #27

Sending small to large quantities of wealth worldwide quasi instantly and with small fees does have a tremendous value. Ask families of immigrants. Buffet hasn’t even invested in digital tech stocks. IMO, even after all the huge respect he deserves, he doesn’t get this technology. Other than that, I don’t doubt that many current “investors” are only FOMO movers

> Sending small to large quantities of wealth worldwide quasi instantly and with small fees does have a tremendous value.

Yes, that is one of the primary purposes of the interbank settlement/wiring systems. They've been around in one form or another for around 100 years...

Re: Warren Buffett: Bitcoin Is Pure FOMO

#113

Post by aetherson »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #89
aetherson wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Nobody thinks of American cash as an investment, except for perhaps those who invest in it."

> Nobody thinks of American cash as an investment, except for perhaps those who invest in it Most buyers of U.S. dollars buy it for non-speculative purposes. Out of those who speculate on it, most do so in tandem with buying bonds and borrowing. Most FX is a cousin of rates trading more than hoping your currency goes up.

> Most buyers of U.S. dollars buy it for non-speculative purposes.

Sure! I didn't say, "except for perhaps those who buy it," I said, "for those who invest in it."

> Out of those who speculate on it, most do so in tandem with buying bonds and borrowing. Most FX is a cousin of rates trading more than hoping your currency goes up.

I agree, but don't feel like we would split these kinds of hairs when talking about other kinds of investment. Like, do we consider shorts and arbitrage and other more sophisticated forms of dabbling in financial markets to be "not investment" because they aren't "buy a stock; hope it goes up"? Perhaps when in technical discussion, but in common parlance, I feel like this is a distinction driven by emotion.

Re: Warren Buffett: Bitcoin Is Pure FOMO

#114

Post by aetherson »

aphextron wrote: post #84
aetherson wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that's a fundamental misunderstanding of what value is. And a manifestation of a common one! Things don't have value because of how much it cost to create them. They have value because of how much people are willing to buy them for. If you and I both produce spoons, and the spoons that we produce are identical in every way, but I have a more efficient manufacturing process and it costs me less to produce those sp…

The point I'm making is that it would still have value as a currency, regardless of whatever the face price of USD value crashes to. It's something that cannot be reproduced and is easily tradeable.

Huh, okay, misunderstood you. That's a fair point.

Re: Warren Buffett: Bitcoin Is Pure FOMO

#115

Post by juanmirocks »

otp124 wrote: post #74
juanmirocks wrote: post #27

Sending small to large quantities of wealth worldwide quasi instantly and with small fees does have a tremendous value. Ask families of immigrants. Buffet hasn’t even invested in digital tech stocks. IMO, even after all the huge respect he deserves, he doesn’t get this technology. Other than that, I don’t doubt that many current “investors” are only FOMO movers

> Sending small to large quantities of wealth worldwide quasi instantly and with small fees does have a tremendous value. Ask families of immigrants. I live in a foreign country, and I do pretty easily & regularly with TransferWise, with less fees than Bitcoin (another thread today mentioned $30 fee for $100 tx). Don’t see the value of bitcoin here. > Buffet hasn’t even invested in digital tech stocks. IMO, even afte…

Answering you here but answering many too. I don’t mean BTC in particular, I mean cryptocurrencies in general. Yes, BTC and ETH currently are suffering slow downs. These both assets and many more will overcome those challenges. The tech is relatively in its infancy.

Re: Warren Buffett: Bitcoin Is Pure FOMO

#116

Post by juanmirocks »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #48
juanmirocks wrote: post #27

Sending small to large quantities of wealth worldwide quasi instantly and with small fees does have a tremendous value. Ask families of immigrants. Buffet hasn’t even invested in digital tech stocks. IMO, even after all the huge respect he deserves, he doesn’t get this technology. Other than that, I don’t doubt that many current “investors” are only FOMO movers

> Buffet hasn’t even invested in digital tech stocks Apple is not a tech stock?

He only invested in it this year, and because, by his own comments, he doesn’t see Apple purely as a tech company any more, but a services one.

Re: Warren Buffett: Bitcoin Is Pure FOMO

#117

Post by empraptor »

hannasanarion wrote: post #61
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So there is inherent value in burning piles of cash, because 'cash went into creating it'? I don't get the logic.

Yeah, that's like saying that a pound of shredded bills has value. Like, yeah, you can trade it, and yeah, value was spent to create it, but you can't get that back. It's not like buying bitcoin gives you back electricity.

Interesting off-topic tidbit that is not meant to derail your point:

You could probably send the shredded bills to a US department that examines mutilated cash and get compensated.

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/06/30/.../episode-78... https://www.moneytips.com/mutilated-currency-101

Re: Warren Buffett: Bitcoin Is Pure FOMO

#118

Post by juanmirocks »

PakG1 wrote: post #58
juanmirocks wrote: post #27

Sending small to large quantities of wealth worldwide quasi instantly and with small fees does have a tremendous value. Ask families of immigrants. Buffet hasn’t even invested in digital tech stocks. IMO, even after all the huge respect he deserves, he doesn’t get this technology. Other than that, I don’t doubt that many current “investors” are only FOMO movers

It's only very recently that he's started investing in tech stocks at all. And he's never on the leading edge. He's always been very clear about this. He doesn't want to invest in things that are bleeding edge and that he doesn't understand, and he's proud to say it.

Absolutely, and that’s always the good strategy. Invest only in that what you understand. He doesn’t have to understand tech nor invest in it; his numbers show it. I for one, and I assume many more here, often suffer from the bias that and consider that everything is tech. Wrong.

Re: Warren Buffett: Bitcoin Is Pure FOMO

#119

Post by juanmirocks »

ec109685 wrote: post #46
juanmirocks wrote: post #27

Sending small to large quantities of wealth worldwide quasi instantly and with small fees does have a tremendous value. Ask families of immigrants. Buffet hasn’t even invested in digital tech stocks. IMO, even after all the huge respect he deserves, he doesn’t get this technology. Other than that, I don’t doubt that many current “investors” are only FOMO movers

What makes it so that Bitcoin will be the medium to send that wealth and not another coin if Bitcoin’s value is too volatile? Given you can have an infinite number of crypto currencies, should one necessarily dominate indefinitely?

Doesn’t have to be Bitcoin, and, I assume, Buffet doesn’t mean it either explicitly. Often Bitcoin in many contexts in understood as a synonym of this new digital money.

Re: Warren Buffett: Bitcoin Is Pure FOMO

#120

Post by rtkwe »

adamnemecek wrote: post #8
bcherny wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can go to Africa right now and I can imagine that even some of the remoter parts will be aware of bitcoin. The Bay Area, ladies and gentlemen. In all seriousness, I doubt people in most of the world have heard of either.

I don't live in the bay area. idk if you saw this but UN has previously used Ethereum to send aid to refugees. https://www.coindesk.com/united-nations-sends-aid-to-10000-s... You have to realize that in the US you have the luxury of stable (corrupt, but stable) government. A lot of other countries dont have that luxury. An international standard is a lot more enticing to someone from such a country than it is for you…

> the project run by the United Nation's World Food Programme (WFP) was designed to direct resources to thousands of Syrian refugees by giving them cryptocurrency-based vouchers that could be redeemed in participating markets.

They're not really using the actual Etherium blockchain in any meaningful sense though. They just gave vouchers that could be spent at participating markets. It reeks of a marketing ploy by Parity Technologies for some press.

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