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Will Bitcoin Make a Good Investment?

beth.technology

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Re: Will Bitcoin Make a Good Investment?

#61

Post by mdorazio »

sedeki wrote: post #5
pmiller2 wrote: post #3

Not one word here about why BTC should be worth anything at all. Who cares if someone spent time and electricity to mine it? The USD is, along with every other major, government-backed currency, already an almost 100% digital currency. I don’t see any advantage there. In fact, BTC has the disadvantage of no major government backing it. If nobody is required to accept it, and I can’t do anything with it otherwise, wha…

What exactly does it mean when people say that a currency is backed by a government? ”Backed” to me implies, e.g., redeemable for gold which is clearly not the case for the US dollar. Is it that the government issue bonds denominated in that currency? But that has nothing to do with the money supply per se...? Please explain.

In addition to the other responses here, the US government (through FDIC) guarantees that you won't lose your money in a bank account if something bad happens to the bank. That's a lot more important than most people give credit for.

Re: Will Bitcoin Make a Good Investment?

#62

Post by pmiller2 »

founderling wrote: post #52
juanbyrge wrote: post #26

Bitcoin is not an investment. It has no underlying rate of return. When you invest in stocks you get dividends. When you invest in bonds you collect coupons. When you invest in real estate you collect rent. Bitcoin is speculation. You are just hoping somebody comes.along and pays more for it than you did. In that sense it's more like gold and silver.

I beg to differ. Alice wants to send $1 to Bob via Bitcoin. Alice needs some Bitcoin to do so. Hoddler sells some Bitcoin to Alice for $1.01 Alice sends that to Bob. Now Bob wants to change it to $. Hoddler buys back for $1 Hoddler has a return on his investment.

You left out transaction fees. Factor that in, and transferring directly via USD is simpler, more secure (if not technically, then via insurance), and probably cheaper.

Re: Will Bitcoin Make a Good Investment?

#63

Post by willmadden »

wickoff wrote: post #36
2bitencryption wrote: post #4

Once thing I've noticed about Bitcoin is that there are many "alt-coins" that seem to deliver better on Bitcoin's promises from a technical perspective, but those coins are forever stuck in Bitcoin's shadow because BTC has that first-mover advantage. And as a currency, the first-mover advantage is HUGE, because who wants to convert their investments from a hugely popular coin to one that could disappear tomorrow? So…

You've accidentally stumbled upon the Bitcoin's true strength in your own answer. > unless the group governing it decides to 'fix' those flaws, but there's another issue, I don't want you messing with how my money works... That's exactly the reason why arguably technically superior projects are worth less - they are constantly messing with how their money works. The community around Bitcoin, it's so called "immune sy…

This is inaccurate. Bitcoin could handle many, many more transactions per second than it currently does with less risk and technical complexity than has been introduced since we hit the blocksize limit in 2017. There's a lot of money making sure it does not get bigger. Instead it's being rate limited with high fees and limited throughput to force transactions onto "layer 2" systems that allow 3rd party companies (ironically acting like banks) to extract fees. This is what caused most of the original Bitcoin community to fork off to Bitcoin Cash, which has improved upon the original code base and proven Bitcoin can handle far more transactions per second.

Re: Will Bitcoin Make a Good Investment?

#64

Post by sanbor »

pmiller2 wrote: post #3

Not one word here about why BTC should be worth anything at all. Who cares if someone spent time and electricity to mine it? The USD is, along with every other major, government-backed currency, already an almost 100% digital currency. I don’t see any advantage there. In fact, BTC has the disadvantage of no major government backing it. If nobody is required to accept it, and I can’t do anything with it otherwise, wha…

It doesn't have to be backed by a government to have value, just as gold or diamonds have value and are not backed by governments.

Re: Will Bitcoin Make a Good Investment?

#65

Post by cookingrobot »

thtthings wrote: post #54
liquidise wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This strikes me as a somewhat semantic argument. Many stocks don't pay dividends. Flipping houses would also fall outside of your definition of investing. Buying gold has also been a relatively safe "investment" strategy as well, speculation or not. Every form of investment is, at its core, speculation on some level. If i pour my savings into Apple and they tank, the dividends would pale in comparison to my losses.

Every asset that produces an Income or has a possibility of producing income in the future is an investment. Everything else is speculation. Buying a commercial property and renting it out is an investment. Buying a house in the hope of selling it for more in the future is not investment. Same goes for Gold, Bitcoin, momentum trading in stocks in not investment. Buying a stock that does not pay dividend but is a real…

By that definition startup investors are speculators not “investors”. That seems like an overly narrow definition of the word, compared to how it’s normally used.

Re: Will Bitcoin Make a Good Investment?

#66

Post by grubles »

gerikson wrote: post #31
comboy wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sidechains allow you to migrate to a completely different system without losing the storage of value property.

Are there any live sidechains in production? I thought the team behind them moved on to the Lightning Network.

Blockstream launched the Liquid Network sidechain fairly recently.[0] The features that distinguish it from the Bitcoin main chain are fast settlement times (1-minute blocks), confidential transactions (versus BTC's transparent txs), and the ability to issue unique assets such as tokenized fiat, crypto assets, and other pretty exciting digitized assets.

[0] https://blockstream.com/liquid/

Disclosure: I work at Blockstream.

Re: Will Bitcoin Make a Good Investment?

#67

Post by ziddoap »

Seeing so many comments (some here, but in general everywhere) still trying to argue and convince people that BTC has no value and you might as well burn your money.

BTC has been around for a decade, how many more decades does it need to be around before people will admit that hey, maybe, for some reason, this has some sort of value?

People still arguing that BTC has no use.. 10 years of usage, adoption, and rising value would seem to offer a different opinion.

Is it going to be around forever? Who knows. Maybe it goes bust tomorrow, I don't know.

What I do know is this: people are willing to buy it, sell it, and trade for it. The value goes up and down. To me, that makes it a currency that you may be able to invest some money into. Maybe you make some money, maybe you don't.

I would even argue BTC falls under the traditional definition of invest, which is:

>expend money with the expectation of achieving a profit or material result by putting it into financial schemes,

When people buy BTC, they are expecting to achieve a profit. BTC is a financial scheme. Seems fairly cut and dry to me.

Re: Will Bitcoin Make a Good Investment?

#68

Post by ThatPlayer »

thefounder wrote: post #33

Let me translate that for you: Would x spins on a slot machine make a good investment? Btw I have 1.x bitcoin in my wallet. Not as an investment though.

If the slot machine had a > 50 percent chance of winning, yes.

Not saying Bitcoin is a good investment.

Re: Will Bitcoin Make a Good Investment?

#69

Post by kartan »

2bitencryption wrote: post #4

Once thing I've noticed about Bitcoin is that there are many "alt-coins" that seem to deliver better on Bitcoin's promises from a technical perspective, but those coins are forever stuck in Bitcoin's shadow because BTC has that first-mover advantage. And as a currency, the first-mover advantage is HUGE, because who wants to convert their investments from a hugely popular coin to one that could disappear tomorrow? So…

> we agree cryptocurrency can be an amazing idea

Do we?

We all agree that currency can be just a pyramidal scheme.

Re: Will Bitcoin Make a Good Investment?

#70

Post by gerikson »

thefounder wrote: post #55
zed88 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that logic, gold should be worthless. It isn't. Bitcoin will probably never be a currency equivalent to fiat, but it surely is a store of value in the long term.

Gold is almost worthless but people just don't want to accept that because governments still use it as a form of currency. Credit rating agencies are using gold reserves(among other things) so this could be a reason

This is the second time today I’ve seen someone say that governments use good as a currency. What governments do this?
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