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Robinhood Crypto – Invest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

crypto.robinhood.com

211–220 of 317 posts

Re: Robinhood Crypto – Invest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#211

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I think Robinhood does a great job of giving young traders the experience and knowledge of what actual trading is like before they're managing really meaningful amounts of money. College kids trading $500 on Robinhood are going to become 30 year olds who have a much better sense of how markets work and how emotion affects their own trading than college kids who are just instructed to give all their savings to mutual…

Maybe, except the college kids who just give all their money to mutual funds will make more money. The day-traders won't "learn how markets work," they'll learn how to lose money by making dumb trades based on less information than their counterparties. They won't learn anything, aaaannnnyyyyything, of actual value.

I would imagine losing money usually causes people to learn.

Re: Robinhood Crypto – Invest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#212
post #30
post #27

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I buy bitcoin, it changes in value, I cash out, I now have a different amount of money than I put in. How is that not an investment?

I put money down on a blackjack table, play a hand, win, and cash out with more money than I put in. How is that not an investment?

Im watching the blackjack game for 9 years, year on year more people are winning and making big bucks. This game is clever because nobody can cheat.

Even time I think I should play another hand, some new technology gets invented that makes more money for the players in the game.

Even some of the scammy non-blackjack games that people keep making, which act like blackjack (and the players also keep making money).

But there is no way i will ever take part in blackjack because gambling is wrong and stupid.

Re: Robinhood Crypto – Invest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#213
post #150

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stocks give you ownership in productive companies. those companies on average go up in value and produce profits which they throw off as dividends (or re-invest to increase their market-cap). so one difference then is that stocks have a justification for their returns given the variance you experience.

So, by your logic, gold is not an investment?

correct. that would be 'gold speculation' which I believe is a gentleman's way of saying gambling.

Re: Robinhood Crypto – Invest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#214
post #186
post #183

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I would tend to subscribe to a similar view and think that no, gold is not really an investment. A hedge, a gamble perhaps. An investment is something that (hopefully) enables useful work and productive endeavour. Putting money into a company in return for a share of ownership is an investment. A lot of stock market shenanigans are little more than gambling. Gold and crypto-currencies for the most part are speculatio…

That's fair. By your logic then, though, ICO tokens would be an investment?

sure. just really bad ones. like the DAO.

Re: Robinhood Crypto – Invest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#215

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If I buy a lump of gold, and attempt to sell it to someone else later at a higher price, that is pure speculation. Gold is gold is gold. That lump of gold is going to be the same lump of gold a year from now or a hundred years from now. You might as well have buried the money in a backyard for all the change of affected in the world. If I take that same money and invest it in a business -- the business is going to ta…

> If I take that same money and invest it in a business -- the business is going to take that money and create something new. Only if you're buying at the IPO. Most of the time, you're just buying stock from another person and the company gets zilch. The service you're providing to the company is just better information about its ability to raise additional capital from selling equity. For some cryptocurrencies, you…

The company is also a shareholder and can pay out dividends or buy back stock to increase the price. One pays you directly, and the other increases your stake by diluting the pool of outstanding shares. Both are direct results of actions taken by the corporation, and both create something new: cash and equity, respectively.

Re: Robinhood Crypto – Invest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#216

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> Ah, I didn't know they made money off that part of it. I suppose you give up some privacy/data when they resell your order, similar to using Facebook or Google. It's a slick business model, I didn't even realize it. Your also giving up better trade execution ie paying more for shares. Robinhood is good for getting your feet wet but people should switch brokers as soon as possible.

Yeah, I plan on moving my shares to a broker with the nice features like DRIP/partial share purchases and so on once I accumulate enough capital to make the $5 trade fees worth it.

If you can handle the minimum amount to open an account(10K) Interactive Brokers is awesome, Commissions are usually just a $1 in and out. If your under 25 then it's 3K to open an account.

Re: Robinhood Crypto – Invest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#217

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Ah, I didn't know they made money off that part of it. I suppose you give up some privacy/data when they resell your order, similar to using Facebook or Google. It's a slick business model, I didn't even realize it.

> Ah, I didn't know they made money off that part of it. I suppose you give up some privacy/data when they resell your order, similar to using Facebook or Google. It's a slick business model, I didn't even realize it. Your also giving up better trade execution ie paying more for shares. Robinhood is good for getting your feet wet but people should switch brokers as soon as possible.

Why not just get a vanguard / schwab / fidelity account then and buy their no fee ETFs?

Re: Robinhood Crypto – Invest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#218

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There's no such thing as a no-fee stock trading. It does not exist: every company that has "no fee" stock trading sells order flow to market makers.

Every single retail brokerage including all the companies that charge "fees" also sell order flows to market makers. All of them.

There are retail brokerages that allow one to specify execution path. Those brokerages cannot sell such order flow.

There are retail brokerages that allow one to collect order flow charges. Those brokerages cannot make money on such order flow.

Re: Robinhood Crypto – Invest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#220
post #209
post #144

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Other assets are tied to real phenomena. With stocks, for example, I can make a prediction about a company's future performance, buy or short accordingly, and expect that if I am correct I will profit. I may be wrong about my prediction, but if I am correct then I've got far better than chance odds of also being correct about the future price of the asset. Without making any further predictions about the state of the…

A bitcoin is as real as anything else. It's ones and zeros stored in a distributed ledger on computers around the world. I'm sorry you're having trouble predicting the price, look up supply and demand. Either way it doesn't make it any less real.

I don't dispute that a Bitcoin is a real, discrete thing. What I'm arguing is that it's a self-contained thing. The price of a Bitcoin is not anchored to anything outside the Bitcoin ecosystem.

With other assets, there's a clear causal arrow leading from outside the system back in. If Google the company performs better, Google the stock will overwhelmingly tend to perform better. If Google the company folds, Google the stock will overwhelmingly tend toward being worthless. The asset is a proxy for something that isn't the asset.

Bitcoin doesn't appear to work the same way. There's no obvious not-Bitcoin that demand for Bitcoin is a function of. It's a proxy for itself, after a fashion. That doesn't mean it has no value, but it does feel uncomfortably self-referential when compared to almost any traditional asset class.

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